Ruling — Escape: The Curse of the Temple

You asked

How long does a game of Escape last, and what happens at each countdown?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Escape: The Curse of the Templebg-113294-en-1e

Players have ten minutes to escape from the collapsing temple.[1][2] During the soundtrack, there are three countdowns:[2]

1. The first countdown starts with one bang of a gong and ends with a door being slammed.[2]

2. The second countdown starts with two bangs of a gong and ends with a door being slammed.[2] At the end of the first or second countdown, any adventurer who is not back in the starting chamber loses one die for the rest of the game.[1][2] Additionally, if the first or second countdown ends and you have the poison curse:

* If you are inside the starting chamber, you lose one of your dice.[3]

* If you are not inside the starting chamber, you lose two of your dice.[3]

* You must stand up immediately and remain standing until you have lifted this curse.[3]

* Each time you roll an adventurer, you cannot use it for an action and must reroll the die on your next roll.[3]

3. The third countdown starts with three bangs of a gong and ends with the sound of the temple collapsing.[2] This signals the end of the game after exactly 10 minutes.[2] If any adventurer is still inside the temple when it collapses, all players have lost the game.[2]

[1] RULEBOOK Escape: The Curse of the Temple — Rulebook · p.4 · Index · Game components for the basic game · Summary and object of the game

[2] RULEBOOK Escape: The Curse of the Temple — Rulebook · p.9 · 5. Provoke a turn of fate · The adventure starts · The soundtrack · End of the game

[3] RULEBOOK Escape: The Curse of the Temple — Rulebook · p.27 · New curse cards · QUEENIE: THE FOUNTAIN · · 1 chamber: The Fountain · The new chamber 'The Fountain' · Poison: · Stand up: · …

🔧 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 103 ms · ask 4915 ms · total 5020 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5020 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 9, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "If there are too many accursed dice in play, players may transfer one of the two gems lying next to the depot to the depot. Then, all adventurers may re-roll all of their accursed dice (black masks). Players must reach this decision unanimously! A turn of fate can be provoked only twice during the c", "headingPath": "5. Provoke a turn of fate · The adventure starts · The soundtrack · End of the game", "sharpsignalDocId": 775}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "You must activate the magic gems in the temple chambers in order to banish the curse, and you have only ten minutes to do so before the temple collapses. Don't sit still for a second - start running now and you might just escape! You must activate the magic gems in the temple chambers in order to ba", "headingPath": "Index · Game components for the basic game · Summary and object of the game", "sharpsignalDocId": 775}, {"page": 22, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "The 'Escape' base game is required when playing with this expansion. The rules of the basic game remain unchanged except for the following adjustments. 5 Trap chambers 2x Cliff 1x Invocation chamber 8 Time chambers 4x Prohibition chamber 2x Lava chamber 1x Moving platform 1x Torch chamber Expansion ", "headingPath": "Activatable: · Module 7: Trap chambers · Module 8: Time chambers · Changes during set-up · Changes during game play", "sharpsignalDocId": 775}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Place the large torch face-up in your current chamber. This chamber now serves as an additional starting chamber for all players until the end of the next countdown. After the countdown, remove this tile from the game. down. After the countdown, remove this You must own the 'Escape' basic game to us", "headingPath": "Large torch:", "sharpsignalDocId": 775}, {"page": 30, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "This curse cannot be removed. If you are not back in the starting chamber at the end of the first or second countdown all of you lose the game immediately. When you discover a new chamber you can use this treasure to look through the whole Use this treasure to hit pause on your music player to get s", "headingPath": "Weakest link: · Short cut: · Time out: · QUEENIE: NEW CHARACTERS · · 2 Chambers · Dungeon: · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 775}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "A game of Escape is even more exciting and varied when you include one or both of the following modules. exciting and varied when you include one Module 1: Curses Module 2: Treasures For Module 1: Curses & Module 2: Treasures 13 curse and treasure chambers All of these chambers show a purple mask, a", "headingPath": "For a more challenging game · Additional game components for the modules 'Curses' and 'Treasures' · During set-up, shuffle the curse cards and place the pile face down in easy reach of all players. · During set-up, shuffle the treasure tiles and stack them face down in easy reach of all players.", "sharpsignalDocId": 775}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "New components This expansion contains 2 new modules: Module 5: Quest chambers Module 6: Characters You may use these modules individually, together, or in any combination with other modules for “Escape”, whether from the basic game, the “Illusions” expansion, or elsewhere. Compose your own adventur", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 775}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "You will need the 6 main chambers and the 13 basic chambers (that is, all the chambers without the purple mask and/or treasure icon). Set aside the starting chamber and exit. Mix the remaining chamber tiles face down, then stack them as a draw pile. Place the starting chamber in the center of the pl", "headingPath": "Set-up of the basic game Set-up of the basic game", "sharpsignalDocId": 775}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Index · Game components for the basic game · Summary and object of the game", "sharpsignalDocId": 775}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "5. Provoke a turn of fate · The adventure starts · The soundtrack · End of the game", "sharpsignalDocId": 775}, {"page": 27, "quote": null, "headingPath": "New curse cards · QUEENIE: THE FOUNTAIN · · 1 chamber: The Fountain · The new chamber 'The Fountain' · Poison: · Stand up: · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 775}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 775 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 775 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 0.92227 of 952 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 13, 2026 12:17

