Ruling — The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth

← The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earthbg-269385-en-1e

To set up the first campaign of Journeys in Middle-earth, follow these steps:

1. Select 'New Game' on the app's title screen to select a campaign, difficulty, and save slot.[1]

2. Each player selects a hero in the app, takes their corresponding figure and hero card, and places them in their play area.[1] (If playing single-player, the player chooses two heroes and controls both).[1]

3. Each player finds the item cards that match the name and tier displayed in the app and places them near their hero card (players may select different starting items in the app if they wish).[1]

4. Gather 15 skill cards for each hero: one copy of each 'Basic' skill card numbered 1-6, skill cards numbered 1-5 with the hero's name on the bottom, skill cards numbered 1-3 with their role on the bottom, and one weakness card from the top of the weakness deck.[2]

5. Each hero finds their starting skill card for their role (identified by the number '1' after the role name and stars next to the card name), places it faceup below their hero card, and shuffles the remaining 14 cards together to create a facedown skill deck in their play area.[2]

6. Shuffle the damage cards, fear cards, and weakness skill cards into separate decks and place them in the center of the play area.[1][3]

7. Separate the exploration/inspiration, search/threat, person, and enemy banner tokens, as well as the three types of boon cards, into separate piles to create the supply.[1][3]

8. Set aside all map tiles and enemy figures, though some will be used during the adventure.[1][3]

9. Return the battle map tiles and terrain tokens to the box, as they are not used in the first adventure.[1][3]

10. Input a group name in the app and select 'Begin' to watch the introductory cutscene.[1][3]

11. Each player selects a role in the app for the first adventure.[1][3]

12. Select 'Embark' in the app and follow the app's instructions to place map tiles and tokens in the play area to create the game map.[2]

[1] RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook · p.4 · FirST cAmpAign SeTUp

[2] RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook · p.5 · FirST cAmpAign SeTUp

[3] RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook · p.4

So says the rulebook. So plays the table.

🔧 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 214 ms · ask 3723 ms · total 3941 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 3941 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "To set up their first campaign of Journeys in Middle-earth , players follow the steps presented in this section. Select Campaign and Difficulty: Select the 'New Game' button on the app's title screen. Then, the app will guide the players through a series of screens for selecting a campaign, a diffic", "headingPath": "FirST cAmpAign SeTUp", "sharpsignalDocId": 312}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.048139, "snippet": "This section describes additional details related to the app. During an adventure, the heroes may be rewarded with lore and experience. These resources are tracked in the app and allow the heroes to upgrade items and purchase new skills between adventures. Players can ignore lore and experience for ", "headingPath": "App elemenTS · lore And experience · Fog · whAT now?", "sharpsignalDocId": 312}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.048131, "snippet": "Hidden If you are attacked, before you test, prevent all  and discard this boon. When you attack, you may discard this boon to add 1 . At the end of your turn, if there are no nearby enemies, discard this boon. If you suffer  or , discard this boon. When you attack, add 2 hits. Emboldened When y", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 312}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.046875, "snippet": "Gather Skill Cards: Each hero gathers the following 15 skill cards: \u0003 one copy of each skill card numbered 1-6 that has the word 'Basic' on the bottom of the card \u0003 the skill cards numbered 1-5 that have the name of their hero on the bottom of the card \u0003 the skill cards numbered 1-3 that have their ", "headingPath": "FirST cAmpAign SeTUp", "sharpsignalDocId": 312}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Players may select different starting items in the app if they wish. 4. C reate Damage, Fear, and Weakness Decks: Shuffle the damage cards, fear cards, and weakness skill cards (only weakness skill cards, not other skill cards) into separate decks and place them in the center of the play area where ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 312}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Sprint 1 (During your turn, discard to move 1 space.) Trailblazer TM Lic. SZC to FFG Pathfinder 1 Before you sprint, gain 1 inspiration. Sprint 1 (During your turn, discard to move 1 space.) Trailblazer TM Lic. SZC to FFG 5 8. G ather Skill Cards: Each hero gathers the following 15 skill cards: \u0003 on", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 312}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "A game of Journeys in Middle-earth is played over a series of rounds. Each round has three phases that players resolve in the following order: Action Phase: During this phase, the heroes move around the map, interact with the world, and attack enemies. Shadow Phase: During this phase, the enemies mo", "headingPath": "plAying The gAme · AcTion phASe · TrAvel AcTion", "sharpsignalDocId": 312}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "The app instructs players to place new map tiles when certain conditions are met-these conditions include exploring and interacting with tokens, defeating enemies, etc. When the app instructs the players to place a tile, it highlights the alphanumeric code on that tile. The players should use this h", "headingPath": "Adding mAp TileS", "sharpsignalDocId": 312}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "FirST cAmpAign SeTUp", "sharpsignalDocId": 312}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "FirST cAmpAign SeTUp", "sharpsignalDocId": 312}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 312}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 312 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 312 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 0.90418 of 1628 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Oct 3, 2026 05:42 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 Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 312)	FirST cAmpAign SeTUp	p.4	0.048916 (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 The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 312)	App elemenTS · lore And experience · Fog · whAT now?	p.15	0.048139 (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 Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 312)		p.4	0.048131 (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 Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 312)	FirST cAmpAign SeTUp	p.5	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
#5	RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 312)		p.4	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
#6	RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 312)		p.5	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
#7	RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 312)	plAying The gAme · AcTion phASe · TrAvel AcTion	p.6	0.029851 (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 Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 312)	Adding mAp TileS	p.7	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 37 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 Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 312)	FirST cAmpAign SeTUp	p.4	#1	0.048916 (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 Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 312)	App elemenTS · lore And experience · Fog · whAT now?	p.15	#2	0.048139 (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 Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 312)	keywordS	p.16	#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
#4	RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 312)		p.4	#5	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 312)	AddiTionAl rUleS · enemieS · reAdied And exhAUSTed · provoking enemieS · inTerrUpTing enemy AcTivATionS · plAcing enemieS	p.13	#14	0.013514 (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
#6	RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 312)	Adding mAp TileS	p.7	#8	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 312)	dArkneSS STep · rAlly phASe	p.9	#12	0.013889 (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
#8	RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 312)	FirST cAmpAign SeTUp	p.5	#4	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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 312)	FirST cAmpAign SeTUp	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 312)	FirST cAmpAign SeTUp	p.5	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 312)		p.4	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 214 ms · first delta 1355 ms · total 3941 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 214 ms · ask 3723 ms · gateway work 3941 ms · total 3941 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3639
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 498
tok/sec: 198.6 tok/sec — 498 output tokens in 2.508 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 46s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 2h, 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: 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 240), 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.