Ruling — Mansions of Madness

You asked

How do I set up Mansions of Madness?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Mansions of Madnessbg-83330-en-1e

To set up Mansions of Madness, players must perform General Setup, followed by simultaneous Investigator and Keeper setup.[1][2]

**General Setup**

1. Choose a story from the five available options.[3]

2. Decide which player will be the keeper and which will be investigators.[3]

3. Slot matching monster tokens into the bases of each monster figure and place them on the table within reach of the keeper.[3]

4. Sort all other markers and tokens into piles by type and place them within reach of all players; place puzzle pieces in five facedown piles separated by their common backs.[3]

5. Investigator players take all Trait, Starting Item, and Investigator Character cards.[3]

6. The keeper player takes all Mythos, Exploration, Lock, Obstacle, Objective, and Keeper Action cards.[3]

7. The keeper builds the story's Event deck by placing the five chosen Event cards in order, starting with the stage 'V' card on the bottom and ending with the stage 'I' card on top.[3]

8. Separate all other cards by their backs; place the three Combat decks and the Trauma deck within reach of the keeper, and place the four Spell decks within reach of the investigators.[3]

**Investigator Setup**

(Performed simultaneously with Keeper setup)

1. Perform steps listed in the chosen story's Investigator Guide, which include setting up the game map, reading the introductory story, and choosing investigators.[2]

2. Once an investigator is chosen, the player receives the corresponding Character card, Trait cards, and a specified number of skill point tokens.[2]

3. Each player chooses two of their investigator's Trait cards to represent abilities for the game.[2]

4. The player receives the Starting Item or Spell card listed on those chosen Trait cards and returns all other Trait cards to the box.[2]

5. Each player places their investigator figure on the Start space as specified in the story's 'Map Setup'.[2]

**Keeper Setup**

(Performed simultaneously with Investigator setup)

1. Perform steps listed in the chosen story's Keeper Guide.[2]

2. These steps include choosing an objective, setting up the Keeper Action cards and Mythos deck, and seeding the game board with Exploration, Obstacle, and Lock cards.[2]

[1] RULEBOOK Mansions of Madness — Rulebook · p.5 · Setup

[2] RULEBOOK Mansions of Madness — Rulebook · p.6 · Investigator Setup · Keeper Setup · Playing the Game

[3] RULEBOOK Mansions of Madness — Rulebook · p.5 · General Setup

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
corpus profile: live
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only): gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings: search 237 ms · ask 12596 ms · total 12844 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 12844 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 5, "score": 0.04866, "snippet": "Before playing the game, players must perform the following steps: Choose Story: 1. Mansions of Madness includes five unique stories, each with many possible card setups and three different endings. Before playing, players decide which of the five stories they wish to play during this game session. ", "headingPath": "General Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 625}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.048652, "snippet": "Setting up a game of Mansions of Madness is different from many other games. Although all players participate during 'General Setup,' the keeper and investigator players have different steps to perform. The investigators' setup instructions for each story are listed in the Investigator Guide at the ", "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 625}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.047379, "snippet": "After finishing General Setup, the investigator players perform the steps listed in the chosen story in the Investigator Guide (at the end of this rulebook). These steps include setting up the game map, reading the introductory story, and choosing investigators. Once a player has chosen his investig", "headingPath": "Investigator Setup · Keeper Setup · Playing the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 625}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.047371, "snippet": "Mansions of Madness is a board game for two to five players in which one player takes on the role of the keeper and all other players take on the roles of investigators. During each game, investigator players come to explore a location in order to unravel a mystery. Investigators win or lose as a te", "headingPath": "Game Overview · Object of the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 625}, {"page": 25, "score": 0.045688, "snippet": "Since Mansions of Madness is a team game, it is important to know which information is open to all players and which information is kept secret from the other side. Combat Cards: All information on Combat cards is open information. An investigator may know the possible outcomes of the card before ch", "headingPath": "Secrecy", "sharpsignalDocId": 625}, {"page": 21, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Although combat is not the main focus of Mansions of Madness , investigators often enter situations where they must fight against horrible creatures or corrupt humans. This section details all rules for combat as well as all mechanics that directly tie into combat (such as 'Damage and Horror': page ", "headingPath": "Combat · Investigator Attacks · Combat Card Breakdown · Range · Line of Sight", "sharpsignalDocId": 625}, {"page": 26, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Game Designer: Corey Konieczka Additional Component and Story Design: Tim Uren Editing and Proofreading: Brian Mola and Mark O'Connor Graphic Design: Kevin Childress, Dallas Mehlhoff, Andrew Navaro, Brian Schomburg, Michael Silsby, WiL Springer, and Adam Taubenheim Cover Art: Anders Finér Map and Fe", "headingPath": "Credits", "sharpsignalDocId": 625}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "The keeper takes the five Event cards for the story the players have chosen and builds the story's Event deck in order, starting with the stage 'V' Event card on the bottom and ending with the stage 'I' Event card on top. No player may look at the face of these cards during this process. Set Up Draw", "headingPath": "General Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 625}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 625}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Investigator Setup · Keeper Setup · Playing the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 625}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "General Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 625}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 625 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 625 boosted
answered-before recall: this ruling was answered, so past rulings were not offered
similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)
debug row retained until: Nov 7, 2026 16:56

retrieval — what the passage search returned

what this block IS: the PASSAGE SEARCH's own results — the same search that fills this page's closest-passages list — and NOT the passages the answerer read. Answering runs its OWN retrieval: a far wider candidate pool, re-ranked down to a final handful, plus floors this search never applies — the base rulebook, surviving errata corrections, and one slot per book on a multi-book read. Each of those armed only if THIS ask sent what it needs: the boost block names the ids it forwarded, and the scope line names the books it read. A document the answer CITES that no row here names is therefore EXPECTED, not a defect: two searches, two candidate pools, two orders. How much wider that pool was is set gateway-side and is NOT REPORTED for this ruling, and neither are the answerer's final rows — so rulesage has nothing of its own to show beside these.