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 Escape: The Curse of the Temple — Rulebook (corpus doc 775)	5. Provoke a turn of fate · The adventure starts · The soundtrack · End of the game	p.9	0.032787 (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 Escape: The Curse of the Temple — Rulebook (corpus doc 775)	Index · Game components for the basic game · Summary and object of the game	p.4	0.032258 (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 Escape: The Curse of the Temple — Rulebook (corpus doc 775)	Activatable: · Module 7: Trap chambers · Module 8: Time chambers · Changes during set-up · Changes during game play	p.22	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
#4	RULEBOOK Escape: The Curse of the Temple — Rulebook (corpus doc 775)	Large torch:	p.15	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
#5	RULEBOOK Escape: The Curse of the Temple — Rulebook (corpus doc 775)	Weakest link: · Short cut: · Time out: · QUEENIE: NEW CHARACTERS · · 2 Chambers · Dungeon: · …	p.30	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
#6	RULEBOOK Escape: The Curse of the Temple — Rulebook (corpus doc 775)	For a more challenging game · Additional game components for the modules 'Curses' and 'Treasures' · During set-up, shuffle the curse cards and place the pile face down in easy reach of all players. · During set-up, shuffle the treasure tiles and stack them face down in easy reach of all players.	p.10	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
#7	RULEBOOK Escape: The Curse of the Temple — Rulebook (corpus doc 775)		p.16	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 Escape: The Curse of the Temple — Rulebook (corpus doc 775)	Set-up of the basic game Set-up of the basic game	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.

candidate pool: the answering read scored 40 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 Escape: The Curse of the Temple — Rulebook (corpus doc 775)	Large torch:	p.15	#4	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
#2	RULEBOOK Escape: The Curse of the Temple — Rulebook (corpus doc 775)	New curse cards · QUEENIE: THE FOUNTAIN · · 1 chamber: The Fountain · The new chamber 'The Fountain' · Poison: · Stand up: · …	p.27	#18	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
#3	RULEBOOK Escape: The Curse of the Temple — Rulebook (corpus doc 775)	For a more challenging game	p.9	#12	0.013889 (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 Escape: The Curse of the Temple — Rulebook (corpus doc 775)	Weakest link: · Short cut: · Time out: · QUEENIE: NEW CHARACTERS · · 2 Chambers · Dungeon: · …	p.30	#5	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 Escape: The Curse of the Temple — Rulebook (corpus doc 775)	For a more challenging game · Additional game components for the modules 'Curses' and 'Treasures' · During set-up, shuffle the curse cards and place the pile face down in easy reach of all players. · During set-up, shuffle the treasure tiles and stack them face down in easy reach of all players.	p.10	#6	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK Escape: The Curse of the Temple — Rulebook (corpus doc 775)	Special features of the illusion chambers:	p.13	#9	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
#7	RULEBOOK Escape: The Curse of the Temple — Rulebook (corpus doc 775)	Index · Game components for the basic game · Summary and object of the game	p.4	#2	0.032258 (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 Escape: The Curse of the Temple — Rulebook (corpus doc 775)	5. Provoke a turn of fate · The adventure starts · The soundtrack · End of the game	p.9	#1	0.032787 (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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Escape: The Curse of the Temple — Rulebook (corpus doc 775)	Index · Game components for the basic game · Summary and object of the game	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Escape: The Curse of the Temple — Rulebook (corpus doc 775)	5. Provoke a turn of fate · The adventure starts · The soundtrack · End of the game	p.9	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Escape: The Curse of the Temple — Rulebook (corpus doc 775)	New curse cards · QUEENIE: THE FOUNTAIN · · 1 chamber: The Fountain · The new chamber 'The Fountain' · Poison: · Stand up: · …	p.27	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 103 ms · first delta 2970 ms · total 5020 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 103 ms · ask 4915 ms · gateway work 5020 ms · total 5020 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3067
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 279
tok/sec: 139.4 tok/sec — 279 output tokens in 2.001 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 1s 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 711), 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.