Ruling — Middara: Unintentional Malum – Act 1

← Middara: Unintentional Malum – Act 1

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Middara: Unintentional Malum – Act 1bg-169427-en-1e

The way Middara is played depends on the chosen Game Mode:[1]

**Crawl Mode**

1. Choose a Scenario.[2]

2. Build 4 Adventurers using the XP and Gold provided by the chosen Scenario's Rank.[2]

3. Spend XP and Gold on Disciplines and Items (Items must be from the Shop and Train section of the Setup).[2]

4. Follow the Encounter Setup Diagram to begin the first Encounter.[2]

5. Progress through Encounters to complete the Scenario.[2]

6. Gain Gold, Items, and XP by defeating opponents, looting treasure, and completing Achievements.[2]

7. Receive additional rewards after completing an Encounter, which may include restoring Adventurers, gaining XP, or using the Shop and Train.[2]

8. Continue to the next Encounter or Scene in the Scenario.[2]

9. Win the Scenario by reaching the end Scene, typically by completing a number of Encounters.[2]

**Adventure Mode**

1. Choose an Adventure (such as Unintentional Malum: Act 1).[3]

2. Start on page 1 of the Adventure Book.[3]

3. Read through Scenes, which are sections of narrative read aloud between Encounters to provide context.[3]

4. Perform Adventure Mechanics (such as Skill Checks or adding Story Flags) when instructed by the Adventure Book.[3]

5. Progress through the story using the Adventure Book.[3]

6. Win an Encounter by reaching a Win Condition listed in the Encounter Setup.[3]

7. If an Encounter is lost (usually when all party members are Defeated), read the Hidden Text under the Lose Condition to learn how to proceed.[3]

**Encounter Setup (Applicable to both modes)**

1. **Prepare Phase**: Adventurers remove Used tokens from Per Encounter Abilities, remove certain Damage tokens, remove all Effect tokens, and set Stamina Points (SP) to their Stamina Point Recovery Value.[4]

2. **Placement Phase**: Set up Tiles, Encounter tokens, Terrain tokens, and figures according to the Encounter Setup Diagram; Adventurers may choose their starting spaces in the Starting Zone.[4]

3. **Distribution Phase**: Distribute Combatant cards for the Combatants listed in the Encounter Setup.[4]

4. **Initiative Phase**: Take an Initiative card for each Adventurer and Combatant, shuffle them, and deal them out to create the Initiative Track.[4]

5. **Gameplay**: Read the Encounter Intro aloud and take turns following the Initiative Track until an End Condition is reached.[4]

[1] RULEBOOK Middara: Unintentional Malum – Act 1 — Rulebook · p.8 · ____ C_h_o_o_si_n_g_A_G_a_m_e_M_o_cle ____ ~fl · CRAWLMODE · ADVENTURE MODE

[2] RULEBOOK Middara: Unintentional Malum – Act 1 — Rulebook · p.9 · CRAWLMODE · CREATE ADVENTURERS · SETUP ENCOUNTER · START PLAYING · ENCOUNTER REWARDS · WINNING AND LOSING

[3] RULEBOOK Middara: Unintentional Malum – Act 1 — Rulebook · p.10 · ADVENTURE MODE · HOW TO START · SCENES · ADVENTURE MECHANICS · WINNING AND LOSING

[4] RULEBOOK Middara: Unintentional Malum – Act 1 — Rulebook · p.14 · BOUNTIES · SET _T _I _ N_ G _ U · Now you're ready to play! · READING ENCOUNTERS · ENCOUNTER SETUP

