RuleSage cited table rulings
← Forbidden Desert

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Forbidden Desertbg-136063-en-1e

1. Look at the 24 desert/city tiles to see what they look like on each side, then turn them all desert-side up.[1]
2. Shuffle the desert/city tiles and randomly place them desert side up into a 5 x 5 square grid with a tile missing in the middle, ensuring all tiles are oriented the same way with the compass symbol in the top left corner and leaving a small gap between tiles.[1]
3. Add 8 Sand markers to the board with the lighter colored side (not the 'X' and side) facing up, and stack the remaining Sand markers in a pile near the board.[1]
4. Remove the 4 parts from the flying machine and place them nearby.[1]
5. Insert the Sand Storm meter into the holder and place a meter clip on it according to the number of players and desired difficulty level.[1]
6. Separate the cards into the Storm deck (red back), Equipment deck (gear back), and Adventurer cards.[1]
7. Shuffle the Storm deck and place it face down just above the top of the desert, with the compass symbol pointing away from the board to indicate 'North'.[1]
8. Shuffle the Equipment deck and place it face down to the side of the desert.[1]
9. Shuffle the 6 Adventurer cards and randomly deal 1 to each player.[2]
10. Read aloud your role and powers written on the front of your card.[2]
11. Attach a meter clip to the front left of your Adventurer card to cover the top mark of your canteen.[2]
12. Take a pawn matching the color of your Adventurer card and place it on the 'helicopter crash' tile.[2]
[1] RULEBOOK Forbidden Desert — Rulebook · p.2 · 1. Examine the Tiles · 2. Create the Desert · 3. Place Sand markers · 4. Place the Flying Machine Parts · 5. Set the Sand Storm Level · 6. Divide the Cards
[2] RULEBOOK Forbidden Desert — Rulebook · p.2 · 7. The Adventurers Appear

Question closed. Friendships intact.

🔧 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 169 ms · ask 3259 ms · total 3430 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 0 ms · generation 3430 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 2, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "Look at the 24 desert/city tiles to get an idea of what they look like on each side. (See 'Special Tiles and Symbols' for more.) Then, turn them all desert-side up. Important: You may not peek at the tiles once they've been turned over! Shuffle the desert/city tiles and randomly place them desert si", "headingPath": "1. Examine the Tiles · 2. Create the Desert · 3. Place Sand markers · 4. Place the Flying Machine Parts · 5. Set the Sand Storm Level · 6. Divide the Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 232}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.047379, "snippet": "Once you've won the Novice game, try starting the Sand Storm meter at the Normal, Elite, or Legendary difficulty settings. Also, try playing with a different mix of adventurers. When we launched Forbidden Island in 2010, we had an inkling that we had created a hit game but never thought that we'd be", "headingPath": "Difficulty · A Word from Gamewright · Credits · Archeologist · Climber · Explorer · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 232}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "The thirstiest player goes first and play continues to the left. On every turn, do the following things in order: Take up to 4 actions. Draw Storm cards equal to the Sand Storm level. The parts of each turn are described below. Also note that every Adventurer card shows a quick reference guide on th", "headingPath": "Order of Play · 1. Take Up to 4 Actions · Move · Remove\tSand · Excavate · Pick\tUp\ta\tPart", "sharpsignalDocId": 232}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Shuffle the 6 Adventurer cards and randomly deal 1 to each player. Take a moment to read aloud your role and powers written on the front of your card so your teammates know your strengths. (More details can be found in 'Meet the Adventurers'.) You'll find you need to take advantage of each player's ", "headingPath": "7. The Adventurers Appear", "sharpsignalDocId": 232}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "This ancient city featured an underground system of tunnels-perfect for getting around under protection from the desert sun. You may move between any two excavated Tunnel tiles for 1 action. However, you may not move to a tunnel tile that contains two or more Sand markers. Tunnels also provide shelt", "headingPath": "Tunnels (3 tiles) · Launch Pad (1 tile) · 2. Draw Sand Storm Cards · Wind Blows", "sharpsignalDocId": 232}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Three desert tiles contain a water symbol in the bottom right corner to indicate that there may be water hidden underneath. When you excavate a tile with this symbol and it reveals a well, every player with a pawn currently on the tile may at once (and only once) add two water to their canteens. You", "headingPath": "Water (3 tiles) · Gear (12 tiles) · Part Location Clues (2 tiles for each flying machine part)", "sharpsignalDocId": 232}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "You can't place a part until both clues have been excavated, even if you have a good idea where the part may be. (Keep in mind, tiles may shift between turns.) If both clues point to the Storm's location, place the part in the empty space. The next tile that moves into that position during the Sand ", "headingPath": "Notes:", "sharpsignalDocId": 232}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "There are 4 Sun Beats Down cards in the Storm deck. When you draw a Sun Beats Down card, all players that are not currently on a tile containing a Tunnel or protected by a Solar Shield must drink 1 water. (Lower the water meter on your canteen to the next lower tick mark.) If any player reaches the ", "headingPath": "Sun Beats Down · When\tthe\tStorm\tDraw\tPile\tRuns\tOut · Winning the Game · Losing the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 232}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "1. Examine the Tiles · 2. Create the Desert · 3. Place Sand markers · 4. Place the Flying Machine Parts · 5. Set the Sand Storm Level · 6. Divide the Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 232}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "7. The Adventurers Appear", "sharpsignalDocId": 232}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 232 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 232 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 0.91348 of 1202 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded
Aug 28, 2026 18:11 UTC

