Ruling — T.I.M.E Stories

← T.I.M.E Stories

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: T.I.M.E Storiesbg-146508-en-1e

To play, follow these setup and gameplay steps:

**Setup**

1. Set up the game board facing the players.[1][2]

2. Set aside the flash cards from the top and bottom, taking care to not look at the other cards.[3]

3. Place half of the normal shields with the skull side showing and the other half with the white shield showing, and sort the other three kinds of shields by type.[1]

4. Place the Life points as well as the resource tokens above the board.[1][2]

5. Place the 6 action dice and the Time Captain die near the players.[1][2]

6. Place the time token and the group pawn near the players; their starting position is provided at the beginning of the scenario during the lecture at the base.[1][2]

7. Each player takes one main pawn of their chosen color and a matching small pawn.[1][2]

8. Install the scenario's Base cards while respecting the letters shown on the back of the cards.[3]

9. Place the rest of the deck in the indicated space.[3]

10. Select a player at random to read the Base's card A aloud, then, in turn, each player reads one of the following cards.[3]

11. Sort the 24 state tokens and place them to the left of the board.[1]

**Gameplay**

* The game is fully cooperative; players work together against the game to complete missions.[4][1][5]

* Players can communicate, exchange ideas, and make decisions in common because all agents are in telepathic contact.[6]

* When playing with two players, each player chooses and controls two receptacles, and players choose a third receptacle together; the game then uses the rules for 3-players.[6]

* In the event of a disagreement or when rolling dice during two-player play, the current Time Captain takes priority.[6]

* In case of rule contradictions, the following order of precedence applies: Receptacle card text > item text > location text > Base card text > game's basic rules.[6]

[1] RULEBOOK T.I.M.E Stories — Rulebook · p.5

[2] RULEBOOK T.I.M.E Stories — Rulebook · p.5 · SET-UP · The set-up of all scenarios remains the same. Simply follow the numbers below step-by-step.

[3] RULEBOOK T.I.M.E Stories — Rulebook · p.15

[4] RULEBOOK T.I.M.E Stories — Rulebook · p.3 · ROLEPLAYING GAME OR BOARDGAME?

[5] RULEBOOK T.I.M.E Stories — Rulebook · p.3 · L e s c énario p r o p o s é d a n s c e t b o îte est p l e i n e m e n t c o p ératif, l e s j o u e u r s 1 DECK = 1 MISSION

[6] RULEBOOK T.I.M.E Stories — Rulebook · p.4 · DECK MANIPULATION · PLAYING WITH TWO PLAYERS · Author's suggestion: · CHALLENGE AND NARRATION · GOLDEN RULE · Here's a brief introduction to all of the components: · …

🔧 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 101 ms · ask 8072 ms · total 8177 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 8177 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.047163, "snippet": "Since the story, the receptacles, the items, and the riddles of a mission are contained in the cards of a single deck, it's extremely important that you learn to manipulate the cards with care while precisely following the given directives. Otherwise, you might deprive yourself of some of the essent", "headingPath": "DECK MANIPULATION · PLAYING WITH TWO PLAYERS · Author's suggestion: · CHALLENGE AND NARRATION · GOLDEN RULE · Here's a brief introduction to all of the components: · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 425}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.046032, "snippet": "At the beginning of the scenario, you are at the T.I.M.E Agency base and you receive your mission briefing. It's then a question of you successfully completing that mission, ideally in a minimum number of attempts. An attempt is commonly called a 'run'. A run equals a complete game, meaning the use ", "headingPath": "OBJECT OF THE GAME · ANATOMY OF A DECK · SET-UP OF A DECK · RESETTING THE DECK", "sharpsignalDocId": 425}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "5 PLAYER 1 PLAYER 2 PLAYER 3 PLAYER 4 1> Set up the game board facing the players. SET-UP The set-up of all scenarios remains the same. Simply follow the numbers below step-by-step. 4> Sort the 24 state tokens and place them to the left of the board. 2> Place half of the normal shields with the skul", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 425}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "(5) Select a player at random to read the Base’s card A out loud, then, in turn, each player reads one of the following cards. (3) Install your scenario’s Base cards while respecting the letters shown on the back of the cards. (6) And this is how the adventure begins! (4) Place the rest of the deck ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 425}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "As much as possible, sit on the same side of the game board so that everyone can clearly see the card panoramas during the game. 1> Set up the game board facing the players. This aids immersion and also helps in your missions as some details from the artwork can turn out to be vital… 3> Place the Li", "headingPath": "SET-UP · The set-up of all scenarios remains the same. Simply follow the numbers below step-by-step.", "sharpsignalDocId": 425}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "You've now reached the end of the rules and can start your first mission. When all players are ready, pull out the N.T. 1921: Asylum deck and perform the following set-up: 17/06/2015 12:05 Livre_D01_US_Asylum_TS_080615.indb 1 17/06/2015 13:27 Advice for how to explain the rules: If you are the only ", "headingPath": "AND YOU'RE READY TO START!", "sharpsignalDocId": 425}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.029958, "snippet": "e o v t u l e q u ' u n a i r d e d i s e n s i o n s o u f l e s u r v o t r e » le jeu , q u i l e u r t e n d r a b i e n d e s e m b ûches et ête. C'e s t d o n c u n e e x p é r i e n c e d e g r o u p e , s g a g n e r e z o u échouere z À terme, i l n ' e s t p a s i m équipe, m a i s p o u r", "headingPath": "L e s c énario p r o p o s é d a n s c e t b o îte est p l e i n e m e n t c o p ératif, l e s j o u e u r s 1 DECK = 1 MISSION", "sharpsignalDocId": 425}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "When all players are ready, pull out the N.T.", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 425}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 425}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SET-UP · The set-up of all scenarios remains the same. Simply follow the numbers below step-by-step.", "sharpsignalDocId": 425}, {"page": 15, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 425}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "ROLEPLAYING GAME OR BOARDGAME?", "sharpsignalDocId": 425}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "L e s c énario p r o p o s é d a n s c e t b o îte est p l e i n e m e n t c o p ératif, l e s j o u e u r s 1 DECK = 1 MISSION", "sharpsignalDocId": 425}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "DECK MANIPULATION · PLAYING WITH TWO PLAYERS · Author's suggestion: · CHALLENGE AND NARRATION · GOLDEN RULE · Here's a brief introduction to all of the components: · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 425}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 425 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 425 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 0.90091 of 1534 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 15, 2026 06:05

