Ruling — Shakespeare

← Shakespeare

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Shakespearebg-180511-en-1e

For the standard game setup:

1. The main board is placed in the middle of the table.[1]

2. The Day token is placed on space 1 of the day tracker.[1]

3. The coins and the '+3' tokens are placed next to the main board.[1]

4. Each player chooses a color and takes: 1 individual board, 1 Recruitment card, 1 Game Reference card (adapted to the number of players), 5 cylinders, 7 discs, and 4 Rest tokens.[1]

5. A disc is placed on the space of the Ambiance track with no icon (third from the left).[1]

6. A disc is placed on the space marked '5' of the Prestige track of the main board.[1]

7. A disc is placed at the beginning of each act (first circle) of the main board.[1]

8. The rest of the player's elements are placed in front of them.[1]

9. One player takes one disc of each color, shuffles them, and places them randomly on the Order track.[1]

10. The player placed first on the Order track places their last disc on position 1 of the Initiative track, the second on position to 2, and so on.[1]

11. Place the Stage Set elements indicated by the Game Reference card in one bag.[1]

12. Place the Costume elements indicated by the Game Reference card in another bag.[1]

13. Randomly draw three elements from each bag per player (12 with 4 players, 9 with 3 players, and 6 with 2 players) and place them on the main board in the reserved areas.[1]

14. Shuffle the Characters to create a deck.[1]

15. Draw from the deck two more cards than the number of players (6 cards with 4 players, 5 cards with 3 players, and 4 cards with 2 players) and place them face up next to the main board.[1]

16. The player placed last on the Order track chooses one of the drawn Character cards and places it next to their individual board.[1]

17. The player preceding them chooses one of the remaining cards and does the same, proceeding until the first player.[1]

18. Discard the remaining cards.[1]

19. Draw again from the deck two more characters than the number of players (6 cards with 4 players, 5 cards with 3 players, and 4 cards with 2 players).[1]

For the solo variant setup:

1. Follow the 2 player game rules with the following exceptions:[2]

2. Place the elements indicated on the 1 player Game Reference card in each bag.[2]

3. At the beginning of the game, draw 6 elements from each bag.[2]

4. At the beginning of the game, draw 4 Character cards.[2]

5. At the beginning of the game, place 3 'neutral' discs on the fourth space (first non-grey space) of each Act.[2]

[1] RULEBOOK Shakespeare — Rulebook · p.3 · setup

[2] RULEBOOK Shakespeare — Rulebook · p.11 · solo variant

🔧 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 119 ms · ask 4822 ms · total 4947 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 4947 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 3, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "Note: a solo variant of the game is presented on page 11. The main board is placed in the middle of the table. The Day token is placed on space 1 of the day tracker. The coins and the '+3' tokens are placed next to the main board. Each player chooses a color and takes: 1 individual board, 1 Recruitm", "headingPath": "setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 761}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.047619, "snippet": "This variant will allow you to familiarize yourself with the game and beat your record by attempting various strategies. The game's rules are identical to the 2 player game with the following exceptions: During setup, the elements indicated on the 1 player Game Reference card (identical to the 2 pla", "headingPath": "solo variant", "sharpsignalDocId": 761}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.046343, "snippet": "The player preceding them chooses one of the remaining cards and does the same. Proceed in this way until the first player. The remaining cards are discarded. Draw again from the deck two more characters than the number of players (meaning 6 cards with 4 players, 5 cards with 3 players, and 4 cards ", "headingPath": "setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 761}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.046175, "snippet": "The set is built from bottom to top . For example, to place an element on the second line of the set, the two elements underneath that space must already be placed. 4 'virtual' elements are already placed on the set to help construction. No set dressing element can be placed on these spaces. Any ele", "headingPath": "set dressIng constructIon rules", "sharpsignalDocId": 761}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "A game of Shakespeare is played over a series of 6 days . Each day is divided into 6 phases . Phase 4 (Dress rehearsal) is only played during days 4 and 6. Each player takes their 5 cylinders in hand and secretly chooses a number of them, which they place in their closed hand. These cylinders corres", "headingPath": "game overview · 2 Recruitment and Activation · A) Recruitment (only once per day)", "sharpsignalDocId": 761}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Note: this phase is only played on days 4 and 6. Two dress rehearsals take place during the game. On day 4 (the 'initial dress rehearsal') and on day 6 (the 'final dress rehearsal'). During these rehearsals, the actors and extras which have a complete costume (3 discs) will benefit from their costum", "headingPath": "3 Ambiance", "sharpsignalDocId": 761}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.029907, "snippet": "Note: on day 6, there is no maintenance phase. Simultaneously (without checking what their opponents are doing), the players must now block all the characters they've activated except for one . They thus take as many Rest tokens as the number of cylinders used on this turn minus one, and place these", "headingPath": "6 Rest", "sharpsignalDocId": 761}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "The player takes one of the cylinders placed on their game board and places it on one of their empty Characters (meaning a Character without a cylinder or Rest token). They then perform actions depending on the icons present on the top right of the card. There are several types of cards: Actors: all", "headingPath": "B) Activation", "sharpsignalDocId": 761}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 761}, {"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "solo variant", "sharpsignalDocId": 761}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 761 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 761 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 0.88341 of 2007 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 16, 2026 05:20

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 Shakespeare — Rulebook (corpus doc 761)	setup	p.3	0.048916 (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 Shakespeare — Rulebook (corpus doc 761)	solo variant	p.11	0.047619 (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 Shakespeare — Rulebook (corpus doc 761)	setup	p.3	0.046343 (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 Shakespeare — Rulebook (corpus doc 761)	set dressIng constructIon rules	p.6	0.046175 (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 Shakespeare — Rulebook (corpus doc 761)	game overview · 2 Recruitment and Activation · A) Recruitment (only once per day)	p.4	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
#6	RULEBOOK Shakespeare — Rulebook (corpus doc 761)	3 Ambiance	p.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))	300
#7	RULEBOOK Shakespeare — Rulebook (corpus doc 761)	6 Rest	p.10	0.029907 (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 Shakespeare — Rulebook (corpus doc 761)	B) Activation	p.5	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 25 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 Shakespeare — Rulebook (corpus doc 761)	setup	p.3	#3	0.046343 (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 Shakespeare — Rulebook (corpus doc 761)	solo variant	p.11	#2	0.047619 (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 Shakespeare — Rulebook (corpus doc 761)	game overview · 2 Recruitment and Activation · A) Recruitment (only once per day)	p.4	#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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Shakespeare — Rulebook (corpus doc 761)	6 Rest	p.10	#7	0.029907 (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 Shakespeare — Rulebook (corpus doc 761)	+3 tokens · Pass	p.8	#15	0.027151 (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 Shakespeare — Rulebook (corpus doc 761)	B) Activation	p.5	#8	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK Shakespeare — Rulebook (corpus doc 761)	set dressIng constructIon rules	p.6	#4	0.046175 (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 Shakespeare — Rulebook (corpus doc 761)	setup	p.3	#1	0.048916 (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 Shakespeare — Rulebook (corpus doc 761)	setup	p.3	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Shakespeare — Rulebook (corpus doc 761)	solo variant	p.11	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 119 ms · first delta 1661 ms · total 4947 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 119 ms · ask 4822 ms · gateway work 4947 ms · total 4947 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3226
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 668
tok/sec: 205.9 tok/sec — 668 output tokens in 3.244 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 53s 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: NO_APPROVED_CHECKLIST — setup-shaped, but no approved setup checklist exists for this game
pattern that matched: SETUP — "setup" / "set up"
matched words (in the normalized question): setup

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 695), 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.