Ruling — Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords – Base Set

← Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords – Base Set

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords – Base Setbg-133038-en-1e

If you are playing an Adventure Path, put the Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path card faceup on the table.[1] Whenever you start a new adventure in the Adventure Path, add all of the cards from that adventure deck to the box, sorting all of the cards by type and combining them with the cards you already have in the box.[1] If you are playing an adventure, put the appropriate adventure card faceup on the table.[2] Choose a scenario and put the scenario card faceup on the table.[2]

1. Set out the locations by using all the location cards listed on the scenario card up to the number of players you have, and place them faceup in the middle of the table.[3]

2. Build the location decks by shuffling each required card type and dealing the correct number of cards of each type to form the basis of each deck, then set them facedown in a stack next to their location card.[3]

3. Add villains and henchmen by making a stack of cards starting with the villain(s) and then adding henchmen from the list down until the stack has as many cards as you have locations, using multiple copies of the bottom henchmen as needed.[3]

4. Shuffle this villain/henchmen stack and put one card on top of each location deck, then shuffle each location deck.[3]

5. Create the blessings deck by drawing 30 random blessing cards from the box, shuffling them together, and placing them facedown on the table.[3]

6. Arrange yourselves around the table in any order.[3]

7. Each player chooses a character,[1] locates the matching token card, and places both the character card and token card on the table in front of them.[1]

8. Each player chooses a location and puts her character's token card near it; multiple characters can choose the same starting location.[3][4]

9. Each player draws their starting hand by drawing the number of cards specified by their character card's hand size from their character deck; if the hand does not contain at least one card of their character's favored card type, discard the hand and draw again until it does.[3][4]

10. Before beginning a scenario, players may freely trade cards from their character decks, provided the deck still conforms to the character card's required card types.[1]

[1] RULEBOOK Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords – Base Set — Rulebook · p.4 · Setting Up

[2] RULEBOOK Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords – Base Set — Rulebook · p.4 · Setting Up

[3] RULEBOOK Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords – Base Set — Rulebook · p.6 · Setting Up

[4] RULEBOOK Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords – Base Set — Rulebook · p.6 · Setting Up

