Ruling — Return to Dark Tower

← Return to Dark Tower

You asked

When does the game end?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Return to Dark Towerbg-256680-en-1e

The game ends in one of the following ways:

**Winning the Game**

* Complete the main goal and then defeat the adversary.[1][2]

* Find the relic in the Tower dungeon.[3]

* If all but one hero is eliminated, the lone remaining hero wins.[3]

**Losing the Game**

* A hero would gain their third corruption.[1][2][4]

* You must take a skull from the supply and there are none.[1][2][5]

* The sixth month ends.[1][2][6]

* An event eliminates all remaining heroes at once, in which case nobody wins.[3]

[1] RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook · p.23 ·  LOSING THE GAME  ·  WINNING THE GAME  · COMPLETING THE MAIN GOAL · DEFEATING THE ADVERSARY ·  GAME SEEDS  ·  APP ICON GUIDE 

[2] RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook · p.28 ·  COMMONLY MISSED RULES  ·  YOU GAIN A CORRUPTION WHEN...  ·  WINNING & LOSING 

[3] RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook · p.25 · ENTERING THE TOWER DUNGEON · FINDING THE RELIC ·  HERO ELIMINATION  ·  END OF THE GAME  ·  CLARIFICATIONS 

[4] RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook · p.9 ·  SPIRIT  ·  VIRTUES  ·  CORRUPTIONS 

[5] RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook · p.21 · 3. End of Turn ·  PLACING SKULLS 

[6] RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook · p.12 · Sequence of Play ·  INDIVIDUAL TURNS  ·  MONTHLY QUESTS  · Taking Your Turn

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
corpus profile: live,vps
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only): gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings: search 70 ms · ask 2993 ms · total 3067 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 3067 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 23, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "You lose the game immediately in any of the following situations: /rightArrow When a hero would gain their third corruption. /rightArrow When you have to take a skull from the supply and there are none. /rightArrow When the sixth month ends. If you lose the game, press the 'game lost' button on the ", "headingPath": " LOSING THE GAME  ·  WINNING THE GAME  · COMPLETING THE MAIN GOAL · DEFEATING THE ADVERSARY ·  GAME SEEDS  ·  APP ICON GUIDE ", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.048131, "snippet": "The game is played in a series of months . If the heroes do not complete the main goal and then defeat the adversary before the end of the sixth month, they lose the game. In the first month, the first turn is taken by the start player. Then play continues in clockwise order. Each player takes exact", "headingPath": "Sequence of Play ·  INDIVIDUAL TURNS  ·  MONTHLY QUESTS  · Taking Your Turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}, {"page": 25, "score": 0.047163, "snippet": "Once you have completed three heroic tests, you have gained access to the Tower dungeon. You can then enter the Tower dungeon by taking the Quest action on any space adjacent to the Tower. Finding the relic requires you to find the room in the Tower dungeon where the relic is hidden. If you find the", "headingPath": "ENTERING THE TOWER DUNGEON · FINDING THE RELIC ·  HERO ELIMINATION  ·  END OF THE GAME  ·  CLARIFICATIONS ", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}, {"page": 22, "score": 0.047131, "snippet": "3. End of Turn (cont.) Events happen at the end of most player turns. The app will alert you. Read the event aloud and follow its instructions, with the player who dropped the skull into the Tower making any choices required. Once the event is resolved, press 'confirm.' Repeat as needed for each eve", "headingPath": " PLACING SKULLS  ·  EVENTS ", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}, {"page": 21, "score": 0.046175, "snippet": "At the end of your turn, you must take a skull from the supply and drop it into the Tower. If you cannot drop a skull because the supply is empty, the heroes lose! When you drop a skull, it might emerge from the Tower, cause the Tower to rotate, or cause events to occur. If skulls emerge, place them", "headingPath": "3. End of Turn ·  PLACING SKULLS ", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}, {"page": 28, "score": 0.045037, "snippet": " You may spend 1 to double your move value for the turn. Once you have started to move, you may no longer double or modify your move.  Nothing on the game board stops or prevents your movement. You may freely enter and leave spaces with foes, skulls, tokens, and other heroes.  Wild Advantages can", "headingPath": " COMMONLY MISSED RULES  ·  YOU GAIN A CORRUPTION WHEN...  ·  WINNING & LOSING ", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Once you have completed the main goal, you can battle the adversary. This works like a normal battle, but with three key exceptions: /rightArrow You must resolve five battle cards in a single battle to defeat the adversary. /rightArrow You may retreat from a battle with the adversary. You must resol", "headingPath": " BATTLING THE ADVERSARY ", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}, {"page": 24, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "We suggest that you familiarize yourself with the cooperative game mode before you try the competitive game mode.  Optional heroic test completion effect In the competitive game mode, the heroes race to be the first to find the relic hidden within the Tower dungeon. Observe these changes and additi", "headingPath": "Competitive Game ·  OVERVIEW  ·  SETUP CHANGES  ·  HERO GOALS  · COMPLETING HEROIC TESTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 23, "quote": null, "headingPath": " LOSING THE GAME  ·  WINNING THE GAME  · COMPLETING THE MAIN GOAL · DEFEATING THE ADVERSARY ·  GAME SEEDS  ·  APP ICON GUIDE ", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}, {"page": 28, "quote": null, "headingPath": " COMMONLY MISSED RULES  ·  YOU GAIN A CORRUPTION WHEN...  ·  WINNING & LOSING ", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}, {"page": 25, "quote": null, "headingPath": "ENTERING THE TOWER DUNGEON · FINDING THE RELIC ·  HERO ELIMINATION  ·  END OF THE GAME  ·  CLARIFICATIONS ", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": " SPIRIT  ·  VIRTUES  ·  CORRUPTIONS ", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}, {"page": 21, "quote": null, "headingPath": "3. End of Turn ·  PLACING SKULLS ", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}, {"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Sequence of Play ·  INDIVIDUAL TURNS  ·  MONTHLY QUESTS  · Taking Your Turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 379 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 379 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)
answer fence: passed — letter density 0.83659 of 410 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 12, 2026 22:56

