Ruling — Cthulhu: Death May Die

← Cthulhu: Death May Die

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Cthulhu: Death May Diebg-253344-en-1e

### Setup

1. Choose an Elder One and place its figure on the starting space of the summoning track.[1]

2. Place the Minions reference card on the Story Board.[1]

3. Set out the 8 Mythos cards and any tokens.[1]

4. Place the Elder One Stage cards in order, faceup, on the Story Board, with Stage 1 on top.[1]

5. Choose an episode and take out its 8 Mythos cards, 15 Discovery cards, Episode card, and tokens.[1]

6. Place the Monsters reference cards on the Story board.[1]

7. Take out all figures for the enemies shown on the reference cards.[1]

8. Set up the map board according to the instructions on the back of the episode card, including arranging map tiles and setting enemy figures and tokens on indicated spaces.[1]

9. Turn over the episode card and place it on the Story board.[1]

10. Shuffle the 16 Mythos cards together and place them facedown.[1]

11. Shuffle the episode Discovery deck and place it facedown.[1]

12. Each player selects an investigator board and its figure, attaching a colored base to the figure to identify it.[1]

13. Place the figures on the starting space for the episode.[1] (In a single-player game, choose 2 investigators and alternate turns with them).[1]

14. Place 6 markers of your color on your investigator board: 3 on the first level of the investigator's skills, and 3 in the leftmost space of the wound, stress, and sanity tracks.[1]

15. Shuffle the insanity cards and deal 1 to each player, placing the card faceup near their investigator boards.[1]

16. Randomly determine a starting player; that player takes the Mythos deck and takes the first turn.[1]

### Turn Sequence

1. Take 3 Actions (You may take the same action more than once).[2] Available actions include:

* Move up to 3 spaces (You can only move between spaces if there is a passage on both tiles or if both spaces have a staircase or tunnel token).[2][3]

* Run.[2]

* Draw Mythos Card.[2]

* Investigate or Fight!.[2]

* (Note: 2 actions are unique to each episode).[2]

2. Resolve.[2]

3. End of Turn.[2]

### Gameplay Mechanics

* **Movement and Enemies:** When you leave a space with enemies, all enemies in that space follow you to your new space.[2]

* **Fire:** When leaving a space with Fire tokens, place 1 Fire token from the reserve onto your investigator board for each token on the space.[2]

* **Stress:** You may increase your stress to reroll 1 die you just rolled.[4]

* **Sanity and Skills:** When an investigator loses sanity, the marker advances on the sanity track.[4] Reaching the Insanity Threshold activates your insanity card and allows you to level up a skill by moving its marker 1 space to the right.[4]

* **Elder One Stages:** When a Stage's wounds equal or exceed its health, the Stage is defeated.[5] Move the Stage card to the side to reveal the next Stage and resolve its "When Revealed" effect; excess wounds do not carry over to the next Stage.[5] Previous Stages' effects and dice remain in play.[5]

* **Summoning:** Some Mythos cards indicate a Gate color and a specific enemy to be summoned at that Gate.[6]

### Ending the Game

* **Winning:** You all win when you kill the Elder One by defeating its Final Stage.[7][8]

* **Losing:** You all lose if any of the following occur:

* An investigator is killed or consumed by madness before the Elder One is summoned (Stage 1).[7][8]

* All investigators are killed or consumed by madness after the Elder One is summoned (Stages 2 onward).[7][8]

* The Progression token reaches the last (8th) space of the Summoning track.[7][8]

[1] RULEBOOK Cthulhu: Death May Die — Rulebook · p.10 · - Leveling up skills

[2] RULEBOOK Cthulhu: Death May Die — Rulebook · p.12 · TURN SEQUENCE · 1. TAKE 3 ACTIONS · RUN

[3] RULEBOOK Cthulhu: Death May Die — Rulebook · p.9

[4] RULEBOOK Cthulhu: Death May Die — Rulebook · p.8 · OVERVIEW · STRESS · WOUNDS · SKILLS · SANITY · - Gaining bonus dice · …

[5] RULEBOOK Cthulhu: Death May Die — Rulebook · p.18 · Starting with Stage 2, each card displays:

