Ruling — The Bloody Inn

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: The Bloody Innbg-180593-en-1e

The game is divided into two seasons and a variable number of rounds.[1] Each round consists of three phases: welcome travelers (evening), player actions (night), and end of round (morning).[1]

**Setup**

1. Give each player two Peasant cards and one Player Aid card; the peasants form your starting hand.[2][3]

2. Return unused Peasant and Player Aid cards to the box if playing with fewer than 4 players.[2][3]

3. Create the Traveler deck by removing a specific number of cards from the box without looking at them based on player count and desired game length (e.g., for 2 players, remove 3/35 for a short game or 25 for a long game).[2][3]

4. Shuffle the remaining cards to create the Entrance Stack, placing them at the entrance of the inn with the Living side faceup.[2][3]

5. Each player chooses a color and receives 8 Key/Room Service tokens and a disk of that color.[2][3]

6. Place your disk on space "5" of the Wealth Track.[2][3]

7. Each player takes one 10F Check token; remaining tokens form a supply.[2][3]

8. Determine open rooms: Each player places a Key token of their color on an unclaimed room of their choice.[2][3]

9. For 2 or 3 players, place one white Key token on each of 3 doors of the inn; for 4 players, place one on each of 4 doors.[2][3]

10. The greediest player takes the First Player card.[2][3]

**Phase 1: Welcome Travelers (Evening)**

The First Player performs the following steps:

1. Draw the top card from the Entrance Stack.[1]

2. Place the traveler in an open, unoccupied room of their choice.[1]

3. Repeat this process until there is a traveler in each open room.[1]

*Note: If the Entrance Stack becomes empty, shuffle the Exit Stack to form a new Entrance Stack. If this happens a second time, play a normal final round (unless there are fewer travelers than players).[1] *

**Phase 2: Player Actions (Night)**

Starting with the first player and going clockwise, each player performs a first action, and then each player performs a second action.[4][1] When performing an action, you choose a Guest card in play (in your hand, play area, or in the inn) and play a number of cards equal to the rank of the chosen card.[1] You take back any cards played that have an affinity for the action and discard the others.[1]

Possible actions include:

* **Bribe a Guest:** To bribe a traveler in a room, choose a traveler regardless of room ownership and play Guest cards equal to the traveler's rank.[5] Return cards with the bribery icon to your hand and place others on the Exit Stack (peasants go to the bistro instead).[5] Add the bribed guest to your hand.[5] You can also bribe peasants in the bistro (rank-0) by playing zero cards.[5]

* **Build an Annex**.[4][1]

* **Kill a Guest:** Choose a guest (traveler in a room or a peasant from the bistro) and play accomplices equal to the rank of the chosen card.[6] The guest is placed in front of you with the Dead side faceup.[6]

* **Bury a Corpse:** Play accomplices all at the same time, equal to the sum of the ranks of the chosen corpses.[4]

* **Pass (and Launder Money)**.[4][1]

**Phase 3: End of Round (Morning)**

* At the end of each round, gain 2F.[7]

* You must pay wages at the end of the round.[4]

* When gaining money, advance your disk on the Wealth Track, respecting the 40F limit.[4][7]

[1] RULEBOOK The Bloody Inn — Rulebook · p.3 · playing the Game · phase 1: Welcome travelers (evening) · example · phase 2: player actions (night)

[2] RULEBOOK The Bloody Inn — Rulebook · p.2

[3] RULEBOOK The Bloody Inn — Rulebook · p.2 · object of the Game · setup · These cards form the Entrance Stack .

[4] RULEBOOK The Bloody Inn — Rulebook · p.8 · phase 2: player actions · phase 3: end of round

[5] RULEBOOK The Bloody Inn — Rulebook · p.3 · 1. bribe a guest

[6] RULEBOOK The Bloody Inn — Rulebook · p.4 · 3. kill a guest

[7] RULEBOOK The Bloody Inn — Rulebook · p.7 · At the end of each round, gain 2F.