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. The answerer's own final rows are shown in their own block below, beside these and never mixed into them.

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 Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	 LOSING THE GAME  ·  WINNING THE GAME  · COMPLETING THE MAIN GOAL · DEFEATING THE ADVERSARY ·  GAME SEEDS  ·  APP ICON GUIDE 	p.23	0.048916 (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 Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	Sequence of Play ·  INDIVIDUAL TURNS  ·  MONTHLY QUESTS  · Taking Your Turn	p.12	0.048131 (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 Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	ENTERING THE TOWER DUNGEON · FINDING THE RELIC ·  HERO ELIMINATION  ·  END OF THE GAME  ·  CLARIFICATIONS 	p.25	0.047163 (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 Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	 PLACING SKULLS  ·  EVENTS 	p.22	0.047131 (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 Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	3. End of Turn ·  PLACING SKULLS 	p.21	0.046175 (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 Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	 COMMONLY MISSED RULES  ·  YOU GAIN A CORRUPTION WHEN...  ·  WINNING & LOSING 	p.28	0.045037 (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 Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	 BATTLING THE ADVERSARY 	p.17	0.030303 (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 Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	Competitive Game ·  OVERVIEW  ·  SETUP CHANGES  ·  HERO GOALS  · COMPLETING HEROIC TESTS	p.24	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

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.

candidate pool: the answering read scored 27 passages, out of a ceiling of 80 set gateway-side. Both figures are reported by the gateway for THIS ask — measurements of what actually happened, not constants read out of anyone's source and printed here on faith.

floors armed for this ask: the base rulebook — armed · surviving errata corrections — not armed · one slot per book on a multi-book read — not armed. Every floor is stated on every ask, armed or not, so a floor that did not apply here is never mistaken for one this app does not know about.

arms fused for this ask: vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm. Stated separately from the rows because an arm that ran and carried nothing is a different fact from an arm that never ran.

read at	document	heading	page	fused rank	fused RRF score	carried by	how it got its slot
#1	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	 LOSING THE GAME  ·  WINNING THE GAME  · COMPLETING THE MAIN GOAL · DEFEATING THE ADVERSARY ·  GAME SEEDS  ·  APP ICON GUIDE 	p.23	#1	0.048916 (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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	 PLACING SKULLS  ·  EVENTS 	p.22	#4	0.047131 (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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	 COMMONLY MISSED RULES  ·  YOU GAIN A CORRUPTION WHEN...  ·  WINNING & LOSING 	p.28	#6	0.045037 (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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	 SPIRIT  ·  VIRTUES  ·  CORRUPTIONS 	p.9	#22	0.012195 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one))	vector	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	1. Start of Turn ·  MAKING TRADES  ·  SPENDING VS. LOSING 	p.13	#10	0.014493 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one))	vector	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	3. End of Turn ·  PLACING SKULLS 	p.21	#5	0.046175 (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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	ENTERING THE TOWER DUNGEON · FINDING THE RELIC ·  HERO ELIMINATION  ·  END OF THE GAME  ·  CLARIFICATIONS 	p.25	#3	0.047163 (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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	Sequence of Play ·  INDIVIDUAL TURNS  ·  MONTHLY QUESTS  · Taking Your Turn	p.12	#2	0.048131 (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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	 LOSING THE GAME  ·  WINNING THE GAME  · COMPLETING THE MAIN GOAL · DEFEATING THE ADVERSARY ·  GAME SEEDS  ·  APP ICON GUIDE 	p.23	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	 COMMONLY MISSED RULES  ·  YOU GAIN A CORRUPTION WHEN...  ·  WINNING & LOSING 	p.28	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	ENTERING THE TOWER DUNGEON · FINDING THE RELIC ·  HERO ELIMINATION  ·  END OF THE GAME  ·  CLARIFICATIONS 	p.25	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	 SPIRIT  ·  VIRTUES  ·  CORRUPTIONS 	p.9	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	3. End of Turn ·  PLACING SKULLS 	p.21	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	Sequence of Play ·  INDIVIDUAL TURNS  ·  MONTHLY QUESTS  · Taking Your Turn	p.12	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 70 ms · first delta 1925 ms · total 3067 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 70 ms · ask 2993 ms · gateway work 3067 ms · total 3067 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3228
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 153
tok/sec: 139.3 tok/sec — 153 output tokens in 1.098 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 50s 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: NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 308), 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.