Ruling — The King's Dilemma

← The King's Dilemma

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: The King's Dilemmabg-245655-en-1e

The game is played in rounds, with each round divided into 5 phases:[1]

1. Draw and Read a Card from the Dilemma Deck [1]

2. Place the Outcome Tokens on the Balance [1]

3. Vote of the Council [1]

4. Vote Resolution [1]

5. Dilemma Resolution [1]

**Round Details**

* At the beginning of the round, a card is drawn from the Dilemma deck.[1] This card describes a problem the kingdom faces and asks a question that players answer with an AYE or NAY vote.[1]

* After the vote, the card is flipped over to reveal the consequences of the choice.[1]

* At the end of the round, the drawn card is placed on the Time Counter to mark the passage of time, and a new round begins.[1]

**Voting Phase**

* Players use AYE, NAY, and PASS cards placed in front of their House screen.[2]

* Players take turns voting clockwise.[3]

* If a player becomes the player with the most Power on their Vote (regardless of the side chosen), they immediately take the Leader token.[3]

* The Voting Phase ends at the end of the turn of the player to the right of the Leader.[3]

* During a turn, a player can add more Power to their vote or "stay" and do nothing.[3] If a player "stays," they are not out of the voting and can add more Power if they get another turn.[3]

* Once a player's turn comes around again, they cannot change their vote (e.g., if they opted to PASS, they cannot later decide to VOTE AYE or NAY).[3]

**Ending the Game**

The game can end in two ways:[1]

1. The King Abdicates: This occurs if the Stability Track reaches either end.[1]

2. The King Dies: This occurs if the card is placed on the final space of the Time Counter and certain conditions are met.[1]

**Scoring and Winning**

* The player with the most points is the winner.[1]

* Scores are determined by Secret Agenda cards and Open Agenda tokens.[1]

* Bonus Agenda Points are awarded to players with the most Power and/or Coins remaining in their pool at the end of the game.[1]

[1] RULEBOOK The King's Dilemma — Rulebook · p.8 · PLAYING THE GAME · PHASES OF THE ROUND

[2] RULEBOOK The King's Dilemma — Rulebook · p.5 · GAME SETUP

[3] RULEBOOK The King's Dilemma — Rulebook · p.10 · pAss And become moderAtor

🔧 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 78 ms · ask 6496 ms · total 6576 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6576 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 8, "score": 0.048412, "snippet": "The game is played in rounds, with each round divided into 5 phases: Draw and Read a Card from the Dilemma Deck . Place the Outcome Tokens on the Balance . Vote of the Council . Vote Resolution . Dilemma Resolution . They are all related to the card drawn from the Dilemma deck at the beginning of th", "headingPath": "PLAYING THE GAME · PHASES OF THE ROUND", "sharpsignalDocId": 518}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.04741, "snippet": "Once you choose a House screen, it will always be your House screen, and you will have to use it in every subsequent game of your campaign. It will allow you to track your Prestige and Crave scores while you progress through the game story (see page 33). It also lists several achievements : the long", "headingPath": "2. Choose a House Screen", "sharpsignalDocId": 518}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.043301, "snippet": "At the end of your voting turn, if you are now the player with the most Power on your Vote (no matter which side you chose), you immediately take the Leader token . Do not take the Leader token if you only equal the highest bidder ' s amount of Power . The position of the Leader token is crucial in ", "headingPath": "pAss And become moderAtor", "sharpsignalDocId": 518}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Open Envelope 00 (see page 26) and take out its contents ( q ). Read the first card included in the Envelope (the Story card ), then place it on the Realm board, in the Storyline space with the same symbol ( w ). Afterwards, shuffle the remaining Dilemma cards ( e ) and cover them with the Cover til", "headingPath": "1. Prepare Your Starting Dilemma Deck", "sharpsignalDocId": 518}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "You do not support nor oppose the proposal at the end of the Dilemma card, and you spend your energies to gather more Power for future votes. Take 1 Coin from the general pool and put it on your PASS card . You will participate in the distribution of Power placed on the middle space of the Balance a", "headingPath": "pAss And gAther power · pAss And become moderAtor", "sharpsignalDocId": 518}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "8 Place your House screen in front of you, then take 1 AYE, 1 NAY, and 1 PASS card and place them face up in front of your House screen. They will be used during the Voting Phase . Put any unused cards back in the box. r Place 8 Power tokens and 10 Coins behind your House screen. Note that all House", "headingPath": "GAME SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 518}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "It may happen that no Dilemma card involving the Resources you are interested in moving is drawn from the deck and you can't change the situation in your favor. If this happens, remember that the less you are getting, the more likely it will be the other players will be willing to take your side . I", "headingPath": "SCORING STRATEGIES IN DIFFICULT SITUATIONS", "sharpsignalDocId": 518}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "You will have to keep the kingdom going while also seeking an advantage for your own House; this power struggle may lead the kingdom into war, famine, or riot, or it could generate wealth and well-being. It will depend on your choices! Each decision has consequences, though: what is good for the kin", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 518}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAYING THE GAME · PHASES OF THE ROUND", "sharpsignalDocId": 518}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAME SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 518}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "pAss And become moderAtor", "sharpsignalDocId": 518}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 518 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 518 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 0.89994 of 1569 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 15, 2026 13:36

