Ruling — Ghost Stories

← Ghost Stories

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Ghost Storiesbg-37046-en-1e

To play Ghost Stories, follow these procedures:

**Setup**

1. Randomly arrange 9 Village tiles to form a 3 x 3 square.[1]

2. Place 4 game boards along the sides of the square so each faces a player.[1]

3. Randomly assign each player a color and determine which side of his board to use.[1]

4. Each player takes 4 Qi tokens, a Yin-Yang token in his color, a Tao token in his color, and a black Tao token, then places his colored Taoist figurine on the central village tile.[1]

5. Place 2 Buddha figurines on the 'Buddhist Temple' Village tile.[1]

6. Prepare the Ghost deck by shuffling Ghost cards, taking 10 Ghost cards, placing one randomly selected Wu-Feng card on them, and covering them with the rest of the Ghost cards.[1]

**Gameplay**

1. The player who most recently saw a kung-fu movie starts, and players play in turns, clockwise.[1]

2. Each player's turn consists of two phases: Yin and Yang.[1]

3. At the beginning of a turn, the active player announces the ghosts present on his board, and all their central stone abilities are applied in the Yin phase.[1]

4. During the Yang phase, the player may perform the following sequence:

* Move (optional): The player may move his Taoist figurine to an adjacent tile, including diagonals.[2]

* Perform one of two actions: Request help from a villager on the current tile OR attempt an exorcism.[2]

5. To attempt an exorcism:

* The Taoist may target a ghost on an adjacent space (no exorcism is possible from the central tile).[3]

* The player rolls 3 Tao dice.[3]

* To succeed, the player must obtain a number of the right colored side (the ghost's color) at least equal to the ghost's resistance; white faces may replace any color.[3]

* If the player fails the dice roll, he may spend Tao tokens of the corresponding color to match the resistance.[3]

* If successful, the ghost is exorcised and the card is discarded.[3]

6. The active player may use his Yin-Yang power before or after any step of his Yang phase.[2]

**Winning and Losing**

1. The players collectively win if they manage to exorcise the incarnation of Wu-Feng.[4]

2. The players lose if:

* All Taoists are dead (no more Qi tokens).[4]

* A 3rd location in the village becomes haunted.[4]

* The last ghost card of the deck is put into play before the incarnation of Wu-Feng is exorcised.[4]

[1] RULEBOOK Ghost Stories — Rulebook · p.4 · Buddha and Haunting Figurines (i) · Setup (Initiation level, 4-player game) · One of the players prepares the Ghost deck: · Goal of the Game · Playing the Game · Step 1. Ghosts' actions

[2] RULEBOOK Ghost Stories — Rulebook · p.5 · Step 2. Board overrun? · Step 3. Arrival of a ghost · Ghost placement rules · Yang Phase (Taoist) · 3) Place a Buddha (optional) · 1) Move · …

[3] RULEBOOK Ghost Stories — Rulebook · p.5 · 2.b) Attempt an exorcism · Exorcising 2 Ghosts