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 165 ms · ask 6223 ms · total 6390 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6390 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 3, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "The game is divided into two seasons and a variable number of rounds. During the first season, travelers arrive at the entrance to the inn for the first time, and the lucky ones will be able to carry on their journey. They will be in the Entrance Stack for the second season. Each round is divided in", "headingPath": "playing the Game · phase 1: Welcome travelers (evening) · example · phase 2: player actions (night)", "sharpsignalDocId": 658}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.047123, "snippet": "Starting with the first player and going clockwise, each player performs a first action. Then each player performs a second action. On your turn, you may: Bribe a Guest Build an Annex There can only be one Room Service token per room. Example: The owner of the Room Service token gains 3F when a rank", "headingPath": "phase 2: player actions · phase 3: end of round", "sharpsignalDocId": 658}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.046032, "snippet": "When you gain money, you advance your disk on the Wealth Track, so you must respect the 40F limit. You must play a number of Guest cards from your hand equal to the sum of the ranks of the killed travelers. Example: To kill a rank-1 traveler and a rank-2 traveler, play 3 accomplices from your hand. ", "headingPath": "At the end of each round, gain 2F.", "sharpsignalDocId": 658}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.045957, "snippet": "2 Give each player two Peasant cards and one Player Aid card . The peasants form your starting hand. Place your Player Aid card on the table, in your play area; it also acts as a barn. With fewer than 4 players, return the unused Peasant and Player Aid cards to the box. Create the Traveler deck: Dep", "headingPath": "object of the Game · setup · These cards form the Entrance Stack .", "sharpsignalDocId": 658}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.045037, "snippet": "From the cards you just played, return cards with the icon to your hand (these guests have an affinity for killing guests); put the other cards in the Exit Stack. (Exception: If you played any peasants, place them in the bistro, instead of the Exit Stack). Place the Guest card in front of you on the", "headingPath": "3. kill a guest · 4. bury a corpse", "sharpsignalDocId": 658}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.044283, "snippet": "The second time the Entrance Stack becomes empty, finish the round, and the game ends. Note: After welcoming travelers, if there are fewer travelers in the inn than there are players, the game ends immediately. In this case, place those Traveler cards on the Exit Stack. Each player with at least one", "headingPath": "end of the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 658}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.04374, "snippet": "2 the Inn Board setup • Give each player two Peasant cards and one Player Aid card . The peasants form your starting hand. Place your Player Aid card on the table, in your play area; it also acts as a barn. With fewer than 4 players, return the unused Peasant and Player Aid cards to the box. • Creat", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 658}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.043636, "snippet": "The Wealth Track no longer limits you to 40F, and the Launder Money action no longer exists: You can exchange money for checks, and vice versa, at any time, and as often as you wish. When welcoming travelers, the first player does not decide in which room to place each traveler who arrives, but inst", "headingPath": "unlimited Wealth (to explore the game) · first come, first served (for beginners, or for a slightly faster game) · solitaire game", "sharpsignalDocId": 658}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "playing the Game · phase 1: Welcome travelers (evening) · example · phase 2: player actions (night)", "sharpsignalDocId": 658}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 658}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "object of the Game · setup · These cards form the Entrance Stack .", "sharpsignalDocId": 658}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "phase 2: player actions · phase 3: end of round", "sharpsignalDocId": 658}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "1. bribe a guest", "sharpsignalDocId": 658}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "3. kill a guest", "sharpsignalDocId": 658}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "At the end of each round, gain 2F.", "sharpsignalDocId": 658}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 658 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 658 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 0.87763 of 2705 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 26, 2026 11:52 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 Bloody Inn — Rulebook (corpus doc 658)	playing the Game · phase 1: Welcome travelers (evening) · example · phase 2: player actions (night)	p.3	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK The Bloody Inn — Rulebook (corpus doc 658)	phase 2: player actions · phase 3: end of round	p.8	0.047123 (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 Bloody Inn — Rulebook (corpus doc 658)	At the end of each round, gain 2F.	p.7	0.046032 (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 Bloody Inn — Rulebook (corpus doc 658)	object of the Game · setup · These cards form the Entrance Stack .	p.2	0.045957 (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 Bloody Inn — Rulebook (corpus doc 658)	3. kill a guest · 4. bury a corpse	p.5	0.045037 (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 Bloody Inn — Rulebook (corpus doc 658)	end of the Game	p.6	0.044283 (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 Bloody Inn — Rulebook (corpus doc 658)		p.2	0.04374 (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 Bloody Inn — Rulebook (corpus doc 658)	unlimited Wealth (to explore the game) · first come, first served (for beginners, or for a slightly faster game) · solitaire game	p.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))	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 20 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 Bloody Inn — Rulebook (corpus doc 658)	phase 2: player actions · phase 3: end of round	p.8	#2	0.047123 (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 Bloody Inn — Rulebook (corpus doc 658)	At the end of each round, gain 2F.	p.7	#3	0.046032 (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 Bloody Inn — Rulebook (corpus doc 658)	1. bribe a guest	p.3	#12	0.029211 (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 Bloody Inn — Rulebook (corpus doc 658)	playing the Game · phase 1: Welcome travelers (evening) · example · phase 2: player actions (night)	p.3	#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
#5	RULEBOOK The Bloody Inn — Rulebook (corpus doc 658)		p.2	#7	0.04374 (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 The Bloody Inn — Rulebook (corpus doc 658)	3. kill a guest	p.4	#16	0.026857 (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 The Bloody Inn — Rulebook (corpus doc 658)	unlimited Wealth (to explore the game) · first come, first served (for beginners, or for a slightly faster game) · solitaire game	p.7	#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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK The Bloody Inn — Rulebook (corpus doc 658)	object of the Game · setup · These cards form the Entrance Stack .	p.2	#4	0.045957 (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 The Bloody Inn — Rulebook (corpus doc 658)	playing the Game · phase 1: Welcome travelers (evening) · example · phase 2: player actions (night)	p.3	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK The Bloody Inn — Rulebook (corpus doc 658)		p.2	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK The Bloody Inn — Rulebook (corpus doc 658)	object of the Game · setup · These cards form the Entrance Stack .	p.2	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK The Bloody Inn — Rulebook (corpus doc 658)	phase 2: player actions · phase 3: end of round	p.8	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK The Bloody Inn — Rulebook (corpus doc 658)	1. bribe a guest	p.3	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK The Bloody Inn — Rulebook (corpus doc 658)	3. kill a guest	p.4	no quote on the wire
[7]	RULEBOOK The Bloody Inn — Rulebook (corpus doc 658)	At the end of each round, gain 2F.	p.7	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 165 ms · first delta 1992 ms · total 6390 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 165 ms · ask 6223 ms · gateway work 6390 ms · total 6390 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3334
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 877
tok/sec: 202.1 tok/sec — 877 output tokens in 4.340 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 54s 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 1s 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 591), 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.