Ruling — Hardback

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Hardbackbg-223750-en-1e

To setup the game, follow these steps:

1. Place the Prestige tracker in the center of the playing area within easy reach of all players.[1]

2. Place Ink and Remover tokens to the side of the Prestige tracker.[1]

3. Each player selects a colored player token and places it on the top of the Prestige tracker, above the prestige numbers.[1]

4. Each player takes the Player card of their associated color and places it in front of them.[1]

5. Shuffle all Adventure, Horror, Mystery, and Romance cards together and place them face-down near the Prestige tracker to form the Offer Deck.[1]

6. Draw the top seven cards from the Offer Deck and place them face-up to the side of the Offer Deck to form the Offer Row.[1]

7. Each player shuffles their starting deck and draws their first hand of 5 cards.[1]

8. The player who most recently used a pen goes first, with play proceeding clockwise, and places the First Player Token in front of them.[1]

9. Give each player their own starting deck of cards, consisting of: eight starting Purchase cards (each providing a 1¢ Coin and containing the letters: A, E, I, L, N, R, S, T) and two starting Prestige cards (each providing 1 Prestige point, selected at random from cards including the letters: B, C, D, G, H, M, O, P, U, Y).[2]

10. Place any unused starting cards back in the box.[2]

Additional Setup Changes:

* Adverts: Give each player an individual Advert tracker and place an Ink token on top of the card, above the 6¢ option.[3]

* Player Powers: All players decide together whether to use Passive or Aggressive player powers.[3] Each player then selects a Player Power card and places it on their Player card, or Player Power cards may be distributed at random to each player.[3]

* Events (if using the Events deck): Shuffle the Events deck and place it next to the Prestige tracker board.[4]

* Cooperative Anthology Variant: Instead of placing a Prestige token for each player on the Prestige tracker, place one token for all players together and one for Penny Dreadful.[4] Additionally, track which lap each team is on by placing an Ink token and a Remover token on the first circle at the top of the Prestige tracker (the Ink token for the players and the Remover token for Penny).[4] Select one of the following genres to be Penny's signature genre: Adventure, Horror, Mystery, or Romance.[4]

* Literary Awards (optional): Stack the Literary Award cards next to the Prestige tracker board, face-up in order, with 7 on the top and 12 on the bottom.[5]

[1] RULEBOOK Hardback — Rulebook · p.3 · Setup

[2] RULEBOOK Hardback — Rulebook · p.2 · What is Hardback? · Setup

[3] RULEBOOK Hardback — Rulebook · p.15 · Adverts · Player Powers

[4] RULEBOOK Hardback — Rulebook · p.17 · Events · Cooperative Anthology

[5] RULEBOOK Hardback — Rulebook · p.14 · Fanfiction: Rules for Variant Play · Literary Awards

Rule found, game on.

