Ruling — Arkham Horror

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Arkham Horrorbg-15987-en-1e

To setup the game of Arkham Horror, follow these steps:

1. Unfold the board and place it in the center of the playing area, ensuring there is ample space around the edges for investigator sheets and card decks.[1]

2. Place various tokens and dice near the board as shown in the setup diagram.[1]

3. Place the terror track marker on the '0' space on the terror track.[1]

4. Place one Clue token on each location on the board that has a red diamond above it.[1]

5. Select one player at random to be the and give them the first player marker.[1]

6. The first player shuffles the 16 investigator sheets and, without looking, randomly deals out one investigator sheet in front of each player (or players may agree to choose investigators clockwise starting with the first player).[1]

7. The first player shuffles the eight Ancient One sheets, selects one at random without looking, and places it face up near the board (alternatively, players may choose which Ancient One to face).[1]

8. Resolve any actions listed in the chosen Ancient One's ability that take place at the start of the game.[1]

9. Separate the various investigator and Ancient One cards into their respective decks and place them near the board.[1]

10. Each player, beginning with the first player and continuing clockwise, receives the items listed on his investigator sheet in the 'Fixed Possessions' area; the first player locates these cards in the investigator decks and passes them out.[1]

11. Players shuffle the Common Item, Unique Item, Spell, and Skill decks, then return them face down next to the board.[1]

12. Each player draws the indicated number of cards from the appropriate decks for any 'Random Possessions' listed on their investigator sheet, beginning with the first player and continuing clockwise.[2]

13. Each player receives a number of Sanity tokens and Stamina tokens equal to the values listed on their investigator sheet and places them near the appropriate area on their sheet.[2]

14. Each player receives three skill sliders and places one slider on each of his three skill tracks, with each slider placed on any of the four 'stops'.[2]

15. Place the monster markers in an opaque container (the monster cup) and randomize them; if the Ancient One is not Nyarlathotep, remove the five 'Mask' monsters from the game.[2]

16. Shuffle the Gate and Mythos decks and return them to their places next to the board.[2]

17. Shuffle the 16 Gate markers and place them face down in a stack next to the board.[2]

18. Each player takes the investigator marker depicting their investigator and places it on the game board location indicated in the 'Home' area of their investigator sheet.[2]

19. Remove any unused investigator sheets, markers, or Ancient One sheets from the game.[2]

[1] RULEBOOK Arkham Horror — Rulebook · p.5 · Game Setup · 1. PRePaRe Playing aRea · 2. Place initial clues · 3. choose FiRst PlayeR · 4. DeteRMine investigatoRs · 5. Reveal ancient one · …

[2] RULEBOOK Arkham Horror — Rulebook · p.5 · 9. Receive RanDoM Possessions · 10. Finish investigatoR setuP · 11. cReate MonsteR cuP · 12. shuFFle ancient one Decks anD gate MaRkeRs · 1 3 . Place investigatoR MaRkeRs

🔧 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 93 ms · ask 7550 ms · total 7645 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 7645 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 5, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "Follow the steps below to prepare for a game of Arkham Horror . Unfold the board and place it in the center of the playing area. Make sure there is ample space around the edges of the board to place the investigator sheets and card decks. Place the various tokens and the dice near the board, as show", "headingPath": "Game Setup · 1. PRePaRe Playing aRea · 2. Place initial clues · 3. choose FiRst PlayeR · 4. DeteRMine investigatoRs · 5. Reveal ancient one · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 471}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.04741, "snippet": "Each investigator sheet may indicate that the investigator receives one or more random possessions. Each player, beginning with the first player and continuing clockwise, draws the indicated number of cards from the appropriate decks, as listed on his investigator sheet in the 'Random Possessions' a", "headingPath": "9. Receive RanDoM Possessions · 10. Finish investigatoR setuP · 11. cReate MonsteR cuP · 12. shuFFle ancient one Decks anD gate MaRkeRs · 1 3 . Place investigatoR MaRkeRs", "sharpsignalDocId": 471}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.046244, "snippet": "During Upkeep , you may adjust your character's skills in order to react to the investigator's situation. Focus represents your character's ability to split his attention between the different tasks at hand. It determines the total number of 'stops' you may adjust your skills each turn. Example 1: A", "headingPath": "aDjusting skills · 3. Adjust Skills · Phase II: Movement", "sharpsignalDocId": 471}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "It is passed to the left at the end of every turn. Each player takes his investigator sheet and marker, then gains Stamina and Sanity tokens equal to his maximum Stamina and Sanity, respectively. In addition, each player receives his character’s possessions. Finally, each player places his investiga", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 471}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "The first player draws a gate marker from the stack of gate markers near the board and places it face up on the location. Discard any Clue tokens that were on the location: The investigators have missed their opportunity to follow up on those leads. The first player draws a monster marker from the c", "headingPath": "2. A Gate Opens · 3. A Monster Appears", "sharpsignalDocId": 471}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "If there is already an open gate at the location, a monster emerges from every open gate currently on the board. This is called a monster surge . When a monster surge occurs, the number of monsters drawn and placed is equal to the number of open gates or the number of players, whichever is greater .", "headingPath": "B. Location Has Open Gate · C. No Elder Sign or Gate · 1. The Doom Track Advances", "sharpsignalDocId": 471}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Enclosed in your Arkham Horror box, you will find the following game components: 1 Rule Book (this book) 1 Game Board 1 First Player Marker 5 Dice 16 Investigator Sheets 16 Investigator Markers 16 Plastic Investigator Stands 196 Investigator Status Tokens 56 Money Tokens 34 Sanity Tokens (10 'threes", "headingPath": "Game Components and Preparation · Component Overview · Game Board · FiRst PlayeR MaRkeR · Dice", "sharpsignalDocId": 471}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "During the Other World Encounters Phase, investigators in Other World spaces have encounters there. The Other World spaces on the board are marked with circular icons of different colors. These colored circles are called encounter symbols . When an investigator has an Other World encounter, the play", "headingPath": "Phase IV: Other World Encounters · Phase V: Mythos · 1. Open Gate and Spawn Monster · A. Location Has Elder Sign", "sharpsignalDocId": 471}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game Setup · 1. PRePaRe Playing aRea · 2. Place initial clues · 3. choose FiRst PlayeR · 4. DeteRMine investigatoRs · 5. Reveal ancient one · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 471}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "9. Receive RanDoM Possessions · 10. Finish investigatoR setuP · 11. cReate MonsteR cuP · 12. shuFFle ancient one Decks anD gate MaRkeRs · 1 3 . Place investigatoR MaRkeRs", "sharpsignalDocId": 471}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 471 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 471 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 0.92649 of 2299 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 13, 2026 09:28