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 T.I.M.E Stories — Rulebook (corpus doc 425)	DECK MANIPULATION · PLAYING WITH TWO PLAYERS · Author's suggestion: · CHALLENGE AND NARRATION · GOLDEN RULE · Here's a brief introduction to all of the components: · …	p.4	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
#2	RULEBOOK T.I.M.E Stories — Rulebook (corpus doc 425)	OBJECT OF THE GAME · ANATOMY OF A DECK · SET-UP OF A DECK · RESETTING THE DECK	p.6	0.046032 (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 T.I.M.E Stories — Rulebook (corpus doc 425)		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 T.I.M.E Stories — Rulebook (corpus doc 425)		p.15	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
#5	RULEBOOK T.I.M.E Stories — Rulebook (corpus doc 425)	SET-UP · The set-up of all scenarios remains the same. Simply follow the numbers below step-by-step.	p.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))	300
#6	RULEBOOK T.I.M.E Stories — Rulebook (corpus doc 425)	AND YOU'RE READY TO START!	p.15	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 T.I.M.E Stories — Rulebook (corpus doc 425)	L e s c énario p r o p o s é d a n s c e t b o îte est p l e i n e m e n t c o p ératif, l e s j o u e u r s 1 DECK = 1 MISSION	p.3	0.029958 (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 T.I.M.E Stories — Rulebook (corpus doc 425)		p.15	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))	45

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 64 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 T.I.M.E Stories — Rulebook (corpus doc 425)	ROLEPLAYING GAME OR BOARDGAME?	p.3	#9	0.029643 (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
#2	RULEBOOK T.I.M.E Stories — Rulebook (corpus doc 425)		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
#3	RULEBOOK T.I.M.E Stories — Rulebook (corpus doc 425)		p.15	#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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK T.I.M.E Stories — Rulebook (corpus doc 425)	AND YOU'RE READY TO START!	p.15	#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
#5	RULEBOOK T.I.M.E Stories — Rulebook (corpus doc 425)	ROLEPLAYING GAME OR BOARDGAME?	p.3	#23	0.012987 (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 T.I.M.E Stories — Rulebook (corpus doc 425)	L e s c énario p r o p o s é d a n s c e t b o îte est p l e i n e m e n t c o p ératif, l e s j o u e u r s 1 DECK = 1 MISSION	p.3	#7	0.029958 (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
#7	RULEBOOK T.I.M.E Stories — Rulebook (corpus doc 425)	DECK MANIPULATION · PLAYING WITH TWO PLAYERS · Author's suggestion: · CHALLENGE AND NARRATION · GOLDEN RULE · Here's a brief introduction to all of the components: · …	p.4	#1	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 T.I.M.E Stories — Rulebook (corpus doc 425)	SET-UP · The set-up of all scenarios remains the same. Simply follow the numbers below step-by-step.	p.5	#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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK T.I.M.E Stories — Rulebook (corpus doc 425)		p.5	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK T.I.M.E Stories — Rulebook (corpus doc 425)	SET-UP · The set-up of all scenarios remains the same. Simply follow the numbers below step-by-step.	p.5	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK T.I.M.E Stories — Rulebook (corpus doc 425)		p.15	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK T.I.M.E Stories — Rulebook (corpus doc 425)	ROLEPLAYING GAME OR BOARDGAME?	p.3	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK T.I.M.E Stories — Rulebook (corpus doc 425)	L e s c énario p r o p o s é d a n s c e t b o îte est p l e i n e m e n t c o p ératif, l e s j o u e u r s 1 DECK = 1 MISSION	p.3	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK T.I.M.E Stories — Rulebook (corpus doc 425)	DECK MANIPULATION · PLAYING WITH TWO PLAYERS · Author's suggestion: · CHALLENGE AND NARRATION · GOLDEN RULE · Here's a brief introduction to all of the components: · …	p.4	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 101 ms · first delta 5888 ms · total 8177 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 101 ms · ask 8072 ms · gateway work 8177 ms · total 8177 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3395
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 460
tok/sec: 205.2 tok/sec — 460 output tokens in 2.242 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 39s 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 354), 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.