RuleSage cited table rulings
← Blood on the Clocktower

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Blood on the Clocktowerbg-240980-en-1e

To setup the game, follow these steps: 1. Gather your players by getting one chair per player and arranging them facing each other in a rough circle or square with a gap between two chairs for the Storyteller [1]. 2. Prepare the Grimoire by fastening its metal clips to the corners of the game box, assembling the two-piece stand, and placing it where players will not accidentally see its contents [1]. 3. Collect supplies of info, night, and shroud tokens anywhere you like in the Grimoire [1]. 4. Choose an edition (TROUBLE BREWING, BAD MOON RISING, or SECTS & VIOLETS) and add its edition box to the bottom-left part of the Grimoire [1]. 5. Add the night sheet for the chosen edition to the right side of the Grimoire [1]. 6. Prepare the Town Square by putting the board on the floor in the center of the chairs [2][1]. 7. Put one life token per player on the Town Square matching their seating position [2][1]. 8. Put a pile of vote tokens in the center of the Town Square [2][1]. 9. Put the Traveller sheet partially under the Town Square, showing the number of Townsfolk, Outsiders, and Minions [2]. 10. Read the rules to any new players (you may use a duplicate rules sheet on the reverse side of the Traveller sheet kept under the Town Square) [2]. 11. Secretly choose characters by taking the appropriate number of Townsfolk character tokens for the number of players and putting them in the left side of the Grimoire, then repeat this process for any Outsiders, Minions, and the Demon [2]. 12. If there are more than fifteen players, any excess players must volunteer to be Travellers; give these volunteers the Traveller sheet so they can choose which Travellers they wish to be [2].

[1] RULEBOOK Blood on the Clocktower — Rulebook · p.12 · SETUP
[2] RULEBOOK Blood on the Clocktower — Rulebook · p.12 · SETUP
🔧 debug — where this ruling came from
outcome
ANSWERED — Answered
corpus profile
live
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only)
gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings
search 221 ms · ask 14950 ms · total 15181 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 0 ms · generation 15181 ms
retrieval refs (raw)
[{"page": 12, "score": 0.048172, "snippet": "Y OU CAN SET UP A GAME OF CLOCKTOWER by following the instructions on the setup sheet , which are explained in more detail here. 1. GATHER YOUR PLAYERS. Get one chair per player and arrange the chairs facing each other. A rough circle or square is fine, as long as people are sitting in a definite cl", "headingPath": "SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 159}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.047883, "snippet": "Likewise, we recommend you run a game or two with five to ten players to get the hang of things, then try your hand at larger games. 4. PREPARE THE TOWN SQUARE. Put the Town Square board on the floor in the center of the chairs. Put one life token per player on the Town Square matching their seating", "headingPath": "SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 159}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.045743, "snippet": "Give these volunteers the Traveller sheet, so they can choose which Travellers they wish to be. You'll find more information about them in TRAVELLER CHARACTERS (page 24). For your first game, we do not recommend that you include Travellers or Fabled. CHOOSING CHARACTERS. The characters you choose wi", "headingPath": "SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 159}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.045635, "snippet": "B EFORE RUNNING THE NIGHT PHASE itself, you'll want to prepare a few things first. Ideally, nights should go quickly and smoothly with a minimum of thinking. If you prepare your night well, you've done all your thinking beforehand! Players may talk amongst themselves freely while you are planning th", "headingPath": "PREPARING THE NIGHT", "sharpsignalDocId": 159}, {"page": 26, "score": 0.045455, "snippet": "To include a Traveller in your game, do the following: 1. LET THE PLAYER CHOOSE A TRAVELLER. Take the player aside and give them the Traveller sheet, which is kept under the Town Square. This sheet details which Travellers are available for this game and what their abilities are. Ask the player to c", "headingPath": "ADDING TRAVELLERS", "sharpsignalDocId": 159}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "D URING THE NIGHT PHASE, players keep their eyes closed. Some players will wake, opening their eyes, to learn information or use powerful abilities. Typically the Demon attacks at night, killing one or more players or otherwise causing havoc. To start the night, tell the players to close their eyes.", "headingPath": "RUNNING THE NIGHT", "sharpsignalDocId": 159}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "After running your first game or two, you'll find it handy to read further: THE NITTY-GRITTY (page 19) includes guidelines for interpreting the rules and the characters' abilities as well as a cornucopia of information on the types of characters available. GREAT STORYTELLING (page 27) gives tips and", "headingPath": "CONTENTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 159}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "Y OU ARE THE STORYTELLER. You are the boss. You will be the person who reads the rules, who referees the game, and who creates the chaotic and fun situations in which your players will play. Many people find the Storyteller role the most creative, rewarding, and interesting of all. This book is writ", "headingPath": "CONTENTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 159}]
citations (raw)
[{"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 159}, {"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 159}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 159 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 159 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)
debug row retained until
Nov 4, 2026 17:59

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 rankdocumentheadingpage fused RRF scoresnippet chars
#1 RULEBOOK Blood on the Clocktower — Rulebook (corpus doc 159) SETUP p.12 0.048172 (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 Blood on the Clocktower — Rulebook (corpus doc 159) SETUP p.12 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 Blood on the Clocktower — Rulebook (corpus doc 159) SETUP p.12 0.045743 (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 Blood on the Clocktower — Rulebook (corpus doc 159) PREPARING THE NIGHT p.14 0.045635 (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 Blood on the Clocktower — Rulebook (corpus doc 159) ADDING TRAVELLERS p.26 0.045455 (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 Blood on the Clocktower — Rulebook (corpus doc 159) RUNNING THE NIGHT p.14 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
#7 RULEBOOK Blood on the Clocktower — Rulebook (corpus doc 159) CONTENTS p.5 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 Blood on the Clocktower — Rulebook (corpus doc 159) CONTENTS p.5 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

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.

#documentheadingpagequote chars
[1] RULEBOOK Blood on the Clocktower — Rulebook (corpus doc 159) SETUP p.12 no quote on the wire
[2] RULEBOOK Blood on the Clocktower — Rulebook (corpus doc 159) SETUP p.12 no quote on the wire
timing split
retrieval 221 ms · first delta 12288 ms · total 15181 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 221 ms · ask 14950 ms · gateway work 15181 ms · total 15181 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
4201
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
415
tok/sec
146.8 tok/sec — 415 output tokens in 2.827 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 3s ago)
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.
outcome
ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered)
answered — no abstain rationale applies
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

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 81), 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.