Ruling — Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Detective: A Modern Crime Board Gamebg-223321-en-1e

Detective is a cooperative game of deduction for 1 to 5 players.[1][2] Each player chooses one investigator with a unique ability and skill set.[1][2] Players act as one team to perform actions together, sharing a common pool of Skill, Stress, and Authority tokens and using a Time marker to track the passing of time.[1][3]

**Gameplay Process:**

1. **Setup:** At the start of a case, players find a few lead cards and clues to begin.[1] Depending on the number of players, 0-4 consultants assist, and any Skill tokens they provide are added to the Token pool.[2]

2. **During a Day:** There are no individual player turns or phases; the team discusses and performs actions together.[3] Each day consists of eight working hours (8:00 AM - 4:00 PM), and players can choose to work Overtime at the cost of Stress.[3]

3. **Taking Actions:** During a day, the team can perform various actions, including:

* Following a lead [3]

* Digging Deeper (revealing the back side of a lead card by spending a specific token) [3][4]

* Browsing the Antares Database [3]

* Browsing the Internet [3]

* Writing a report [3]

* Using an investigator's ability [3]

* Spending authority tokens to perform actions specified on a card [3]

* Performing other actions defined by the case introduction or specific cards [3]

4. **Advancing Time:** Each action may require advancing the Time marker as instructed.[3] Moving the IT marker may also be necessary depending on choices made.[3]

5. **Ending a Case:** Players have a limited number of days to achieve the stated goal.[3] Once days run out, players must navigate to the case's "Final Report" on the Antares website and answer questions related to it.[3]

6. **Scoring and Winning:** Answers to the Final Report questions determine the final score.[3] The Antares Database calculates the score and announces if the team has won or lost.[5] The team wins or loses based on the number of victory points earned.[1]

7. **Continuing the Campaign:** After a case, players can reset the lead deck to play the case again, or move to the next case by returning unused cards to the box and storing gained cards in a dedicated spot.[5] It is recommended to summarize important facts at the end of a case to assist with future cases.[6]

[1] RULEBOOK Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game — Rulebook · p.2 · ▸ WELCOME, INVESTIGATORS · ▶ Teamwork · ▶ Metaplot · ▶ One case, one deck · ▶ Cast a wide net · ▶ Notes

[2] RULEBOOK Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game — Rulebook · p.14 · ▸ INVESTIGATORS · ▶ Jack Coleman, former cop · ▶ Chris Stone, former private eye · ▶ Ben Harris, former FBI analyst · ▶ Julia Jacobson, former investigative journalist · ▶ Mia Roberts, former psychologist · …

[3] RULEBOOK Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game — Rulebook · p.5 · ▸ SUMMARY · ▶ Days and hours · #playtestingtip · ▶ Daily activity

[4] RULEBOOK Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game — Rulebook · p.9 · ▸ DIG DEEPER · #playtestingtip

[5] RULEBOOK Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game — Rulebook · p.15 · ▶ credits

[6] RULEBOOK Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game — Rulebook · p.13 · #playtestingtip

🔧 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 142 ms · ask 5232 ms · total 5384 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5384 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 16, "score": 0.04741, "snippet": "In this game, you choose a character to play, but beyond that I would suggest that you all take on game roles and responsibilities. When playtesting, we discovered that the following roles could lead to a very fun and engaging game: 'I need one more sheet of paper. No, the bigger one…' You are respo", "headingPath": "▸ PLAYER ROLES · ▶ Notetaker · ▶ Techie · ▶ Browser · ▶ Narrator · ▶ Fact Checker", "sharpsignalDocId": 437}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.046898, "snippet": "Each case has many paths to completion. Due to time constraints, you will never see the whole deck or discover all of the clues. In fact, the average number of cards drawn in each case is about twenty! After finishing the game, don't be disappointed that you didn't go through the entire deck. This i", "headingPath": "▶ Solving cases without a full deck · ▶ There is no 'You Won' card · #playtestingtip", "sharpsignalDocId": 437}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "You have a limited number of days, i.e. game rounds, in which to learn as much as possible about a case and achieve the stated goal. Once you run out of days, navigate to that case's 'Final Report' on the Antares website and attempt to answer questions related to it. Your answers will determine your", "headingPath": "▸ SUMMARY · ▶ Days and hours · #playtestingtip · ▶ Daily activity", "sharpsignalDocId": 437}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "As in all co-op games, one player in the group may want to take charge and decide that their ideas should be the group's ideas. I'd like to encourage all detectives to participate in the game, with all players voicing their ideas and theories. Then you can collectively decide which lead to follow. T", "headingPath": "▸ LET EVERYBODY HAVE A VOICE · ▶ FOLLOW US!", "sharpsignalDocId": 437}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "During the game, you will find underlined phrases with the icon. These may be addresses, quotes, names, dates, or other information that you can learn more about by browsing the Internet. None of these clues are necessary to solve the case, and you can finish the game without browsing the Internet. ", "headingPath": "BROWSE THE INTERNET", "sharpsignalDocId": 437}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "It's good to spend a few minutes at the end of a case to summarize the most important facts, names, and theories that you had during the game. This will be very helpful when you continue the game after a few days - or weeks! After all, approaching the next case with only a vague memory of the previo", "headingPath": "#playtestingtip", "sharpsignalDocId": 437}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "This symbol means 'turn the card over and read its back side,' either after following some additional instructions (see Dig Deeper action) or for free. The ' READ ' keyword indicates that you must immediately read the specified card or Antares Database entry. If you are instructed to read more than ", "headingPath": "▶ instructions", "sharpsignalDocId": 437}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.02971, "snippet": "Detective is for 1 to 5 players, each of whom must choose one investigator that they will play. The main features of a character are their abilities and skills. Skills are simply added to the Token pool at the start of a case. Abilities let you gain or spend authority tokens and use them to gain new", "headingPath": "▸ INVESTIGATORS · ▶ Jack Coleman, former cop · ▶ Chris Stone, former private eye · ▶ Ben Harris, former FBI analyst · ▶ Julia Jacobson, former investigative journalist · ▶ Mia Roberts, former psychologist · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 437}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "▸ WELCOME, INVESTIGATORS · ▶ Teamwork · ▶ Metaplot · ▶ One case, one deck · ▶ Cast a wide net · ▶ Notes", "sharpsignalDocId": 437}, {"page": 14, "quote": null, "headingPath": "▸ INVESTIGATORS · ▶ Jack Coleman, former cop · ▶ Chris Stone, former private eye · ▶ Ben Harris, former FBI analyst · ▶ Julia Jacobson, former investigative journalist · ▶ Mia Roberts, former psychologist · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 437}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "▸ SUMMARY · ▶ Days and hours · #playtestingtip · ▶ Daily activity", "sharpsignalDocId": 437}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "▸ DIG DEEPER · #playtestingtip", "sharpsignalDocId": 437}, {"page": 15, "quote": null, "headingPath": "▶ credits", "sharpsignalDocId": 437}, {"page": 13, "quote": null, "headingPath": "#playtestingtip", "sharpsignalDocId": 437}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 437 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 437 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 0.89406 of 1869 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 15, 2026 05:28

