An obscure card game for 2 players — found, re-interpreted, and documented by Bill de Veas, 2020-09-03
Disclaimer: I am not the creator of "Pariah". This document is only my personal interpretation of the rule set that I found online on a now-deleted Wikipedia article. I felt that the game was interesting enough to be preserved for posterity. I describe it here in my own words which I find easier to understand. Any info that leads to a definitive, verifiable source / author for "Pariah" will be appreciated and published here in an update.
This game uses a standard French-suited card deck (52 cards, no Jokers).
To start a round, deal both players 4 "private" cards, face-down, side-by-side; and 4 "public" cards placed face-up toward the center of the playing area, one in front of each private card.
Place the remainder of the deck face-down in the center of the playing table as the stock pile.
Each parallel pair of one public card and one private card is called a "coop"; each player has four coops.
You may peek at your own private cards at any time, and never at those of your opponent.
The object of Pariah is to be the first to reach a predetermined agreed-upon point threshold, such as 500 or 1000.
Make valid coops to score points across one or more rounds, with a running total.
A coop is valid only when its cards satisfy the following conditions:
To start your turn, draw a card from the stock pile (never the discard pile).
Then, do one of the following with the card:
Drawing a court card grants an additional special action:
At the end of your turn, you may knock. Upon doing so, your opponent gets one more turn to either improve their own hand or attempt to sabotage your hand. When their turn ends, so does the round.
The round also ends if the stock pile runs out and nobody has knocked.
When the round ends, players add up the values of their cards in valid coops — cards in invalid coops are not counted.
Keep a running total, and play again until a player wins by reaching/crossing the point threshold.
2020-09-03: Initial documentation.
2021-04-08: Edited to note that the Wikipedia source page has been deleted.