Ruling — Mice and Mystics

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Mice and Mysticsbg-124708-en-1e

To setup a game of Mice and Mystics, follow these steps:

1. Chapter selection: Choose a chapter from a Mice and Mystics story book; depending on the number of players, some may need to control more than one mouse to ensure the correct number of mice are in the party.[1][2]

2. Choose a hero: Each player chooses their mouse hero (or heroes) and collects that mouse's hero card, initiative card, and figure.[1][2] The chapter being played will indicate how many mice should be adventuring (usually four).[1][2]

3. Choose an ability: Players choose 1 ability card for each mouse they are playing, ensuring the mouse meets the class requirements for the chosen ability.[1][2]

4. Gather equipment: Find the search cards indicated on each mouse's starting setup and equip them to that mouse, referring to the 'Party Setup' section of the chapter for any extra cards or party items.[1][3][2]

5. Set up the board: Place the room tiles in the middle of the playing area as shown in the 'Room Tile Setup' section of the chapter being played, ensuring the arrows on the corners of the tiles all point in the same direction.[1][3][2]

6. Place figures: Place the mice figures and any minion figures on the board as directed in the 'Room Tile Setup' section of the chapter being played.[1][2]

7. Determine initiative order: Shuffle the initiative cards belonging to each mouse and minion on the board at the start of the chapter and determine the starting initiative order.[1][2]

8. Set up the story control board: Place the story control board to the side of the playing area; place the hourglass marker on the first page of the chapter track and the chapter end marker on the page noted in the 'Chapter End' section of the chapter being played; shuffle the remaining search cards to form a search deck on the search area of the story control board; and refer to the 'Encounter Deck Setup' section of the chapter for details on setting up the encounter deck.[1][2]

9. Additional items: Place the cheese tokens, minion figures, any remaining initiative and ability cards, and a pile of all other tokens off to the side of the playing area within reach of the players.[1][2]

10. Follow any chapter specific instructions: Follow any further setup instructions as noted in the 'Chapter Setup' section of the chapter.[1][2]

[1] RULEBOOK Mice and Mystics — Rulebook · p.8 · Game setup

[2] RULEBOOK Mice and Mystics — Rulebook · p.8

[3] RULEBOOK Mice and Mystics — Rulebook · p.8

That settles it — whose turn was it?

🔧 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 99 ms · ask 7308 ms · total 7702 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 293 ms · generation 7409 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 7, "score": 0.047883, "snippet": "The story book included with this game set is called Sorrow and Remembrance. Other story books are planned for future releases. The story book is an essential part of playing a game of Mice and Mystics. Players start a game of Mice and Mystics by choosing a chapter in a Mice and Mystics story book t", "headingPath": "Story B ook", "sharpsignalDocId": 574}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.047643, "snippet": "6 6. Place figures: Place the mice figures and any minion figures on the board as directed in the ‘Room Tile Setup’ section of the chapter being played. 7. Determine initiative order: Shuffle the initiative cards belonging to each mouse and minion that is on the board at the start of the chapter and", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 574}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.047131, "snippet": "Story Book The story book included with this game set is called Sorrow and Remembrance. Other story books are planned for future releases. The story book is an essential part of playing a game of Mice and Mystics. Players start a game of Mice and Mystics by choosing a chapter in a Mice and Mystics s", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 574}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.046898, "snippet": "To setup a game of Mice and Mystics follow these steps: 1. Chapter selection: Choose a chapter from a Mice and Mystics story book. Depending on how many people are playing, some players may need to choose and control more than one mouse so that the correct number of mice are in the adventuring party", "headingPath": "Game setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 574}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.0463, "snippet": "If you want us to teach you how to play, you can visit plaidhatgames.com and watch a video explanation.", "headingPath": "Stop!", "sharpsignalDocId": 574}, {"page": 21, "score": 0.045724, "snippet": "When playing Mice and Mystics, players will choose a chapter to play through from a story book. Each chapter has its own victory conditions. To win the game, players must complete these victory conditions before the hourglass marker moves onto the chapter end marker on the chapter track located on t", "headingPath": "Winning and Losing · Playing Mice and Mystics as a Campaign · Achievements", "sharpsignalDocId": 574}, {"page": 18, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "When Brodie chases, roll 2 action dice and total the numbers. The result is how far Brodie is moved on that turn. Move Brodie along the shortest path toward the closest mouse that is not already on Brodie's space. If 2 or more mice are an equal distance away, Brodie will move toward the one that is ", "headingPath": "Brodie Chases", "sharpsignalDocId": 574}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "To perform a search action, a player must announce that his or her mouse is searching and roll an action die. If a symbol is rolled, that player draws 1 card from the top of the search deck. If that card is an item, weapon, armor, accessory, scroll, or trick, the player may either: put it into the s", "headingPath": "Search · Recover · Recovering From Stunned · Recovering From Webbed · Explore · Exploring an Exit Area", "sharpsignalDocId": 574}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 574}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 574}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 574}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 574 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 574 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 0.92276 of 1916 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 23, 2026 17:02 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 Mice and Mystics — Rulebook (corpus doc 574)	Story B ook	p.7	0.047883 (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 Mice and Mystics — Rulebook (corpus doc 574)		p.8	0.047643 (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 Mice and Mystics — Rulebook (corpus doc 574)		p.7	0.047131 (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 Mice and Mystics — Rulebook (corpus doc 574)	Game setup	p.8	0.046898 (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 Mice and Mystics — Rulebook (corpus doc 574)	Stop!	p.1	0.0463 (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))	103
#6	RULEBOOK Mice and Mystics — Rulebook (corpus doc 574)	Winning and Losing · Playing Mice and Mystics as a Campaign · Achievements	p.21	0.045724 (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 Mice and Mystics — Rulebook (corpus doc 574)	Brodie Chases	p.18	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 Mice and Mystics — Rulebook (corpus doc 574)	Search · Recover · Recovering From Stunned · Recovering From Webbed · Explore · Exploring an Exit Area	p.14	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 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 Mice and Mystics — Rulebook (corpus doc 574)	Stop!	p.1	#5	0.0463 (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 Mice and Mystics — Rulebook (corpus doc 574)	Game setup	p.8	#4	0.046898 (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 Mice and Mystics — Rulebook (corpus doc 574)		p.8	#10	0.029199 (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 Mice and Mystics — Rulebook (corpus doc 574)	Story B ook	p.7	#1	0.047883 (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 Mice and Mystics — Rulebook (corpus doc 574)		p.7	#3	0.047131 (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 Mice and Mystics — Rulebook (corpus doc 574)	Winning and Losing · Playing Mice and Mystics as a Campaign · Achievements	p.21	#6	0.045724 (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 Mice and Mystics — Rulebook (corpus doc 574)	Introduction · O bject of the Game · Mouse Hero Cards	p.3	#12	0.027056 (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
#8	RULEBOOK Mice and Mystics — Rulebook (corpus doc 574)		p.8	#2	0.047643 (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 Mice and Mystics — Rulebook (corpus doc 574)	Game setup	p.8	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Mice and Mystics — Rulebook (corpus doc 574)		p.8	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Mice and Mystics — Rulebook (corpus doc 574)		p.8	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 99 ms · first delta 3208 ms · total 7702 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 293 ms · retrieval 99 ms · ask 7308 ms · gateway work 7409 ms · total 7702 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3906
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 538
tok/sec: 130.5 tok/sec — 538 output tokens in 4.124 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 35s 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 3s 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 506), 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.