Ruling — Cerebria: The Inside World

← Cerebria: The Inside World

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Cerebria: The Inside Worldbg-218479-en-1e

### Setup

1. Divide players evenly into two teams, Bliss and Gloom.[1]

2. Teammates sit side by side with their Team board between them.[1]

3. Both teams should play with the same side (A or B) of the Team board.[1]

4. Each team takes 3 Ambition tokens and places them on their board with their inactive side up.[1]

5. Each team shuffles their deck of Hidden Aspirations and places it on their Team board.[1]

6. In the basic game, before shuffling the Hidden Aspirations, remove the cards "Reflection" and "Sensibility".[1]

7. The top card of the Hidden Aspiration deck is peeked at; it must not match the current Common Aspiration.[2]

8. Each team takes the Fragments and Intensity tokens associated with their team.[1]

9. Set up the Origin and give each Sphere 7 Willpower counters.[3]

10. Place remaining Willpower counters and each team's Essence counters on the Main board.[3]

11. Place each team's Point counter on the '0' starting space of their Wheel of Intentions.[3]

12. Shuffle the deck of Common Aspirations and, in the basic game, remove "Reflection" and "Sensibility" before dealing seven cards face up in a row.[3]

13. Determine the order of play randomly using Player Order markers, ensuring one team's players go first and third, and the other team's players go second and fourth.[3]

14. The starting player begins with 2 more Willpower than others but must flip over their Action Tracker token.[2]

15. Each player chooses one of their team's Spirits, takes the corresponding board and figure, and places their Action Tracker token on their Spirit board.[4]

16. In the basic game, players place 4 wild Vibe tokens on the Move, Invoke, Quell, and Fortify Actions to denote they are unlocked.[4]

17. Each player takes 2 Essence and 4 Willpower from the general supply and places them on their Spirit board.[4]

18. Players shuffle their Emotion deck, place it near them on the Main board, draw 2 cards for a starting hand, and turn the top card face up.[5]

19. In player order, players place their Spirit Figure on an empty space on one of the five Frontiers.[6]

20. Players place their Starting Emotion card on a slot adjacent to their Frontier's Emotion slot.[6]

21. Players place 1 Essence from the general supply on the first (shaded) Essence space of the Emotion card.[6]

### Gameplay

1. Players take turns alternating between Bliss and Gloom players according to the established play order.[7]

2. On your turn, you take 3 Actions.[7]

3. You may use 3 Ambition Abilities once per turn, either before or after any Action, if you have available Ambition.[7]

4. You may use an Absorb Ability once per turn, which might trigger a Revelation.[7]

5. Use your Action Tracker token to track used Actions; if you use your Absorb Ability, flip the token over.[7]

6. If a player's turn triggers a Revelation scoring event, the Revelation is resolved immediately and the turn continues.[7]

7. To affect an Emotion slot on a Frontier, you must be on the Spirit space of that Frontier; to affect an Emotion slot in a Realm, you must be in that Realm.[7]

### Scoring and Ending the Game

1. There are two ways to score: Accomplishing Intentions or adding Fragments to the Identity.[8]

2. In the basic game, Intentions are not used; scoring only occurs by adding Fragments to the Identity.[8]

3. If playing with Intentions, accomplishing an Intention scores 1 point; each additional Intention accomplished in the same turn scores 2 points.[8]

4. Points for Intentions are recorded by moving the team counter around the Wheel of Intentions.[8]

5. The game ends if a team's counter reaches 20 points.[8]

6. Teams are scored based on how well they accomplished their Aspirations during Revelation scoring events.[2]

[1] RULEBOOK Cerebria: The Inside World — Rulebook · p.8 · PLAYER SETUP · TEAMS

[2] RULEBOOK Cerebria: The Inside World — Rulebook · p.11 · FINAL STEPS · ASPIRATIONS · ORDER OF PLAY

[3] RULEBOOK Cerebria: The Inside World — Rulebook · p.6 · MAIN BOARD SETUP · FORTRESS LOCATION · EMOTION SLOT · SPIRIT SPACE · REALM CONTROL MARKER

[4] RULEBOOK Cerebria: The Inside World — Rulebook · p.9 · TEAMS · VIBE TOKENS

[5] RULEBOOK Cerebria: The Inside World — Rulebook · p.10 · THE EMOTION DECK · EMOTION VIBES · STARTING EMOTIONS

[6] RULEBOOK Cerebria: The Inside World — Rulebook · p.11 · PLACE SPIRITS & STARTING EMOTIONS

[7] RULEBOOK Cerebria: The Inside World — Rulebook · p.14 · GAMEPLAY · TURN OVERVIEW · At the end of your turn: · WHAT CAN YOU DO?