[6] RULEBOOK Cthulhu: Death May Die — Rulebook · p.14 · SUMMON ENEMIES

[7] RULEBOOK Cthulhu: Death May Die — Rulebook · p.19

[8] RULEBOOK Cthulhu: Death May Die — Rulebook · p.19 · ENDING THE GAME · INDEX

🔧 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 73 ms · ask 8131 ms · total 9297 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 1091 ms · generation 8206 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 18, "score": 0.045476, "snippet": "When an investigator is killed or consumed by madness, the game is immediately lost if the Elder One is still on the Summoning track. If, however, the Elder One has already been summoned to the board, the other investigators may continue playing and try to win the game. First, discard all Discovery ", "headingPath": "DEATH OF AN INVESTIGATOR · DISRUPTING THE RITUAL · FIGHTING THE ELDER ONE", "sharpsignalDocId": 267}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.045285, "snippet": "If there are 3 cards in the discard pile that have the Elder One Summoning symbol, the Elder One advances toward ultimate power! Advance the Elder One along the Summoning track. If the Elder One is already on the board, move the Progression token along the track instead. The revealed Elder One Stage", "headingPath": "3. CHECK THE MYTHOS DISCARD PILE · If there are 3 Elder One Summoning symbols: · The Elder One is summoned if:", "sharpsignalDocId": 267}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Choose an Elder One. From its box, place the Elder One figure on the starting space of the summoning track. Place the Minions reference card on the Story Board. Set out the 8 Mythos cards and any tokens . Place the Elder One Stage cards in order, faceup, on the Story Board. Stage 1 goes on top. Choo", "headingPath": "- Leveling up skills", "sharpsignalDocId": 267}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "This step varies depending on whether there are enemies in your space or not. Draw the top card of the Discovery deck and read the text in the center box aloud. Some cards will have a statement of something you must do if you have a Condition or a certain Companion. Most offer choices of what you wa", "headingPath": "3. INVESTIGATE OR FIGHT! · If you are in a Safe space, INVESTIGATE your space: · If you are not in a Safe space, the enemies FIGHT you:", "sharpsignalDocId": 267}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "When an enemy attacks you, roll the number and type of dice as shown on their reference card. Each success gives you 1 wound. Each tentacle costs you 1 sanity. Elder signs only have an effect if the enemy has the ability to use them. You may use stress to reroll these dice and you may use any of you", "headingPath": "DEFENDING AGAINST ENEMIES · 2. FIRE!", "sharpsignalDocId": 267}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "RULES OF THE GAME - DEATH MAY DIE TILES AND SPACES Each tile is double-sided and labeled with a code to help with setup. Spaces are defined by walls and passages. Some tiles contain 1 space while others contain 2 or 3 (see above). On the board, you may only move through passages that have connecting", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 267}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Some actions and Discovery cards tell you to 'make a roll'. When investigators make a roll, you always roll 3 standard black dice (and may also be allowed to add bonus green dice). Enemies roll a specific number and type of dice for their attacks, as indicated on their reference card. Each die has 4", "headingPath": "DICE AND CHECKS · 1. Use Any Successes:", "sharpsignalDocId": 267}, {"page": 18, "score": 0.030679, "snippet": "A one-time effect that takes place when that card is revealed. An ongoing effect that remains in play until the end of the game. Health showing how many wounds that Stage can take. The number and type of dice that Stage adds to the Elder One's attacks. When a Stage has wounds equal to or greater tha", "headingPath": "Starting with Stage 2, each card displays:", "sharpsignalDocId": 267}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "- Leveling up skills", "sharpsignalDocId": 267}, {"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "TURN SEQUENCE · 1. TAKE 3 ACTIONS · RUN", "sharpsignalDocId": 267}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 267}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "OVERVIEW · STRESS · WOUNDS · SKILLS · SANITY · - Gaining bonus dice · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 267}, {"page": 18, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Starting with Stage 2, each card displays:", "sharpsignalDocId": 267}, {"page": 14, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SUMMON ENEMIES", "sharpsignalDocId": 267}, {"page": 19, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 267}, {"page": 19, "quote": null, "headingPath": "ENDING THE GAME · INDEX", "sharpsignalDocId": 267}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 267 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 267 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 0.88103 of 2900 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 15, 2026 10:38