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 rankdocumentheadingpage fused RRF scoresnippet chars
#1 RULEBOOK Forbidden Desert — Rulebook (corpus doc 232) 1. Examine the Tiles · 2. Create the Desert · 3. Place Sand markers · 4. Place the Flying Machine Parts · 5. Set the Sand Storm Level · 6. Divide the Cards p.2 0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1) 300
#2 RULEBOOK Forbidden Desert — Rulebook (corpus doc 232) Difficulty · A Word from Gamewright · Credits · Archeologist · Climber · Explorer · … p.7 0.047379 (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 Forbidden Desert — Rulebook (corpus doc 232) Order of Play · 1. Take Up to 4 Actions · Move · Remove Sand · Excavate · Pick Up a Part p.3 0.032258 (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 Forbidden Desert — Rulebook (corpus doc 232) 7. The Adventurers Appear p.2 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
#5 RULEBOOK Forbidden Desert — Rulebook (corpus doc 232) Tunnels (3 tiles) · Launch Pad (1 tile) · 2. Draw Sand Storm Cards · Wind Blows 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
#6 RULEBOOK Forbidden Desert — Rulebook (corpus doc 232) Water (3 tiles) · Gear (12 tiles) · Part Location Clues (2 tiles for each flying machine part) p.4 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 Forbidden Desert — Rulebook (corpus doc 232) Notes: p.4 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 Forbidden Desert — Rulebook (corpus doc 232) Sun Beats Down · When the Storm Draw Pile Runs Out · Winning the Game · Losing the Game p.6 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 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 13 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 atdocumentheadingpage fused rankfused RRF scorecarried byhow it got its slot
#1 RULEBOOK Forbidden Desert — Rulebook (corpus doc 232) 1. Examine the Tiles · 2. Create the Desert · 3. Place Sand markers · 4. Place the Flying Machine Parts · 5. Set the Sand Storm Level · 6. Divide the Cards p.2 #1 0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1) vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm the re-ranker chose it
#2 RULEBOOK Forbidden Desert — Rulebook (corpus doc 232) Order of Play · 1. Take Up to 4 Actions · Move · Remove Sand · Excavate · Pick Up a Part p.3 #3 0.032258 (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
#3 RULEBOOK Forbidden Desert — Rulebook (corpus doc 232) Difficulty · A Word from Gamewright · Credits · Archeologist · Climber · Explorer · … p.7 #2 0.047379 (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
#4 RULEBOOK Forbidden Desert — Rulebook (corpus doc 232) Navigator · Water Carrier p.7 #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
#5 RULEBOOK Forbidden Desert — Rulebook (corpus doc 232) Water (3 tiles) · Gear (12 tiles) · Part Location Clues (2 tiles for each flying machine part) p.4 #6 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)) vector + the doc-priority boost arm the re-ranker chose it
#6 RULEBOOK Forbidden Desert — Rulebook (corpus doc 232) Sun Beats Down · When the Storm Draw Pile Runs Out · Winning the Game · Losing the Game p.6 #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 Forbidden Desert — Rulebook (corpus doc 232) Share Water and Pass Equipment · The Water Carrier spends 4 actions: p.3 #9 0.014493 (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 Forbidden Desert — Rulebook (corpus doc 232) 7. The Adventurers Appear p.2 #4 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

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 Forbidden Desert — Rulebook (corpus doc 232) 1. Examine the Tiles · 2. Create the Desert · 3. Place Sand markers · 4. Place the Flying Machine Parts · 5. Set the Sand Storm Level · 6. Divide the Cards p.2 no quote on the wire
[2] RULEBOOK Forbidden Desert — Rulebook (corpus doc 232) 7. The Adventurers Appear p.2 no quote on the wire
timing split
retrieval 169 ms · first delta 1541 ms · total 3430 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 169 ms · ask 3259 ms · gateway work 3430 ms · total 3430 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
2985
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
369
tok/sec
201.3 tok/sec — 369 output tokens in 1.833 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 6s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage)
reachable (for 24h, checked 8s 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.
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 158), 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.