[8] RULEBOOK Cerebria: The Inside World — Rulebook · p.24 · There are two ways to score: · INTENTIONS

Question closed. Friendships intact.

🔧 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 83 ms · ask 10226 ms · total 10312 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 10312 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 24, "score": 0.048172, "snippet": "Accomplish one of your Intentions and score points on your turn. Add Fragments to the Identity, which will be scored at the end of the game. BASIC GAME: Intentions are not used in the basic game. They can be a powerful tool in the hands of experienced players, but playing them right takes a little p", "headingPath": "There are two ways to score: · INTENTIONS", "sharpsignalDocId": 1009}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.047619, "snippet": "As the final steps of setup, players need to discover their Aspirations, choose a random play order, and place their Spirit Figures and Starting Emotions. We all have certain goals in life. We believe we pursue these goals by choice. After some introspection, we might realize that our aspirations ha", "headingPath": "FINAL STEPS · ASPIRATIONS · ORDER OF PLAY", "sharpsignalDocId": 1009}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.046175, "snippet": "Our inside world is an inside-out reflection of the outside world. This page depicts the basic setup for a standard four-player game. Rules for other numbers of players are in the Appendix. \u0007 Set up the Origin and give each Sphere 7 Willpower counters, as explained on the previous page. \u0007 Place the ", "headingPath": "MAIN BOARD SETUP · FORTRESS LOCATION · EMOTION SLOT · SPIRIT SPACE · REALM CONTROL MARKER", "sharpsignalDocId": 1009}, {"page": 30, "score": 0.04598, "snippet": "Playing as the Shaper, a player can control one Spirit representing Bliss or Gloom on its own. The Shaper variant can be used in three- or two-player games. In a three-player game, one player can play a Shaper against a full team of two, while in a two-player game, two Shapers can face each other. A", "headingPath": "GAME VARIANT FOR 2-3 PLAYERS: THE SHAPER · 2. Place Spirits and Starting Emotions: · LIST OF INTENTIONS · CHANGES IN PLAYER SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 1009}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.045262, "snippet": "Each player chooses one of their team's Spirits to play for the duration of the game. Unchosen Spirits can be left in the box. Take the board and figure corresponding to your chosen Spirit. All Spirit boards have the same Actions on the A side. The B side gives each Spirit a unique set of Spirit Act", "headingPath": "TEAMS · VIBE TOKENS", "sharpsignalDocId": 1009}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.045245, "snippet": "From birth to death, life is a journey to discover one's true self. Some have more revelations than others, but the quantity does not matter. Each revelation has value. Players take turns, according to the play order established at the beginning of the game, alternating between Bliss and Gloom playe", "headingPath": "GAMEPLAY · TURN OVERVIEW · At the end of your turn: · WHAT CAN YOU DO?", "sharpsignalDocId": 1009}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.043636, "snippet": "Players have a number of choices they can make before the game actually begins. These choices can be bewildering to players who don't even know what the game is about yet. We give recommendations that you should follow when setting up the game for people who are new to Cerebria. Our positive and neg", "headingPath": "PLAYER SETUP · TEAMS", "sharpsignalDocId": 1009}, {"page": 21, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "On your turn, you have a number of Abilities which you can use before or after any Action. Using an Ability does not count as an Action. You can use multiple Abilities on your turn, but you cannot use the same Ability twice in one turn. Your Ambition Abilities are explained on this page. Your Absorb", "headingPath": "ABILITIES · AMBITION ABILITIES", "sharpsignalDocId": 1009}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAYER SETUP · TEAMS", "sharpsignalDocId": 1009}, {"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "FINAL STEPS · ASPIRATIONS · ORDER OF PLAY", "sharpsignalDocId": 1009}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "MAIN BOARD SETUP · FORTRESS LOCATION · EMOTION SLOT · SPIRIT SPACE · REALM CONTROL MARKER", "sharpsignalDocId": 1009}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "TEAMS · VIBE TOKENS", "sharpsignalDocId": 1009}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "THE EMOTION DECK · EMOTION VIBES · STARTING EMOTIONS", "sharpsignalDocId": 1009}, {"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLACE SPIRITS & STARTING EMOTIONS", "sharpsignalDocId": 1009}, {"page": 14, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAMEPLAY · TURN OVERVIEW · At the end of your turn: · WHAT CAN YOU DO?", "sharpsignalDocId": 1009}, {"page": 24, "quote": null, "headingPath": "There are two ways to score: · INTENTIONS", "sharpsignalDocId": 1009}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1009 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1009 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 0.90450 of 3089 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 23, 2026 02:42 UTC

