Ruling — Escape: The Curse of the Temple

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Escape: The Curse of the Templebg-113294-en-1e · Escape: The Curse of the Temple – Expansion 1: Illusionsbg-128236-en-1e · Escape: The Curse of the Temple – Expansion 2: Questbg-137405-en-1e · Escape: The Curse of the Temple – Expansion 3: Trapsbg-158616-en-1e

To set up the basic game:

1. Gather the 6 main chambers and the 13 basic chambers (all chambers without a purple mask and/or treasure icon).[1]

2. Set aside the starting chamber and the exit tile.[1]

3. Mix the remaining chamber tiles face down and stack them as a draw pile.[1]

4. Place the starting chamber in the center of the playing area.[1]

5. Place 2 randomly drawn chamber tiles next to the starting chamber.[1]

6. Take the top 4 tiles of the draw pile, shuffle them together with the exit tile, and place them on the bottom of the draw pile (Exception: If playing alone or with a second player, insert the exit tile in the middle of the draw pile).[1]

7. Determine how many magic gems to place into the gem depot using the provided chart, then place 2 additional magic gems next to the depot.[1]

8. Each player selects their color, takes 5 dice (Exception: If playing alone, take 7 dice instead of 5), and takes the appropriately colored adventurer figure and adventurer token.[1]

9. All players place their figure on the starting chamber and keep their token in front of them.[1]

10. Place all components not needed for the basic game back in the game box.[1]

[1] RULEBOOK Escape: The Curse of the Temple — Rulebook · p.5 · Set-up of the basic game Set-up of the basic game

🔧 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 83 ms · ask 7235 ms · total 7319 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 7319 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 5, "score": 0.04918, "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}, {"page": 24, "score": 0.046927, "snippet": "Mix the 8 time chambers face down, draw 2, 3 or 4 chambers, then set them near you without looking at them. Remove the remaining time chambers from the game. Shuffle the time chambers in front of you with the draw pile, then take five chambers at random from the pile, shuffle them with the exit tile", "headingPath": "Changes during set-up · Changes during game play · Prohibition chambers:", "sharpsignalDocId": 775}, {"page": 29, "score": 0.043997, "snippet": "You are not allowed to touch your adventurer figure, the draw pile or the gems on the gem depot. Better get some other player to help you move those pieces. QUEENIE: THE MAZE Only playable with the basic game. The rules of the basic game remain unchanged. 2 Chambers (1x mirage chamber, 1x gear chamb", "headingPath": "Mind control: · Game components and changes during set-up · Mirage chamber: · Gear chamber: · Pitfall: · Magical bond:", "sharpsignalDocId": 775}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.042751, "snippet": "Each player chooses one of the six characters and gains that character's special ability for this game. Each adventurer chooses one character and takes the two corresponding character cards, one of which shows a permanent ability, the other an activatable ability. Each player chooses one of their tw", "headingPath": "Module 6: Characters · Set-up modifications · Permanent and activatable abilities: · Permanent: · Activatable: · DOC", "sharpsignalDocId": 775}, {"page": 35, "score": 0.041753, "snippet": "Only playable with the basic game. The rules of the basic game remain unchanged. 1 Totem Chamber After placing 2 chambers next to the starting chamber, shuffle the totem chamber with the rest of the chambers. Once discovered, players can enter to try to activate up to 2 magic gems. To do so, they mu", "headingPath": "QUEENIE: TOTEM CHAMBER · Game components and changes during set-up · The new 'Totem Chamber' · QUEENIE: THE CURSED GEMS · Changes during sequence of play", "sharpsignalDocId": 775}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.031498, "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": 2, "score": 0.030622, "snippet": "Mix the 5 trap chambers face down, draw _- Shuffle the trap chambers in front of you 2, 3 or 4 chambers, then set them near with the draw pile, then take five chamyou without looking at them. Remove bers at random from the pile, shuffle the remaining trap chambers from the them with the exit tile, a", "headingPath": "| Changes during set-up Changes during set-up · Changes during game play · Moving platform:", "sharpsignalDocId": 894}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.03031, "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}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Set-up of the basic game Set-up of the basic game", "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 0.90938 of 960 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 13, 2026 18:09

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)	Set-up of the basic game Set-up of the basic game	p.5	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Escape: The Curse of the Temple — Rulebook (corpus doc 775)	Changes during set-up · Changes during game play · Prohibition chambers:	p.24	0.046927 (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)	Mind control: · Game components and changes during set-up · Mirage chamber: · Gear chamber: · Pitfall: · Magical bond:	p.29	0.043997 (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)	Module 6: Characters · Set-up modifications · Permanent and activatable abilities: · Permanent: · Activatable: · DOC	p.20	0.042751 (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)	QUEENIE: TOTEM CHAMBER · Game components and changes during set-up · The new 'Totem Chamber' · QUEENIE: THE CURSED GEMS · Changes during sequence of play	p.35	0.041753 (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)	5. Provoke a turn of fate · The adventure starts · The soundtrack · End of the game	p.9	0.031498 (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 – Expansion 3: Traps — Rulebook (corpus doc 894)	\| Changes during set-up Changes during set-up · Changes during game play · Moving platform:	p.2	0.030622 (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)	Large torch:	p.15	0.03031 (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 57 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 — 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.

one thing that looks wrong and is not: a row a floor seated can carry a fused rank LARGER than the pool size above it. The floors draw from the whole fused list, not only from the passages the re-ranker scored — so a rank past the pool is a floor reaching down for something the re-ranker would never have seen, which is exactly what the floors are for.

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)	Set-up of the basic game Set-up of the basic game	p.5	#1	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK Escape: The Curse of the Temple – Expansion 3: Traps — Rulebook (corpus doc 894)	Slide trap: · Changes during game play	p.4	#13	0.026786 (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 re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK Escape: The Curse of the Temple — Rulebook (corpus doc 775)	Mind control: · Game components and changes during set-up · Mirage chamber: · Gear chamber: · Pitfall: · Magical bond:	p.29	#3	0.043997 (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 Escape: The Curse of the Temple – Expansion 3: Traps — Rulebook (corpus doc 894)	\| Changes during set-up Changes during set-up · Changes during game play · Moving platform:	p.2	#7	0.030622 (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 re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Escape: The Curse of the Temple — Rulebook (corpus doc 775)	QUEENIE: TOTEM CHAMBER · Game components and changes during set-up · The new 'Totem Chamber' · QUEENIE: THE CURSED GEMS · Changes during sequence of play	p.35	#5	0.041753 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Escape: The Curse of the Temple — Rulebook (corpus doc 775)	Changes during set-up · Changes during game play · Prohibition chambers:	p.24	#2	0.046927 (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 Escape: The Curse of the Temple – Expansion 2: Quest — Rulebook (corpus doc 953)	Module 6: Characters · Set-up modifications · Permanent and activatable abilities: · Activatable: · Permanent:	p.5	#11	0.027598 (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	guaranteed a slot by the one-slot-per-book floor
#8	RULEBOOK Escape: The Curse of the Temple – Expansion 1: Illusions — Rulebook (corpus doc 952)	Special features of the treasure chamber: · Are you bold enough to try it? · Note on Module 2: Treasures · Changes during set-up · Soul exchange:	p.4	#15	0.025334 (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	guaranteed a slot by the one-slot-per-book floor

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	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	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 83 ms · first delta 3042 ms · total 7319 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 83 ms · ask 7235 ms · gateway work 7319 ms · total 7319 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3496
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 288
tok/sec: 68.6 tok/sec — 288 output tokens in 4.196 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 28s 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 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.