score = the fused retrieval score (reciprocal-rank fusion over the search arms) — NOT a cosine similarity. This ruling ran the THREE-ARM fuse (full-text + vector + the doc-priority boost arm, which carried the base rulebook and/or the errata corrections this query matched), whose arithmetic ceiling is 0.04918 — all three arms ranking the same chunk #1 (ceiling = arms/(k+1) at k=60). The measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 was measured on TWO-arm asks and does not bound this one: its high end is the two-arm ceiling, and a third arm has room above it. A chunk only one arm ranked highly lands near 0.016 (that one arm's #1 vote), so 0.03 here is an excellent hit, not a 3% match.

per-arm ranks (the rank each search arm gave a chunk): NOT DISCLOSED by the gateway. Fusion happens gateway-side and only the FUSED score crosses the wire, so rulesage cannot show them without a gateway change. The rank column below is the FUSED rank (position in the returned list), which is real.

token count per chunk: NOT DISCLOSED — chunk token counts are not reported on the ask path. The character counts below are of the bounded snippet/quote rulesage actually received — a real measurement of what we hold, never an estimate of the chunk.

fused rank	document	heading	page	fused RRF score	snippet chars
#1	RULEBOOK Mansions of Madness — Rulebook (corpus doc 625)	General Setup	p.5	0.04866 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#2	RULEBOOK Mansions of Madness — Rulebook (corpus doc 625)	Setup	p.5	0.048652 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#3	RULEBOOK Mansions of Madness — Rulebook (corpus doc 625)	Investigator Setup · Keeper Setup · Playing the Game	p.6	0.047379 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#4	RULEBOOK Mansions of Madness — Rulebook (corpus doc 625)	Game Overview · Object of the Game	p.2	0.047371 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#5	RULEBOOK Mansions of Madness — Rulebook (corpus doc 625)	Secrecy	p.25	0.045688 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#6	RULEBOOK Mansions of Madness — Rulebook (corpus doc 625)	Combat · Investigator Attacks · Combat Card Breakdown · Range · Line of Sight	p.21	0.030769 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#7	RULEBOOK Mansions of Madness — Rulebook (corpus doc 625)	Credits	p.26	0.029851 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#8	RULEBOOK Mansions of Madness — Rulebook (corpus doc 625)	General Setup	p.5	0.029412 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300

what the answerer read — the passages it actually had in front of it

what this block IS: the passages the ANSWERING read put in front of the answerer, in the order it read them — the other half of the two reads described above, and the one that decides what the answer could possibly say. Each row names the book it came from and where in that book it sits, what it scored when the search arms were fused, which arm carried it there, and whether the re-ranker chose it or a floor guaranteed it a slot. A row here that no passage-search row names is EXPECTED: a far wider pool, re-ranked, with floors the passage search never applies.

the passages the answerer read: NOT RECORDED for this ruling. Any of three things leaves this empty, and they are all different from the answerer having had nothing to read: this ask may never have reached a gateway at all; a multi-book ask keeps each book's own context on that book's own page rather than here; or the gateway build that answered may simply not report it. What this NEVER means is that the answerer read nothing — an answer was composed from passages either way, and their absence here is a gap in what we were told, not in what it read.

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Mansions of Madness — Rulebook (corpus doc 625)	Setup	p.5	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Mansions of Madness — Rulebook (corpus doc 625)	Investigator Setup · Keeper Setup · Playing the Game	p.6	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Mansions of Madness — Rulebook (corpus doc 625)	General Setup	p.5	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 237 ms · first delta 9142 ms · total 12844 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 0 ms · retrieval 237 ms · ask 12596 ms · gateway work 12844 ms · total 12844 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3662
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 496
tok/sec: 136.6 tok/sec — 496 output tokens in 3.632 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 33s ago)
stream path: streamed — the gateway pushed at least one accumulated draft
watchdog: first-token watchdog: 30s per arming window (rulesage.table.first-token-watchdog-seconds), re-armed once by the passages frame — so the worst case before a reader falls back to polling is 60s. Whether it actually fired is a BROWSER-side decision that never reaches the server, so it is not recorded here. The stream path above is the server's half of that story: whether a delta was emitted at all.
num_ctx · think posture: both are the CHILD's settings, not rulesage's, and no ask reply carries them — an answer never states which context window or think posture produced it. The live-seat line above reads them from the running child instead, where the gateway can answer for itself; it describes the child NOW, not this ask.

disposition

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered): answered — no abstain rationale applies

setup-shape — why the checklist band did or didn't render

decision: NO_APPROVED_CHECKLIST — setup-shaped, but no approved setup checklist exists for this game
pattern that matched: SETUP — "setup" / "set up"
matched words (in the normalized question): set up

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 558), so "no registered errata card matched" above could never have matched one

Errata scope: the gate above matched this ruling's own edition only. When an ask also reads an expansion, that expansion's own registered errata cards stay outside the match — a stated phase-1 limitation, not a failed lookup.