That's the page. Back to 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 221 ms · ask 7560 ms · total 7783 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 7783 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.047712, "snippet": "Preparation is the key to a successful adventure. The road to victory is littered with the bodies of the unready. Choose Your Character . Each player chooses one character card; this represents the character you'll be playing in the game. Locate the token card that matches your character card, and p", "headingPath": "Setting Up", "sharpsignalDocId": 671}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.046147, "snippet": "It lists the adventures that make up the Adventure Path, starting with Burnt Offerings , as well as the reward you'll get for completing the Adventure Path. Whenever you start a new adventure in the Adventure Path, add all of the cards from that adventure deck to the box, sorting all of the cards by", "headingPath": "Setting Up", "sharpsignalDocId": 671}, {"page": 19, "score": 0.044854, "snippet": "You can make your own story cards-simply follow the format of the ones in the box, choosing villains and henchmen that are appropriate for the power level of your characters. Be careful when setting rewards; you don't want to give out too much for success. You can also make your own character and ro", "headingPath": "RULES: MAKING YOUR OWN CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 671}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.044589, "snippet": "Story cards define the game session you'll be playing. You always have a scenario card, which tells you what to do and where to go in the current game session. You may also have an adventure card, which lists the scenarios you need to finish to complete the adventure, and perhaps an Adventure Path c", "headingPath": "Story Cards (Adventure Path, Adventure, and Scenario) · Location Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 671}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Set Out the Locations . The scenario card lists numbers of players alongside the location cards the scenario uses. Use all of the location cards listed up to the number of players you have. For example, if you have 3 players, you will use all of the location cards listed for 1, 2, and 3 players, but", "headingPath": "Setting Up", "sharpsignalDocId": 671}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Each player chooses a location and puts her character's token card near it. Multiple characters can choose the same starting location. . Each character card includes a hand size for that character card also lists a favored card type. If you didn't draw at least Draw Starting Hands character; draw th", "headingPath": "Setting Up", "sharpsignalDocId": 671}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.030092, "snippet": "Dark rumors whisper that the Runelords have returned. But the story is not yet written, and only you can determine the ending. In the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, your party of adventurers races against time on a quest to defeat a dangerous villain. Each player has a deck of cards representing he", "headingPath": "Welcome to Varisia. · Object of the Game · A Multitude of Cards · Card Sets · RULES: THE GOLDEN RULE", "sharpsignalDocId": 671}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Take your turn by going through the following steps in order. The only required steps are Advance the Blessings Deck, Reset Your Hand, and End Your Turn; the other steps are optional. Advance the Blessings Deck : Flip the top card from the blessings deck faceup onto the top of the blessings discard ", "headingPath": "Your Turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 671}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setting Up", "sharpsignalDocId": 671}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setting Up", "sharpsignalDocId": 671}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setting Up", "sharpsignalDocId": 671}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setting Up", "sharpsignalDocId": 671}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 671 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 671 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 0.93863 of 1825 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Aug 25, 2026 21:04 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 Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords – Base Set — Rulebook (corpus doc 671)	Setting Up	p.4	0.047712 (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 Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords – Base Set — Rulebook (corpus doc 671)	Setting Up	p.4	0.046147 (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 Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords – Base Set — Rulebook (corpus doc 671)	RULES: MAKING YOUR OWN CARDS	p.19	0.044854 (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 Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords – Base Set — Rulebook (corpus doc 671)	Story Cards (Adventure Path, Adventure, and Scenario) · Location Cards	p.14	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
#5	RULEBOOK Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords – Base Set — Rulebook (corpus doc 671)	Setting Up	p.6	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 Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords – Base Set — Rulebook (corpus doc 671)	Setting Up	p.6	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 Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords – Base Set — Rulebook (corpus doc 671)	Welcome to Varisia. · Object of the Game · A Multitude of Cards · Card Sets · RULES: THE GOLDEN RULE	p.2	0.030092 (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 Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords – Base Set — Rulebook (corpus doc 671)	Your Turn	p.8	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

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 61 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 Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords – Base Set — Rulebook (corpus doc 671)	Setting Up	p.6	#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
#2	RULEBOOK Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords – Base Set — Rulebook (corpus doc 671)	Setting Up	p.4	#2	0.046147 (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 Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords – Base Set — Rulebook (corpus doc 671)	RULES: ROLLING DICE	p.6	#20	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
#4	RULEBOOK Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords – Base Set — Rulebook (corpus doc 671)	Turn Overview · Encountering a Card · Attempting a Check · Playing a Card · Encountering a Villain · A Few Rules That Are Easy to Forget	p.24	#26	0.012658 (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 Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords – Base Set — Rulebook (corpus doc 671)	Organizing Your Cards	p.4	#22	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
#6	RULEBOOK Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords – Base Set — Rulebook (corpus doc 671)	Story Cards (Adventure Path, Adventure, and Scenario) · Location Cards	p.14	#4	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
#7	RULEBOOK Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords – Base Set — Rulebook (corpus doc 671)	Setting Up	p.6	#6	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords – Base Set — Rulebook (corpus doc 671)	Setting Up	p.4	#1	0.047712 (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 Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords – Base Set — Rulebook (corpus doc 671)	Setting Up	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords – Base Set — Rulebook (corpus doc 671)	Setting Up	p.4	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords – Base Set — Rulebook (corpus doc 671)	Setting Up	p.6	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords – Base Set — Rulebook (corpus doc 671)	Setting Up	p.6	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 221 ms · first delta 3961 ms · total 7783 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 7560 ms · gateway work 7783 ms · total 7783 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3201
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 502
tok/sec: 134.5 tok/sec — 502 output tokens in 3.732 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 47s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 7s 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 604), 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.