Ruling — Conan — RuleSage

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Conanbg-160010-en-1e

1. Players choose a scenario from the book (pages 12-41) or online at www.the-overlord.net and designate a player to be the Overlord.[1]

2. Depending on the chosen scenario, players place the corresponding game board in the center of the table and place the dice nearby.[1]

3. The Overlord places the Book of Skelos in front of themselves, takes the number of red gems indicated by the scenario, and splits them between their Reserve zone and their Fatigue zone.[1]

4. Each Hero chooses their character as suggested by the scenario and takes the corresponding Hero sheet and miniature.[1]

5. Heroes place their miniatures on the game board as indicated by the scenario.[1]

6. Each Hero takes the Weapon, Item, and Spell cards indicated by the scenario and places them faceup near their Hero sheet.[1]

7. Each Hero takes the number of blue gems indicated at the bottom left corner of their Hero sheet's Reserve zone and splits them between their Reserve zone and their Fatigue zone as specified by the scenario.[1]

8. Each Hero places a red gem on their Recovery chart on the 'Aggressive' icon.[1]

9. The Overlord places their tiles in the River according to the scenario and places their Weapon, Item, and Spell cards faceup in front of themselves.[1]

10. The Overlord's miniatures are placed on the game board, with any necessary tokens and colored bases, depending on the scenario's indications.[1]

11. The Overlord places the Turn track near the Book of Skelos and places the Turn marker on the '0' space, as well as any Life Point token as indicated by the scenario.[1]

12. All players take note of the Special Rules, form the Asset deck if instructed to, and prepare any other game components, such as miniature reserves or additional tiles.[1]

13. In some scenarios, the Overlord secretly chooses one numbered token corresponding to a numbered hut in the setup diagram and sets it aside facedown.[2]

14. In some scenarios, the Overlord places 1 chest in each hut area (8 total).[2]

15. In some scenarios, the Overlord chooses 1 Objective card and keeps it facedown, then takes the remaining Objectives, Sacred Treasures, and an Idol of Yag-Kosha, shuffles them, and randomly places 1 card facedown in each hut area.[3]

16. In some scenarios, the Overlord also shuffles items (Battle Axe, Shield, Dagger, Sword, Parrying Dagger, 2 Pictish Drinks, and 1 Javelin) and randomly places 1 card facedown in each hut area (2 cards total in each hut area).[3]

17. During setup for certain scenarios, the Energy token is placed on space 0 of the Turn track.[4]

[1] RULEBOOK Conan — Rulebook · p.10 · Game Setup

[2] RULEBOOK Conan — Rulebook · p.13 · Winning the Game: · Special Rules:

[3] RULEBOOK Conan — Rulebook · p.33 · Winning the Game: · Suggestions for 3 Heroes:

[4] RULEBOOK Conan — Rulebook · p.41 · Winning the Game: · Suggestions for 3 Heroes:

The sage rests. The game continues.