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 Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 437)	▸ PLAYER ROLES · ▶ Notetaker · ▶ Techie · ▶ Browser · ▶ Narrator · ▶ Fact Checker	p.16	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
#2	RULEBOOK Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 437)	▶ Solving cases without a full deck · ▶ There is no 'You Won' card · #playtestingtip	p.2	0.046898 (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 Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 437)	▸ SUMMARY · ▶ Days and hours · #playtestingtip · ▶ Daily activity	p.5	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
#4	RULEBOOK Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 437)	▸ LET EVERYBODY HAVE A VOICE · ▶ FOLLOW US!	p.16	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 Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 437)	BROWSE THE INTERNET	p.10	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 Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 437)	#playtestingtip	p.13	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 Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 437)	▶ instructions	p.8	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 Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 437)	▸ INVESTIGATORS · ▶ Jack Coleman, former cop · ▶ Chris Stone, former private eye · ▶ Ben Harris, former FBI analyst · ▶ Julia Jacobson, former investigative journalist · ▶ Mia Roberts, former psychologist · …	p.14	0.02971 (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 32 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 Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 437)	▸ PLAYER ROLES · ▶ Notetaker · ▶ Techie · ▶ Browser · ▶ Narrator · ▶ Fact Checker	p.16	#1	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
#2	RULEBOOK Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 437)	▸ WELCOME, INVESTIGATORS · ▶ Teamwork · ▶ Metaplot · ▶ One case, one deck · ▶ Cast a wide net · ▶ Notes	p.2	#11	0.029387 (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 Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 437)	#playtestingtip	p.13	#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
#4	RULEBOOK Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 437)	▸ LET EVERYBODY HAVE A VOICE · ▶ FOLLOW US!	p.16	#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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 437)	▸ SUMMARY · ▶ Days and hours · #playtestingtip · ▶ Daily activity	p.5	#3	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
#6	RULEBOOK Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 437)	▸ DIG DEEPER · #playtestingtip	p.9	#10	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 437)	▸ INVESTIGATORS · ▶ Jack Coleman, former cop · ▶ Chris Stone, former private eye · ▶ Ben Harris, former FBI analyst · ▶ Julia Jacobson, former investigative journalist · ▶ Mia Roberts, former psychologist · …	p.14	#8	0.02971 (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
#8	RULEBOOK Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 437)	▶ credits	p.15	#9	0.029551 (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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 437)	▸ WELCOME, INVESTIGATORS · ▶ Teamwork · ▶ Metaplot · ▶ One case, one deck · ▶ Cast a wide net · ▶ Notes	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 437)	▸ INVESTIGATORS · ▶ Jack Coleman, former cop · ▶ Chris Stone, former private eye · ▶ Ben Harris, former FBI analyst · ▶ Julia Jacobson, former investigative journalist · ▶ Mia Roberts, former psychologist · …	p.14	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 437)	▸ SUMMARY · ▶ Days and hours · #playtestingtip · ▶ Daily activity	p.5	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 437)	▸ DIG DEEPER · #playtestingtip	p.9	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 437)	▶ credits	p.15	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 437)	#playtestingtip	p.13	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 142 ms · first delta 2657 ms · total 5384 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 142 ms · ask 5232 ms · gateway work 5384 ms · total 5384 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3330
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 552
tok/sec: 206.0 tok/sec — 552 output tokens in 2.680 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 10s 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 368), 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.