🔧 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 91 ms · ask 9098 ms · total 9191 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 9191 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 24, "score": 0.047123, "snippet": "_____ _ _____________ --,;,~fl When starting a new Adventure or playing a new Crawl Mode Scenario, players wi 11 be instructed to select and setup Adventurers. In Adventure Mode, the Adventure Book will dictate which Adventurers players have in their party and when more Adventurers will join the par", "headingPath": "TILE NUMBER · SETT _I _ N _ G _ U_ P _ · A_d_v_eq_t_u_r_er_s_a_n_d_I_t_em_s _ ____ · PLAYING ADVENTURERS · SELECTING ADVENTURERS · EQYIPPING AND STORING ITEMS · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 648}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.046871, "snippet": "To begin playing the Adventure Mode, players choose an Adventure to play. This game contains only one Adventure, Unintentional Ma/um: Act 1. Adventure packs and future content will contain a wider variety of Adventures of various lengths. Players start on Pg. 1 of the Adventure Book. It's important ", "headingPath": "ADVENTURE MODE · HOW TO START · SCENES · ADVENTURE MECHANICS · WINNING AND LOSING", "sharpsignalDocId": 648}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.045688, "snippet": "The Adventure Mode is not intended to be played in a single session. Instead, it is intended to be played in 1-4 hour sessions over a long period of time. When stopping between Encounters, players must keep track of many variables. Players will be required to use the Adventure Sheet to keep track of", "headingPath": "CONTINUING AN ADVENTURE · THE PARTY", "sharpsignalDocId": 648}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.045541, "snippet": "The Crawl Mode is for those who want to play a game that focuses on killing monsters and gaining loot, without worrying about a continuing story. When playing the Crawl Mode, players start by choosing a Scenario. There are 5 different Scenarios in Unintentional Malum:Act 1, each with a different Ran", "headingPath": "CRAWLMODE · CREATE ADVENTURERS · SETUP ENCOUNTER · START PLAYING · ENCOUNTER REWARDS · WINNING AND LOSING", "sharpsignalDocId": 648}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.043794, "snippet": "If players would like a more epic Crawl Mode experience, starting as a novice and growing their Adventurer as a force to be reckoned with, players can keep track of their progress between Scenarios. The best way to do this would be to start with a Rank 1 Scenario and after completing it, move on to ", "headingPath": "EPIC DUNGEON CRAWL", "sharpsignalDocId": 648}, {"page": 43, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Any time an Attack is called for, the figure making the Attack will follow these steps. Select a figure within Line of Sight and Range as the target. Some Abilities have specific targeting parameters that may override this. 1-Handed Weapons have a single Combat Die printed on them. 2-Handed Weapons ", "headingPath": "STEPS FOR MAKING AN ATTACK · 1. CHOOSE THE TARGET · 2. BUILD THE COMBAT DICE POOL: · 4. DODGE:", "sharpsignalDocId": 648}, {"page": 38, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Players will begin an Encounter by determining whose turn it is on the Initiative Track. Whether the figure is an Adventurer, a Command Combatant, or an Intelligent Combatant will determine what steps they must go through during their turn. Encounters are divided into rounds that are made up of indi", "headingPath": "THE INITIATIVE TRACI( · IMPORTANT INITIATIVE RULES:", "sharpsignalDocId": 648}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.030282, "snippet": "The way Middara is set up and played changes depending on the Game Mode the players decide to play. Regardless of what Game Mode is chosen, Middara is, at its core, about completing Encounters. An Encounter can take anywhere from 30 minutes to 3 hours to play. Use the following to determine which Ga", "headingPath": "____ C_h_o_o_si_n_g_A_G_a_m_e_M_o_cle ____ ~fl · CRAWLMODE · ADVENTURE MODE", "sharpsignalDocId": 648}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "____ C_h_o_o_si_n_g_A_G_a_m_e_M_o_cle ____ ~fl · CRAWLMODE · ADVENTURE MODE", "sharpsignalDocId": 648}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "CRAWLMODE · CREATE ADVENTURERS · SETUP ENCOUNTER · START PLAYING · ENCOUNTER REWARDS · WINNING AND LOSING", "sharpsignalDocId": 648}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "ADVENTURE MODE · HOW TO START · SCENES · ADVENTURE MECHANICS · WINNING AND LOSING", "sharpsignalDocId": 648}, {"page": 14, "quote": null, "headingPath": "BOUNTIES · SET _T _I _ N_ G _ U · Now you're ready to play! · READING ENCOUNTERS · ENCOUNTER SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 648}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 648 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 648 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 0.89685 of 1968 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 15, 2026 06:37

