Ruling — The Pursuit of Happiness

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: The Pursuit of Happinessbg-181687-en-1e

The game is played over a series of rounds, with each round representing a different stage of your in-game Lifetime.[1] All rounds except the first one start with the Preparation Phase.[1]

**Setup**

1. Place the Round marker on the leftmost space (Teen round) of the Lifetime track.[2]

2. Shuffle the Child Trait cards and deal 2 to each player, who must decide which one to keep.[2]

3. Return the remaining Child Trait cards to the game box.[2]

4. Shuffle the Life Goal cards, draw as many as the number of players, and place them face-up next to the Game board.[2]

5. Return the remaining Life Goal cards to the game box.[2]

6. The oldest player gets the First Player token.[2]

7. Place all Level indicators and all Money, Knowledge, Creativity, and Influence tokens next to the Game board to form the general supply.[2]

8. Place the Unavailable Action tokens on the Game board to cover the Get Job, Start Relationship, and Overtime Board Action spaces.[2]

**Round Structure**

Each round consists of 4 phases: Preparation, Upkeep, Action, and Resolution Phase.[1]

**The Action Phase**

1. Players take turns, beginning with the player who has the First Player token and continuing in clockwise order.[3]

2. On your turn, use one of your available Hourglass tokens to perform either a Board Action (by placing your Hourglass token on a Board Action space) or a Card Action (by placing your Hourglass token on a card in your play area).[3]

3. As soon as you complete your action, your turn is over.[3]

4. You cannot "pass" on your turn as long as you have available Hourglass tokens.[3]

5. The Action Phase ends as soon as no player has any Hourglass tokens left.[3]

**The Resolution Phase**

1. Determine the next round's First Player based on each player's position on the Short-Term Happiness track (the player furthest to the right gets the token; ties are broken by the player furthest from the current First Player in clockwise order).[4]

2. Reset all Short-Term Happiness Track indicators by placing them on the central space.[4]

3. Receive any Additional Rewards from Group Projects that you initiated and/or participated in during the Action Phase.[4]

4. Set aside within your play area any Single-Round Projects and any Group Projects that you initiated during the Action Phase.[4]

5. Return all your Hourglass tokens to the general supply.[4]

6. Check if the End of the Game has been triggered; if so, proceed to it; otherwise, proceed to the Preparation Phase of the next round.[4]

[1] RULEBOOK The Pursuit of Happiness — Rulebook · p.4 · Symbols · 1. Play Area · 2. Round Overview

[2] RULEBOOK The Pursuit of Happiness — Rulebook · p.3

[3] RULEBOOK The Pursuit of Happiness — Rulebook · p.5 · Action Phase

[4] RULEBOOK The Pursuit of Happiness — Rulebook · p.5 · Resolution Phase

The book has spoken.