[4] RULEBOOK Ghost Stories — Rulebook · p.8 · End of the 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 91 ms · ask 4799 ms · total 4891 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 4891 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 5, "score": 0.04866, "snippet": "If all 3 ghost spaces on his board are occupied at the begining of his turn, the player loses 1 Qi token and does not perform Step 3. (he does not draw a new ghost from the deck and directly starts the Yang phase). If the player's board is not overrun by 3 ghosts, the player draws the first ghost ca", "headingPath": "Step 2. Board overrun? · Step 3. Arrival of a ghost · Ghost placement rules · Yang Phase (Taoist) · 3) Place a Buddha (optional) · 1) Move · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 458}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.046964, "snippet": "Presence of ghost(s) with the Haunter ability For each of such ghosts on the neutral board, adjust the position of the Haunting figurine according to the normal rules. Presence of ghost(s) with the Tormentor ability For each Tormentor on the neutral board, a player must roll the Curse die and apply ", "headingPath": "Step 1. Ghosts' Actions · Step 2. Board overrun? · Possessed board (board with 0 Qi) · Higher Difficulty levels: Normal, Nightmare, and Hell · Normal mode · Nightmare mode", "sharpsignalDocId": 458}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.046875, "snippet": "The Haunting figurines represent the Ghosts' menace to the village, and the Buddha figurines represent the mystical traps that the Taoists can set. Randomly arrange the 9 Village tiles to form a 3 x 3 square. At the beginning of the game, no locations are haunted, so the villagers are visible. Place", "headingPath": "Buddha and Haunting Figurines (i) · Setup (Initiation level, 4-player game) · One of the players prepares the Ghost deck: · Goal of the Game · Playing the Game · Step 1. Ghosts' actions", "sharpsignalDocId": 458}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.046432, "snippet": "Many fell, putting an end to the reign of terror of Wu-Feng, Lord of the Nine Hells. The funerary urn housing his ashes was buried in the cemetery of a village in the Middle Empire. Years have elapsed, and the cursed legacy has been forgotten by the living. Hidden away in hell, Wu-Feng has forgotten", "headingPath": "A game by Antoine Bauza for 1 to 4 players, aged 12 and up. · Preamble", "sharpsignalDocId": 458}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.045445, "snippet": "On the tile where it stands, the Taoist may exorcise a ghost situated on a adjacent space only.. Therefore, no exorcism is possible from the central tile, and two exorcisms are possible from a corner tile. To attempt an exorcism, the player rolls the 3 Tao dice. To succeed, he must obtain a number o", "headingPath": "2.b) Attempt an exorcism · Exorcising 2 Ghosts", "sharpsignalDocId": 458}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.044854, "snippet": "For each haunting ghost present on his board, the player must update the position of the associated Haunting figurine. Three positions are possible: one on the card and two on the board. On the card: if the haunting figurine stands on the card, the player moves it onto the corresponding haunting ico", "headingPath": "A. Presence of ghost(s) with the Haunter ability · B. Presence of ghost(s) with the Tormentor ability", "sharpsignalDocId": 458}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.044337, "snippet": "In order to evaluate your performance and to help you progress, you will find a score sheet in the box to keep track of your games. To calculate your score, use the following values: +10 points in case of victory (in Initiation, normal, or nightmare mode) +20 points for a victory in Hell level. +1 p", "headingPath": "Score · The Taoist Powers · 1. Enfeeblement Mantra · 2. Bottomless Pockets · Red Taoist", "sharpsignalDocId": 458}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.043364, "snippet": "A neutral power token allows the active player to use during his Yang phase the power of a non-possessed (see below) neutral board. Such action is supplementary to his own power. A player may use several neutral power tokens in the same turn, but not for the same power. After use, a neutral power to", "headingPath": "Neutral power tokens · Neutral Boards", "sharpsignalDocId": 458}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Buddha and Haunting Figurines (i) · Setup (Initiation level, 4-player game) · One of the players prepares the Ghost deck: · Goal of the Game · Playing the Game · Step 1. Ghosts' actions", "sharpsignalDocId": 458}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Step 2. Board overrun? · Step 3. Arrival of a ghost · Ghost placement rules · Yang Phase (Taoist) · 3) Place a Buddha (optional) · 1) Move · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 458}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "2.b) Attempt an exorcism · Exorcising 2 Ghosts", "sharpsignalDocId": 458}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "End of the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 458}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 458 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 458 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 0.90110 of 1901 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 15, 2026 11:15

