You asked
How do I set up the game?
Answered counted as answeredAsked with: Blood on the Clocktowerbg-240980-en-1e
To set up a game of Clocktower, follow these steps: 1. Gather your players by arranging one chair per player in a circle or square facing each other, leaving a gap between two chairs for the Storyteller to enter and exit [1]. Ensure the center of this space is mostly empty with no tables or tripping hazards [1]. 2. Prepare the Grimoire by fastening the two metal clips as close as possible to the upper and lower corners of the game box to create a sturdy container [1]. Unfold and assemble the two-piece Grimoire stand, place the Grimoire upon it, and position it where players walking around will not accidentally see its contents [1]. Collect all info, night, and shroud tokens anywhere you like in the Grimoire [1]. 3. Choose one of three editions (Trouble Brewing, Bad Moon Rising, or Sects & Violets) [1]. Uncover and add its edition box to the bottom-and-left part of the Grimoire [1]. Add the night sheet for this edition to the right side of the Grimoire [1]. 4. Prepare the Town Square by putting the Town Square board on the floor in the center of the chairs [1][2]. Put one life token per player on the Town Square matching their seating position [1][2]. Put a pile of vote tokens in the center of the Town Square [1][2]. Put the Traveller sheet partially under the Town Square, showing the number of Townsfolk, Outsiders, and Minions [2]. 5. Read the rules to any new players using the rules sheet (a duplicate of which is on the reverse side of the Traveller sheet kept under the Town Square) [2]. You may demonstrate hand signals as you go [2]. 6. Secretly choose characters by taking all Townsfolk character tokens from the chosen edition box and choosing the appropriate number for the number of players, as listed on the setup sheet [2]. Put these tokens in the left side of the Grimoire and return remaining tokens to the edition box [2]. Repeat this process for any Outsiders, Minions, and the Demon [2]. 7. 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].
🔧 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 321 ms · ask 17361 ms · total 1161378 ms
- single-flight (PR-5)
- queued 1143685 ms · generation 17693 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": 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": 12, "score": 0.044796, "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": 26, "score": 0.044563, "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": 0.03125, "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": 0.030769, "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}, {"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}]
- 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 6, 2026 14:28
retrieval — what the search arm returned
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 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) | 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 |
| #4 | RULEBOOK Blood on the Clocktower — Rulebook (corpus doc 159) | SETUP | p.12 | 0.044796 (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 | 0.044563 (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 | 0.03125 (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 Blood on the Clocktower — Rulebook (corpus doc 159) | CONTENTS | p.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)) | 300 |
| #8 | 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 |
chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited
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.
| # | document | heading | page | quote 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 |
generation — timing and the path taken
- timing split
- retrieval 321 ms · first delta 14237 ms · total 1161378 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
- full breakdown
- queued 1143685 ms · retrieval 321 ms · ask 17361 ms · gateway work 17693 ms · total 1161378 ms
- tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
- 4464
- tokens out (what the answerer generated)
- 494
- tok/sec
- 145.3 tok/sec — 494 output tokens in 3.401 s of generation
- live seat (read from the running child)
- answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 38s 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.
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)
-
set up
errata registry — what the gate above had to match against
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.