🔧 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 107 ms · ask 5649 ms · total 5758 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5758 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 10, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "1 Players choose a scenario among those available in this book (see from pages 12-41) or online at www.the-overlord.net , and then designate a player to be the Overlord. 2 Depending on the chosen scenario, players place the corresponding game board in the center of the table and place the dice nearb", "headingPath": "Game Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 714}, {"page": 23, "score": 0.047643, "snippet": "The game starts with the Hero's turn. Conan starts in the area indicated by the setup diagram. Suggestion for 1 Hero: Conan (Sword, Leather Armor) After setup, Conan does not move any gems from his Reserve zone to his Fatigue zone. The Hero plays the Heroes' stance phase as if no Hero had died durin", "headingPath": "Winning the Game:", "sharpsignalDocId": 714}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.046875, "snippet": "8 If you do not have the Pict Warriors miniatures (purple base), you may use Pict Hunters miniatures to represent them on the game board. Game Board Rules: Standard game board rules apply (see page 43). Y selda : During setup, the Overlord secretly chooses one numbered token corresponding to a numbe", "headingPath": "Winning the Game: · Special Rules:", "sharpsignalDocId": 714}, {"page": 33, "score": 0.045445, "snippet": "The game starts with the Heroes' turn. The Heroes start in the areas indicated by the setup diagram. Conan Shevatas Valeria After setup, each Hero moves 5 gems from their Reserve zone to their Fatigue zone. The Overlord starts with 3 gems in their Reserve zone and 8 in their Fatigue zone, and places", "headingPath": "Winning the Game: · Suggestions for 3 Heroes:", "sharpsignalDocId": 714}, {"page": 39, "score": 0.044589, "snippet": "The game starts with the Heroes' turn. The Heroes start in the areas indicated by the setup diagram. Conan (Battle Axe, Buckler, Leather Armor) Shevatas (Kris, Throwing Knives) Hadrathus (Dagger, and 3 spells: Teleportation, Mitra's Halo, Lightning Storm). He does not start with Mitra's Halo cast. A", "headingPath": "Winning the Game: · Suggestions for 3 Heroes: · Special Rules:", "sharpsignalDocId": 714}, {"page": 37, "score": 0.044343, "snippet": ". The game starts with the Heroes' turn. The Heroes start in the areas indicated by the setup diagram. Conan (Conan's Sword, Leather Armor) Shevatas (Kris, Throwing Knives) After setup, Heroes do not move any gems from their Reserve zone to their Fatigue zone. The Overlord starts with 10 gems in the", "headingPath": "Winning the Game: · Suggestions for 2 Heroes: · The Overlord chooses one event: · Special Rules:", "sharpsignalDocId": 714}, {"page": 41, "score": 0.044283, "snippet": "The game starts with the Heroes' turn. The Heroes start in the areas indicated by the setup diagram. Conan (Battle Axe, Leather Armor) Shevatas (Kris, Throwing Knives) Valeria (Parrying Dagger) After setup, Valeria moves 4 gems from her Reserve zone to her Fatigue zone; Conan and Shevatas do not mov", "headingPath": "Winning the Game: · Suggestions for 3 Heroes:", "sharpsignalDocId": 714}, {"page": 29, "score": 0.043301, "snippet": ". The game begins with the Heroes' turn. The Heroes start in the area indicated by the setup diagram. Conan (Sword) Shevatas (Kris, Buckler) Hadrathus (Ornamental Spear, and 3 spells: Mitra's Healing, Set's Possession, Mind Control) After setup, each Hero moves 3 gems from their Reserve zone to thei", "headingPath": "Winning the Game · Suggestions for 3 Heroes: · The Overlord chooses one event:", "sharpsignalDocId": 714}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 714}, {"page": 13, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Winning the Game: · Special Rules:", "sharpsignalDocId": 714}, {"page": 33, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Winning the Game: · Suggestions for 3 Heroes:", "sharpsignalDocId": 714}, {"page": 41, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Winning the Game: · Suggestions for 3 Heroes:", "sharpsignalDocId": 714}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 714 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 714 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 0.91866 of 2127 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 27, 2026 00:04 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 Conan — Rulebook (corpus doc 714)	Game Setup	p.10	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Conan — Rulebook (corpus doc 714)	Winning the Game:	p.23	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 Conan — Rulebook (corpus doc 714)	Winning the Game: · Special Rules:	p.13	0.046875 (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 Conan — Rulebook (corpus doc 714)	Winning the Game: · Suggestions for 3 Heroes:	p.33	0.045445 (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 Conan — Rulebook (corpus doc 714)	Winning the Game: · Suggestions for 3 Heroes: · Special Rules:	p.39	0.044589 (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 Conan — Rulebook (corpus doc 714)	Winning the Game: · Suggestions for 2 Heroes: · The Overlord chooses one event: · Special Rules:	p.37	0.044343 (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 Conan — Rulebook (corpus doc 714)	Winning the Game: · Suggestions for 3 Heroes:	p.41	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
#8	RULEBOOK Conan — Rulebook (corpus doc 714)	Winning the Game · Suggestions for 3 Heroes: · The Overlord chooses one event:	p.29	0.043301 (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 56 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 Conan — Rulebook (corpus doc 714)	Game Setup	p.10	#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 Conan — Rulebook (corpus doc 714)	Winning the Game:	p.23	#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
#3	RULEBOOK Conan — Rulebook (corpus doc 714)	Winning the Game: · Suggestions for 3 Heroes: · Special Rules:	p.39	#5	0.044589 (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
#4	RULEBOOK Conan — Rulebook (corpus doc 714)	Winning the Game · Suggestions for 3 Heroes: · The Overlord chooses one event:	p.29	#8	0.043301 (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 Conan — Rulebook (corpus doc 714)	Winning the Game: · Special Rules:	p.13	#3	0.046875 (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 Conan — Rulebook (corpus doc 714)	Winning the Game: · Suggestions for 3 Heroes:	p.33	#4	0.045445 (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 Conan — Rulebook (corpus doc 714)	Winning the Game: · Suggestions for 2 Heroes: · The Overlord chooses one event: · Special Rules:	p.37	#6	0.044343 (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 Conan — Rulebook (corpus doc 714)	Winning the Game: · Suggestions for 3 Heroes:	p.41	#7	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))	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 Conan — Rulebook (corpus doc 714)	Game Setup	p.10	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Conan — Rulebook (corpus doc 714)	Winning the Game: · Special Rules:	p.13	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Conan — Rulebook (corpus doc 714)	Winning the Game: · Suggestions for 3 Heroes:	p.33	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Conan — Rulebook (corpus doc 714)	Winning the Game: · Suggestions for 3 Heroes:	p.41	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 107 ms · first delta 2630 ms · total 5758 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 107 ms · ask 5649 ms · gateway work 5758 ms · total 5758 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3087
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 618
tok/sec: 201.8 tok/sec — 618 output tokens in 3.062 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 58s 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 4s 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: 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 648), 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.