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 Cerebria: The Inside World — Rulebook (corpus doc 1009)	There are two ways to score: · INTENTIONS	p.24	0.048172 (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 Cerebria: The Inside World — Rulebook (corpus doc 1009)	FINAL STEPS · ASPIRATIONS · ORDER OF PLAY	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 Cerebria: The Inside World — Rulebook (corpus doc 1009)	MAIN BOARD SETUP · FORTRESS LOCATION · EMOTION SLOT · SPIRIT SPACE · REALM CONTROL MARKER	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
#4	RULEBOOK Cerebria: The Inside World — Rulebook (corpus doc 1009)	GAME VARIANT FOR 2-3 PLAYERS: THE SHAPER · 2. Place Spirits and Starting Emotions: · LIST OF INTENTIONS · CHANGES IN PLAYER SETUP	p.30	0.04598 (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 Cerebria: The Inside World — Rulebook (corpus doc 1009)	TEAMS · VIBE TOKENS	p.9	0.045262 (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 Cerebria: The Inside World — Rulebook (corpus doc 1009)	GAMEPLAY · TURN OVERVIEW · At the end of your turn: · WHAT CAN YOU DO?	p.14	0.045245 (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 Cerebria: The Inside World — Rulebook (corpus doc 1009)	PLAYER SETUP · TEAMS	p.8	0.043636 (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 Cerebria: The Inside World — Rulebook (corpus doc 1009)	ABILITIES · AMBITION ABILITIES	p.21	0.029412 (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 52 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 Cerebria: The Inside World — Rulebook (corpus doc 1009)	There are two ways to score: · INTENTIONS	p.24	#1	0.048172 (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 Cerebria: The Inside World — Rulebook (corpus doc 1009)	GAMEPLAY · TURN OVERVIEW · At the end of your turn: · WHAT CAN YOU DO?	p.14	#6	0.045245 (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 Cerebria: The Inside World — Rulebook (corpus doc 1009)	PLACE SPIRITS & STARTING EMOTIONS	p.11	#20	0.014493 (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 Cerebria: The Inside World — Rulebook (corpus doc 1009)	PLAYER SETUP · TEAMS	p.8	#7	0.043636 (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 Cerebria: The Inside World — Rulebook (corpus doc 1009)	MAIN BOARD SETUP · FORTRESS LOCATION · EMOTION SLOT · SPIRIT SPACE · REALM CONTROL MARKER	p.6	#3	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
#6	RULEBOOK Cerebria: The Inside World — Rulebook (corpus doc 1009)	THE EMOTION DECK · EMOTION VIBES · STARTING EMOTIONS	p.10	#15	0.025709 (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 Cerebria: The Inside World — Rulebook (corpus doc 1009)	TEAMS · VIBE TOKENS	p.9	#5	0.045262 (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 Cerebria: The Inside World — Rulebook (corpus doc 1009)	FINAL STEPS · ASPIRATIONS · ORDER OF PLAY	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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Cerebria: The Inside World — Rulebook (corpus doc 1009)	PLAYER SETUP · TEAMS	p.8	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Cerebria: The Inside World — Rulebook (corpus doc 1009)	FINAL STEPS · ASPIRATIONS · ORDER OF PLAY	p.11	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Cerebria: The Inside World — Rulebook (corpus doc 1009)	MAIN BOARD SETUP · FORTRESS LOCATION · EMOTION SLOT · SPIRIT SPACE · REALM CONTROL MARKER	p.6	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Cerebria: The Inside World — Rulebook (corpus doc 1009)	TEAMS · VIBE TOKENS	p.9	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Cerebria: The Inside World — Rulebook (corpus doc 1009)	THE EMOTION DECK · EMOTION VIBES · STARTING EMOTIONS	p.10	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Cerebria: The Inside World — Rulebook (corpus doc 1009)	PLACE SPIRITS & STARTING EMOTIONS	p.11	no quote on the wire
[7]	RULEBOOK Cerebria: The Inside World — Rulebook (corpus doc 1009)	GAMEPLAY · TURN OVERVIEW · At the end of your turn: · WHAT CAN YOU DO?	p.14	no quote on the wire
[8]	RULEBOOK Cerebria: The Inside World — Rulebook (corpus doc 1009)	There are two ways to score: · INTENTIONS	p.24	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 83 ms · first delta 3291 ms · total 10312 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 83 ms · ask 10226 ms · gateway work 10312 ms · total 10312 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3818
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 923
tok/sec: 132.5 tok/sec — 923 output tokens in 6.964 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 18s ago)
gateway schema (read from the running child): schema head 0042_definer_search_path (live revision not readable by this principal)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 60h, checked 6s ago)
answerer node (the seat proxy's own header — this probe, not this ask): node1
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 939), 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.