🔧 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 201 ms · ask 3905 ms · total 4109 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 4109 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 15, "score": 0.048652, "snippet": "Even the most seasoned authors occasionally need help building their public image. Adverts allow you to purchase Prestige with Coins earned during the game. Setup changes: During setup, give each player an individual Advert tracker. Each player should then place an Ink token on top of the card, abov", "headingPath": "Adverts · Player Powers", "sharpsignalDocId": 1131}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.046432, "snippet": "The Benefits listed above the line on a card are Basic Benefits. You gain all the Basic Benefits of a card each time you use the card face-up to spell a word. The Benefits listed below the line are Genre Benefits. You only gain Genre Benefits when at least one other card of the same genre is include", "headingPath": "3. Resolve Card Benefits · 4. Purchase New cards and Ink · a.\tPurchasing Cards · b. Flushing the Offer Row", "sharpsignalDocId": 1131}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.045724, "snippet": "Hardback is a deck-building word game. As an aspiring 19th-century novelist, you work to pen your next masterpiece, earning prestige along the way. You start with your own personal deck of cards, using them to acquire new cards, and reshuffle your deck throughout the game. Specialize your deck in ce", "headingPath": "What is Hardback? · Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 1131}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Set up the playing area: Place the Prestige tracker in the center of the playing area within easy reach of all players. Place Ink and Remover tokens to the side of the Prestige tracker. Each player selects a colored player token and places it on the top of the Prestige tracker, above the prestige nu", "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 1131}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Events provide an added challenge and are ideal for the veteran group looking to test their authorial skills. Setup changes: During setup, shuffle the Events deck and place it next to the Prestige tracker board. Gameplay changes: For each individual player, each time you enter a new decade on the Pr", "headingPath": "Events · Cooperative Anthology", "sharpsignalDocId": 1131}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "You may purchase Ink tokens at the cost of 1¢ each. When you purchase Ink, take the appropriate number of Ink tokens from the general supply and place them in front of you. See Ink on page 11 for a description of how Ink is used. After scoring your Prestige and purchasing new cards, put all the card", "headingPath": "c.\tPurchasing Ink · 5. Discard Used Cards and Ink · 6. Discard Other Players' Timeless Classic Cards · 7. Draw Your Next Hand", "sharpsignalDocId": 1131}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Struggling to make a word? You can ask for help from other players. If you request a ghost writer, display your cards for all players to see. Your turn continues normally. If another player suggests a word that you decide to use, that player receives a free Ink token from the general supply (not fro", "headingPath": "Request a Ghost Writer · Writer's Block · 2. Discard Unused Cards · 3. Resolve Card Benefits", "sharpsignalDocId": 1131}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "There are four card Genres represented in Hardback: Adventure Horror Mystery Romance Each Genre has its own unique abilities and play style. Abilities can trigger either as Basic Benefits or Genre Benefits, depending on where the ability is listed on the card. See Resolve Card Benefits on page 5 for", "headingPath": "Timeless Classics", "sharpsignalDocId": 1131}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 1131}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "What is Hardback? · Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 1131}, {"page": 15, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Adverts · Player Powers", "sharpsignalDocId": 1131}, {"page": 17, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Events · Cooperative Anthology", "sharpsignalDocId": 1131}, {"page": 14, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Fanfiction: Rules for Variant Play · Literary Awards", "sharpsignalDocId": 1131}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1131 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1131 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 0.90896 of 2087 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 28, 2026 19:31 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 Hardback — Rulebook (corpus doc 1131)	Adverts · Player Powers	p.15	0.048652 (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 Hardback — Rulebook (corpus doc 1131)	3. Resolve Card Benefits · 4. Purchase New cards and Ink · a. Purchasing Cards · b. Flushing the Offer Row	p.7	0.046432 (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 Hardback — Rulebook (corpus doc 1131)	What is Hardback? · Setup	p.2	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
#4	RULEBOOK Hardback — Rulebook (corpus doc 1131)	Setup	p.3	0.032787 (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 Hardback — Rulebook (corpus doc 1131)	Events · Cooperative Anthology	p.17	0.031746 (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 Hardback — Rulebook (corpus doc 1131)	c. Purchasing Ink · 5. Discard Used Cards and Ink · 6. Discard Other Players' Timeless Classic Cards · 7. Draw Your Next Hand	p.8	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
#7	RULEBOOK Hardback — Rulebook (corpus doc 1131)	Request a Ghost Writer · Writer's Block · 2. Discard Unused Cards · 3. Resolve Card Benefits	p.6	0.030769 (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 Hardback — Rulebook (corpus doc 1131)	Timeless Classics	p.10	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 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 Hardback — Rulebook (corpus doc 1131)	What is Hardback? · Setup	p.2	#3	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
#2	RULEBOOK Hardback — Rulebook (corpus doc 1131)	Adverts · Player Powers	p.15	#1	0.048652 (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 Hardback — Rulebook (corpus doc 1131)	Events · Cooperative Anthology	p.17	#5	0.031746 (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 Hardback — Rulebook (corpus doc 1131)		p.1	#20	0.0125 (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
#5	RULEBOOK Hardback — Rulebook (corpus doc 1131)	3. Resolve Card Benefits · 4. Purchase New cards and Ink · a. Purchasing Cards · b. Flushing the Offer Row	p.7	#2	0.046432 (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 Hardback — Rulebook (corpus doc 1131)	8. Use Ink and Remover · Ending the Game · Timeless Classics	p.9	#16	0.013333 (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
#7	RULEBOOK Hardback — Rulebook (corpus doc 1131)	Fanfiction: Rules for Variant Play · Literary Awards	p.14	#9	0.028446 (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 Hardback — Rulebook (corpus doc 1131)	Setup	p.3	#4	0.032787 (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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Hardback — Rulebook (corpus doc 1131)	Setup	p.3	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Hardback — Rulebook (corpus doc 1131)	What is Hardback? · Setup	p.2	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Hardback — Rulebook (corpus doc 1131)	Adverts · Player Powers	p.15	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Hardback — Rulebook (corpus doc 1131)	Events · Cooperative Anthology	p.17	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Hardback — Rulebook (corpus doc 1131)	Fanfiction: Rules for Variant Play · Literary Awards	p.14	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 201 ms · first delta 1013 ms · total 4109 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 201 ms · ask 3905 ms · gateway work 4109 ms · total 4109 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3033
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 605
tok/sec: 201.5 tok/sec — 605 output tokens in 3.003 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 1s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 48h, checked 5s 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 1061), 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.