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 Arkham Horror — Rulebook (corpus doc 471)	Game Setup · 1. PRePaRe Playing aRea · 2. Place initial clues · 3. choose FiRst PlayeR · 4. DeteRMine investigatoRs · 5. Reveal ancient one · …	p.5	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 Arkham Horror — Rulebook (corpus doc 471)	9. Receive RanDoM Possessions · 10. Finish investigatoR setuP · 11. cReate MonsteR cuP · 12. shuFFle ancient one Decks anD gate MaRkeRs · 1 3 . Place investigatoR MaRkeRs	p.5	0.04741 (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 Arkham Horror — Rulebook (corpus doc 471)	aDjusting skills · 3. Adjust Skills · Phase II: Movement	p.6	0.046244 (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 Arkham Horror — Rulebook (corpus doc 471)		p.4	0.031746 (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 Arkham Horror — Rulebook (corpus doc 471)	2. A Gate Opens · 3. A Monster Appears	p.9	0.03125 (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 Arkham Horror — Rulebook (corpus doc 471)	B. Location Has Open Gate · C. No Elder Sign or Gate · 1. The Doom Track Advances	p.9	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 Arkham Horror — Rulebook (corpus doc 471)	Game Components and Preparation · Component Overview · Game Board · FiRst PlayeR MaRkeR · Dice	p.2	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 Arkham Horror — Rulebook (corpus doc 471)	Phase IV: Other World Encounters · Phase V: Mythos · 1. Open Gate and Spawn Monster · A. Location Has Elder Sign	p.9	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.

candidate pool: the answering read scored 62 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 Arkham Horror — Rulebook (corpus doc 471)	Game Setup · 1. PRePaRe Playing aRea · 2. Place initial clues · 3. choose FiRst PlayeR · 4. DeteRMine investigatoRs · 5. Reveal ancient one · …	p.5	#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 Arkham Horror — Rulebook (corpus doc 471)	aDjusting skills · 3. Adjust Skills · Phase II: Movement	p.6	#3	0.046244 (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 Arkham Horror — Rulebook (corpus doc 471)	1 4 . DRaw anD Resolve Mythos caRD · The Game Turn	p.5	#20	0.012821 (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
#4	RULEBOOK Arkham Horror — Rulebook (corpus doc 471)	B. Location Has Open Gate · C. No Elder Sign or Gate · 1. The Doom Track Advances	p.9	#6	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Arkham Horror — Rulebook (corpus doc 471)	Delayed Investigators · location encounteR (with gate) · Phase III: Arkham Encounters · 1. No Gate · otheR woRlD encounteR	p.8	#24	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
#6	RULEBOOK Arkham Horror — Rulebook (corpus doc 471)	4. Activate Mythos Ability · Turn End · Ending the Game · victoRy	p.12	#14	0.014085 (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
#7	RULEBOOK Arkham Horror — Rulebook (corpus doc 471)	2. A Gate Opens · 3. A Monster Appears	p.9	#5	0.03125 (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 + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK Arkham Horror — Rulebook (corpus doc 471)	9. Receive RanDoM Possessions · 10. Finish investigatoR setuP · 11. cReate MonsteR cuP · 12. shuFFle ancient one Decks anD gate MaRkeRs · 1 3 . Place investigatoR MaRkeRs	p.5	#2	0.04741 (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 Arkham Horror — Rulebook (corpus doc 471)	Game Setup · 1. PRePaRe Playing aRea · 2. Place initial clues · 3. choose FiRst PlayeR · 4. DeteRMine investigatoRs · 5. Reveal ancient one · …	p.5	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Arkham Horror — Rulebook (corpus doc 471)	9. Receive RanDoM Possessions · 10. Finish investigatoR setuP · 11. cReate MonsteR cuP · 12. shuFFle ancient one Decks anD gate MaRkeRs · 1 3 . Place investigatoR MaRkeRs	p.5	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 93 ms · first delta 3392 ms · total 7645 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 93 ms · ask 7550 ms · gateway work 7645 ms · total 7645 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3865
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 629
tok/sec: 149.8 tok/sec — 629 output tokens in 4.198 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 35s 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): setup

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 401), 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.