🔧 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 172 ms · ask 4895 ms · total 5070 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5070 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "In The Pursuit of Happiness , you seek to gain as much Long-Term Happiness ( LTH ) as possible during your in-game Lifetime ! Over the course of the game, your in-game life unfolds in front of you, in your play area : Projects that you take on, Items that you buy, Activities that you engage in, Part", "headingPath": "Symbols · 1. Play Area · 2. Round Overview", "sharpsignalDocId": 835}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.047883, "snippet": "The Game board features 10 Board Action spaces, each one corresponding to a different Board Action . Some of the Board Action spaces may not be available during specific stages of your in-game Lifetime. There are 3 types of Resources in the game: Knowledge , Creativity , and Influence. Whenever you ", "headingPath": "3. Board Actions & Related Card Types ·  Study / Play / Interact ·  Take Project · Basic Projects", "sharpsignalDocId": 835}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.046642, "snippet": "A Basic Project can be progressively advanced to higher Levels by performing the Advance a Project Card Action ( see 'Card Actions' on page 11 ). Example : John decides that it's time to take on a new project. He places one of his Hourglass tokens on the Take Project Board Action space to perform th", "headingPath": "Basic Projects", "sharpsignalDocId": 835}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.04598, "snippet": "A L1 or a L2 Job in your play area gives you the option to get a Promotion , i.e., to get a Job of the same Category and the next higher Level, by performing the Get a Promotion Card Action : Pay the Promotion Cost that is depicted on the Job card in your play area, receive the corresponding Promoti", "headingPath": "Get a Promotion", "sharpsignalDocId": 835}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.045079, "snippet": "Take turns, beginning with the player who has the First Player token and continuing in a clockwise order. On your turn, use one of your available Hourglass tokens to perform either a Board Action , by placing your Hourglass token on a Board Action space on the Game board, or a Card Action , by placi", "headingPath": "Action Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 835}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.043905, "snippet": "An active Basic Project in your play area can be advanced to its next higher Level by performing the Advance a Project Card Action : Move the Level indicator onto the next Level of the card, pay the depicted Level Cost, and receive the corresponding Level Reward. Reminder : The Level Cost to advance", "headingPath": "Advance a Project · Participate in a Project", "sharpsignalDocId": 835}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Place the Round marker on the leftmost space (Teen round) of the Lifetime track. Shuffle the Child Trait cards and deal 2 to each player, who must decide which one to keep. Return the remaining cards to the game box. Your Child Trait determines your unique Ability for the remainder of the game and a", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 835}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Perform the following steps: y Advance the Round marker on the Lifetime track one space to the right. In addition: y When the Round marker is advanced to the 1st Adult round, remove all the Unavailable Action tokens from the Game board. y When the Round marker is advanced to the 1st Old Age round, p", "headingPath": "Preparation Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 835}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Symbols · 1. Play Area · 2. Round Overview", "sharpsignalDocId": 835}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 835}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Action Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 835}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Resolution Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 835}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 835 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 835 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 0.91172 of 2073 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 26, 2026 06:17 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 The Pursuit of Happiness — Rulebook (corpus doc 835)	Symbols · 1. Play Area · 2. Round Overview	p.4	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK The Pursuit of Happiness — Rulebook (corpus doc 835)	3. Board Actions & Related Card Types ·  Study / Play / Interact ·  Take Project · Basic Projects	p.6	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
#3	RULEBOOK The Pursuit of Happiness — Rulebook (corpus doc 835)	Basic Projects	p.7	0.046642 (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 Pursuit of Happiness — Rulebook (corpus doc 835)	Get a Promotion	p.12	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 The Pursuit of Happiness — Rulebook (corpus doc 835)	Action Phase	p.5	0.045079 (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 Pursuit of Happiness — Rulebook (corpus doc 835)	Advance a Project · Participate in a Project	p.11	0.043905 (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 Pursuit of Happiness — Rulebook (corpus doc 835)		p.3	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
#8	RULEBOOK The Pursuit of Happiness — Rulebook (corpus doc 835)	Preparation Phase	p.4	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

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 31 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 Pursuit of Happiness — Rulebook (corpus doc 835)	Symbols · 1. Play Area · 2. Round Overview	p.4	#1	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK The Pursuit of Happiness — Rulebook (corpus doc 835)	Get a Promotion	p.12	#4	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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK The Pursuit of Happiness — Rulebook (corpus doc 835)		p.3	#7	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK The Pursuit of Happiness — Rulebook (corpus doc 835)	Develop a Relationship	p.13	#16	0.026491 (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 Pursuit of Happiness — Rulebook (corpus doc 835)	Resolution Phase	p.5	#11	0.027973 (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 Pursuit of Happiness — Rulebook (corpus doc 835)	Advance a Project · Participate in a Project	p.11	#6	0.043905 (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 The Pursuit of Happiness — Rulebook (corpus doc 835)	Action Phase	p.5	#5	0.045079 (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 Pursuit of Happiness — Rulebook (corpus doc 835)	 Start Relationship	p.10	#9	0.029644 (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 Pursuit of Happiness — Rulebook (corpus doc 835)	Symbols · 1. Play Area · 2. Round Overview	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK The Pursuit of Happiness — Rulebook (corpus doc 835)		p.3	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK The Pursuit of Happiness — Rulebook (corpus doc 835)	Action Phase	p.5	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK The Pursuit of Happiness — Rulebook (corpus doc 835)	Resolution Phase	p.5	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 172 ms · first delta 2069 ms · total 5070 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 172 ms · ask 4895 ms · gateway work 5070 ms · total 5070 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3091
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 596
tok/sec: 202.6 tok/sec — 596 output tokens in 2.942 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 55s 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 2s 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 770), 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.