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 Ghost Stories — Rulebook (corpus doc 458)	Step 2. Board overrun? · Step 3. Arrival of a ghost · Ghost placement rules · Yang Phase (Taoist) · 3) Place a Buddha (optional) · 1) Move · …	p.5	0.04866 (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 Ghost Stories — Rulebook (corpus doc 458)	Step 1. Ghosts' Actions · Step 2. Board overrun? · Possessed board (board with 0 Qi) · Higher Difficulty levels: Normal, Nightmare, and Hell · Normal mode · Nightmare mode	p.10	0.046964 (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 Ghost Stories — Rulebook (corpus doc 458)	Buddha and Haunting Figurines (i) · Setup (Initiation level, 4-player game) · One of the players prepares the Ghost deck: · Goal of the Game · Playing the Game · Step 1. Ghosts' actions	p.4	0.046875 (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 Ghost Stories — Rulebook (corpus doc 458)	A game by Antoine Bauza for 1 to 4 players, aged 12 and up. · Preamble	p.2	0.046432 (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 Ghost Stories — Rulebook (corpus doc 458)	2.b) Attempt an exorcism · Exorcising 2 Ghosts	p.5	0.045445 (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 Ghost Stories — Rulebook (corpus doc 458)	A. Presence of ghost(s) with the Haunter ability · B. Presence of ghost(s) with the Tormentor ability	p.4	0.044854 (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 Ghost Stories — Rulebook (corpus doc 458)	Score · The Taoist Powers · 1. Enfeeblement Mantra · 2. Bottomless Pockets · Red Taoist	p.8	0.044337 (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 Ghost Stories — Rulebook (corpus doc 458)	Neutral power tokens · Neutral Boards	p.9	0.043364 (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 21 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 Ghost Stories — Rulebook (corpus doc 458)	Step 2. Board overrun? · Step 3. Arrival of a ghost · Ghost placement rules · Yang Phase (Taoist) · 3) Place a Buddha (optional) · 1) Move · …	p.5	#1	0.04866 (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 Ghost Stories — Rulebook (corpus doc 458)	Buddha and Haunting Figurines (i) · Setup (Initiation level, 4-player game) · One of the players prepares the Ghost deck: · Goal of the Game · Playing the Game · Step 1. Ghosts' actions	p.4	#3	0.046875 (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 Ghost Stories — Rulebook (corpus doc 458)	A game by Antoine Bauza for 1 to 4 players, aged 12 and up. · Preamble	p.2	#4	0.046432 (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 Ghost Stories — Rulebook (corpus doc 458)	2.b) Attempt an exorcism · Exorcising 2 Ghosts	p.5	#5	0.045445 (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
#5	RULEBOOK Ghost Stories — Rulebook (corpus doc 458)	End of the Game	p.8	#10	0.02904 (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 Ghost Stories — Rulebook (corpus doc 458)	Step 1. Ghosts' Actions · Step 2. Board overrun? · Possessed board (board with 0 Qi) · Higher Difficulty levels: Normal, Nightmare, and Hell · Normal mode · Nightmare mode	p.10	#2	0.046964 (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 Ghost Stories — Rulebook (corpus doc 458)	1. Second Wind · 2. Heavenly Gust · 1. Strength of the Mountain · 2. Gods' favourite · Setup · Note: in a 2-player game, the two players must face each other. Therefore, they each have a neutral board on their left and on their right. Preparation of the deck: · …	p.9	#17	0.013699 (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
#8	RULEBOOK Ghost Stories — Rulebook (corpus doc 458)	A. Presence of ghost(s) with the Haunter ability · B. Presence of ghost(s) with the Tormentor ability	p.4	#6	0.044854 (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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Ghost Stories — Rulebook (corpus doc 458)	Buddha and Haunting Figurines (i) · Setup (Initiation level, 4-player game) · One of the players prepares the Ghost deck: · Goal of the Game · Playing the Game · Step 1. Ghosts' actions	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Ghost Stories — Rulebook (corpus doc 458)	Step 2. Board overrun? · Step 3. Arrival of a ghost · Ghost placement rules · Yang Phase (Taoist) · 3) Place a Buddha (optional) · 1) Move · …	p.5	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Ghost Stories — Rulebook (corpus doc 458)	2.b) Attempt an exorcism · Exorcising 2 Ghosts	p.5	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Ghost Stories — Rulebook (corpus doc 458)	End of the Game	p.8	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 91 ms · first delta 1900 ms · total 4891 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 4799 ms · gateway work 4891 ms · total 4891 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3854
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 603
tok/sec: 205.2 tok/sec — 603 output tokens in 2.939 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 56s 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 388), 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.