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 Cthulhu: Death May Die — Rulebook (corpus doc 267)	DEATH OF AN INVESTIGATOR · DISRUPTING THE RITUAL · FIGHTING THE ELDER ONE	p.18	0.045476 (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 Cthulhu: Death May Die — Rulebook (corpus doc 267)	3. CHECK THE MYTHOS DISCARD PILE · If there are 3 Elder One Summoning symbols: · The Elder One is summoned if:	p.17	0.045285 (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 Cthulhu: Death May Die — Rulebook (corpus doc 267)	- Leveling up skills	p.10	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 Cthulhu: Death May Die — Rulebook (corpus doc 267)	3. INVESTIGATE OR FIGHT! · If you are in a Safe space, INVESTIGATE your space: · If you are not in a Safe space, the enemies FIGHT you:	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 Cthulhu: Death May Die — Rulebook (corpus doc 267)	DEFENDING AGAINST ENEMIES · 2. FIRE!	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
#6	RULEBOOK Cthulhu: Death May Die — Rulebook (corpus doc 267)		p.9	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
#7	RULEBOOK Cthulhu: Death May Die — Rulebook (corpus doc 267)	DICE AND CHECKS · 1. Use Any Successes:	p.11	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 Cthulhu: Death May Die — Rulebook (corpus doc 267)	Starting with Stage 2, each card displays:	p.18	0.030679 (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 45 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 Cthulhu: Death May Die — Rulebook (corpus doc 267)	- Leveling up skills	p.10	#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
#2	RULEBOOK Cthulhu: Death May Die — Rulebook (corpus doc 267)	Starting with Stage 2, each card displays:	p.18	#8	0.030679 (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 Cthulhu: Death May Die — Rulebook (corpus doc 267)		p.19	#15	0.013333 (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 Cthulhu: Death May Die — Rulebook (corpus doc 267)	ENDING THE GAME · INDEX	p.19	#16	0.013158 (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
#5	RULEBOOK Cthulhu: Death May Die — Rulebook (corpus doc 267)	TURN SEQUENCE · 1. TAKE 3 ACTIONS · RUN	p.12	#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
#6	RULEBOOK Cthulhu: Death May Die — Rulebook (corpus doc 267)	OVERVIEW · STRESS · WOUNDS · SKILLS · SANITY · - Gaining bonus dice · …	p.8	#10	0.030214 (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 Cthulhu: Death May Die — Rulebook (corpus doc 267)	SUMMON ENEMIES	p.14	#9	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
#8	RULEBOOK Cthulhu: Death May Die — Rulebook (corpus doc 267)		p.9	#6	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 Cthulhu: Death May Die — Rulebook (corpus doc 267)	- Leveling up skills	p.10	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Cthulhu: Death May Die — Rulebook (corpus doc 267)	TURN SEQUENCE · 1. TAKE 3 ACTIONS · RUN	p.12	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Cthulhu: Death May Die — Rulebook (corpus doc 267)		p.9	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Cthulhu: Death May Die — Rulebook (corpus doc 267)	OVERVIEW · STRESS · WOUNDS · SKILLS · SANITY · - Gaining bonus dice · …	p.8	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Cthulhu: Death May Die — Rulebook (corpus doc 267)	Starting with Stage 2, each card displays:	p.18	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Cthulhu: Death May Die — Rulebook (corpus doc 267)	SUMMON ENEMIES	p.14	no quote on the wire
[7]	RULEBOOK Cthulhu: Death May Die — Rulebook (corpus doc 267)		p.19	no quote on the wire
[8]	RULEBOOK Cthulhu: Death May Die — Rulebook (corpus doc 267)	ENDING THE GAME · INDEX	p.19	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 73 ms · first delta 3736 ms · total 9297 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 1091 ms · retrieval 73 ms · ask 8131 ms · gateway work 8206 ms · total 9297 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3021
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 913
tok/sec: 206.2 tok/sec — 913 output tokens in 4.428 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 15s 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 195), 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.