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 Middara: Unintentional Malum – Act 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 648)	TILE NUMBER · SETT _I _ N _ G _ U_ P _ · A_d_v_eq_t_u_r_er_s_a_n_d_I_t_em_s _ ____ · PLAYING ADVENTURERS · SELECTING ADVENTURERS · EQYIPPING AND STORING ITEMS · …	p.24	0.047123 (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 Middara: Unintentional Malum – Act 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 648)	ADVENTURE MODE · HOW TO START · SCENES · ADVENTURE MECHANICS · WINNING AND LOSING	p.10	0.046871 (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 Middara: Unintentional Malum – Act 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 648)	CONTINUING AN ADVENTURE · THE PARTY	p.10	0.045688 (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 Middara: Unintentional Malum – Act 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 648)	CRAWLMODE · CREATE ADVENTURERS · SETUP ENCOUNTER · START PLAYING · ENCOUNTER REWARDS · WINNING AND LOSING	p.9	0.045541 (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 Middara: Unintentional Malum – Act 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 648)	EPIC DUNGEON CRAWL	p.9	0.043794 (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 Middara: Unintentional Malum – Act 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 648)	STEPS FOR MAKING AN ATTACK · 1. CHOOSE THE TARGET · 2. BUILD THE COMBAT DICE POOL: · 4. DODGE:	p.43	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
#7	RULEBOOK Middara: Unintentional Malum – Act 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 648)	THE INITIATIVE TRACI( · IMPORTANT INITIATIVE RULES:	p.38	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
#8	RULEBOOK Middara: Unintentional Malum – Act 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 648)	____ C_h_o_o_si_n_g_A_G_a_m_e_M_o_cle ____ ~fl · CRAWLMODE · ADVENTURE MODE	p.8	0.030282 (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 80 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 Middara: Unintentional Malum – Act 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 648)		p.71	#17	0.023697 (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 Middara: Unintentional Malum – Act 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 648)	EPIC DUNGEON CRAWL	p.9	#5	0.043794 (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 Middara: Unintentional Malum – Act 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 648)	CRAWLMODE · CREATE ADVENTURERS · SETUP ENCOUNTER · START PLAYING · ENCOUNTER REWARDS · WINNING AND LOSING	p.9	#4	0.045541 (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 Middara: Unintentional Malum – Act 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 648)	____ C_h_o_o_si_n_g_A_G_a_m_e_M_o_cle ____ ~fl · CRAWLMODE · ADVENTURE MODE	p.8	#8	0.030282 (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 Middara: Unintentional Malum – Act 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 648)	THE ACTIVE GROUP	p.10	#25	0.019841 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Middara: Unintentional Malum – Act 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 648)		p.71	#15	0.025015 (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 Middara: Unintentional Malum – Act 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 648)	ADVENTURE MODE · HOW TO START · SCENES · ADVENTURE MECHANICS · WINNING AND LOSING	p.10	#2	0.046871 (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 Middara: Unintentional Malum – Act 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 648)	BOUNTIES · SET _T _I _ N_ G _ U · Now you're ready to play! · READING ENCOUNTERS · ENCOUNTER SETUP	p.14	#11	0.028571 (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 Middara: Unintentional Malum – Act 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 648)	____ C_h_o_o_si_n_g_A_G_a_m_e_M_o_cle ____ ~fl · CRAWLMODE · ADVENTURE MODE	p.8	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Middara: Unintentional Malum – Act 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 648)	CRAWLMODE · CREATE ADVENTURERS · SETUP ENCOUNTER · START PLAYING · ENCOUNTER REWARDS · WINNING AND LOSING	p.9	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Middara: Unintentional Malum – Act 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 648)	ADVENTURE MODE · HOW TO START · SCENES · ADVENTURE MECHANICS · WINNING AND LOSING	p.10	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Middara: Unintentional Malum – Act 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 648)	BOUNTIES · SET _T _I _ N_ G _ U · Now you're ready to play! · READING ENCOUNTERS · ENCOUNTER SETUP	p.14	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 91 ms · first delta 4658 ms · total 9191 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 91 ms · ask 9098 ms · gateway work 9191 ms · total 9191 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3488
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 546
tok/sec: 122.0 tok/sec — 546 output tokens in 4.476 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 37s 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 581), 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.