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 The King's Dilemma — Rulebook (corpus doc 518)	PLAYING THE GAME · PHASES OF THE ROUND	p.8	0.048412 (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 The King's Dilemma — Rulebook (corpus doc 518)	2. Choose a House Screen	p.4	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
#3	RULEBOOK The King's Dilemma — Rulebook (corpus doc 518)	pAss And become moderAtor	p.10	0.043301 (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 The King's Dilemma — Rulebook (corpus doc 518)	1. Prepare Your Starting Dilemma Deck	p.3	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 The King's Dilemma — Rulebook (corpus doc 518)	pAss And gAther power · pAss And become moderAtor	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
#6	RULEBOOK The King's Dilemma — Rulebook (corpus doc 518)	GAME SETUP	p.5	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
#7	RULEBOOK The King's Dilemma — Rulebook (corpus doc 518)	SCORING STRATEGIES IN DIFFICULT SITUATIONS	p.16	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
#8	RULEBOOK The King's Dilemma — Rulebook (corpus doc 518)		p.3	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

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 The King's Dilemma — Rulebook (corpus doc 518)	PLAYING THE GAME · PHASES OF THE ROUND	p.8	#1	0.048412 (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 The King's Dilemma — Rulebook (corpus doc 518)	2. Choose a House Screen	p.4	#2	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
#3	RULEBOOK The King's Dilemma — Rulebook (corpus doc 518)		p.2	#20	0.024022 (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
#4	RULEBOOK The King's Dilemma — Rulebook (corpus doc 518)	DISCLAIMER · DILEMMA CARD SYSTEM · A LEGACY-LIKE EXPERIENCE	p.1	#10	0.028442 (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 The King's Dilemma — Rulebook (corpus doc 518)	GAME SETUP	p.4	#29	0.020851 (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 The King's Dilemma — Rulebook (corpus doc 518)	GAME SETUP	p.5	#6	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK The King's Dilemma — Rulebook (corpus doc 518)	pAss And become moderAtor	p.10	#3	0.043301 (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 The King's Dilemma — Rulebook (corpus doc 518)		p.2	#19	0.024828 (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 The King's Dilemma — Rulebook (corpus doc 518)	PLAYING THE GAME · PHASES OF THE ROUND	p.8	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK The King's Dilemma — Rulebook (corpus doc 518)	GAME SETUP	p.5	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK The King's Dilemma — Rulebook (corpus doc 518)	pAss And become moderAtor	p.10	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 78 ms · first delta 4051 ms · total 6576 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 78 ms · ask 6496 ms · gateway work 6576 ms · total 6576 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3020
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 515
tok/sec: 206.5 tok/sec — 515 output tokens in 2.494 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 21s 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 446), 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.