Ruling — The Others

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: The Othersbg-172047-en-1e

To play The Others, follow these steps:

Setup

1. Choose a Story from the available Story Boards, either mutually or randomly.[1]

2. Take the Apocalypse cards deck corresponding to the chosen Story type, shuffle it, and place it face down near the Sins Player.[1]

3. Place the chosen Story Board on the table near a Hero Player.[1]

4. Place one Tentacle marker on the slot for the first Mission and another on the 'zero' slot of the Mission Progress track.[1]

5. Choose player roles: one player is the Sins Player and the rest are Hero Players.[2]

6. The Sins Player picks a single Sin directly or randomly.[2]

7. Once a Sin is chosen, place the Apocalypse Track near the Sins Player with a Tentacle marker on the 'zero' slot.[2]

8. Place the corresponding Sin Board next to the Apocalypse Track.[2]

9. Shuffle the corresponding Sin cards deck and place it face down near the Sins Player.[2]

10. Place all of the chosen Sin's Monster figures (1 Avatar, 1 Controller, and 6 Abominations) near the Sins Player.[2]

11. The Sins Player chooses an Acolyte type directly or randomly.[3]

12. Place the corresponding Acolyte Board next to the Sin Board and place all 6 of the chosen Acolyte Monster figures near the Sins Player.[3]

13. Choose a map setup from the back of the chosen Story Board, either mutually or randomly.[4]

14. Create the game board by positioning the listed game tiles, placing tokens in indicated quantities/spaces, and placing requested Monster figures in indicated spaces.[4]

15. Shuffle the Upgrade cards and place the deck face down; draw 5 cards and place them face up as the Upgrade Inventory.[5]

16. The Sins Player draws a starting hand of 5 Sin cards.[5]

17. The Sins Player receives Reaction tokens equal to the number of Heroes in play, placed next to the Sin Board with the active side facing up.[5]

18. Hero Players choose which Hero(es) they want to start the game as.[6]

Gameplay

1. Hero Players take turns in clockwise order.[7]

2. After each Hero finishes their Turn, the Sins Player may choose to spend a Reaction token to react to that specific Hero's Turn.[7]

3. If the Sins Player reacts, they flip a Reaction token to its spent side, can move a single Monster up to 2 spaces, and may start a Fight with the Hero who just finished their turn.[7]

4. The Sins Player can play a single Sin card from their hand during each Turn (including the Hero's Turn and the Sin's Reaction).[7]

5. If Hero Players cannot reach a unanimous decision on a collective matter, the Sins Player decides for them.[8]

6. At the end of a Round, remove any Marked tokens from the Acolyte board and any other one-Round Marks.[8]

7. Play continues Round after Round until either the Heroes or the Sins emerge victorious.[8]

[1] RULEBOOK The Others — Rulebook · p.9 · 4. CHOOSE STORY

[2] RULEBOOK The Others — Rulebook · p.8 · 1. CHOOSE PLAYER ROLES · 2. CHOOSE SIN

[3] RULEBOOK The Others — Rulebook · p.9 · 3. CHOOSE ACOLYTES

[4] RULEBOOK The Others — Rulebook · p.10 · 5. CHOOSE MAP

[5] RULEBOOK The Others — Rulebook · p.12 · 7. FINAL PREPARATIONS

[6] RULEBOOK The Others — Rulebook · p.11 · 5. CHOOSE MAP

[7] RULEBOOK The Others — Rulebook · p.16 · SIN REACTIONS · SPEND A REACTION TOKEN · MOVE A MONSTER · START A FIGHT WITH THE CURRENT HERO

[8] RULEBOOK The Others — Rulebook · p.17 · UNITE OR FALL

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 103 ms · ask 8022 ms · total 8127 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 8127 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 11, "score": 0.047643, "snippet": "The Hero Players always have at their disposal a full team of 7 FA.I.T.H. agents to face the Sin forces throughout the game. However, these Heroes will not be in play all at the same time. The number of Heroes in play is determined by the number of Hero Players: 1 Hero Player: controls 3 Heroes (3 H", "headingPath": "5. CHOOSE MAP", "sharpsignalDocId": 1041}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.046544, "snippet": "Each Story Board lists one or more specific tasks that need to be executed at the beginning of every Round. These are generally executed by the Sins Player, and he decides how to execute them. They usually involve placing new tokens on the board, but each Story has its peculiarities. The Hero Player", "headingPath": "BEGINNING OF ROUND STORY TASKS · DECIDE THE FIRST HERO · HERO TURNS · SPEND A TURN TOKEN · MOVE AND TAKE AN ACTION · MOVE · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 1041}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.046239, "snippet": "The players need to pick a Story to play from the ones available in the Story Boards. Players can either mutually agree on a Story, or they can pick one at random. There are 3 general types of Stories in The Others : \u0007 Terror - These Stories focus on combat and action, and are generally more straigh", "headingPath": "4. CHOOSE STORY", "sharpsignalDocId": 1041}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.045921, "snippet": "The Others can be played by 2 to 5 players. One player must pick the role of the Sins Player, while the rest are Hero Players. The Hero Players all cooperate with each other, with the Sins Player playing against them all. Audio Surveillance Transcript - Dead Drop Mic #8919, Midtown Female: You look ", "headingPath": "1. CHOOSE PLAYER ROLES · 2. CHOOSE SIN", "sharpsignalDocId": 1041}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.043935, "snippet": "Accomplishing the set of Missions presented by the chosen Story is how the Hero Players win the game. At the start of the game, the Heroes must accomplish the task proposed by Mission number 1. Once they fulfill that, they move to Mission number 2, and so on, until they fulfill the last Mission and ", "headingPath": "MISSIONS · HERO NUMBER", "sharpsignalDocId": 1041}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.04329, "snippet": "At the end of a session of The Others, either the Sins Player will emerge victorious, or all of the Hero Players as a group will be the winners. For the Heroes to win, they need to accomplish each of the Missions presented by the Story Board in order. Immediately upon accomplishing the last Mission,", "headingPath": "VICTORY AND DEFEAT · GAME SEQUENCE · START OF ROUND · HERO TURNS · SIN REACTIONS · END OF ROUND", "sharpsignalDocId": 1041}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "The back of the chosen Story Board displays a couple of map setups that should be used for that Story. Players either mutually or randomly decide which map setup to use. Follow the indications on the map setup to create the game board. \u0007 Take the listed game tiles and position them, making sure they", "headingPath": "5. CHOOSE MAP", "sharpsignalDocId": 1041}, {"page": 24, "score": 0.030415, "snippet": "The Sins Player has his hand of Sin cards always available to play on unsuspecting Heroes. These Sin cards further employ the strategies of each individual Sin to help the Sins Player defeat the forces of F.A.I.T.H. The Sins Player's hand of Sin card is limited, and only replenished by keeping the H", "headingPath": "SIN CARDS · TOKENS", "sharpsignalDocId": 1041}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "4. CHOOSE STORY", "sharpsignalDocId": 1041}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "1. CHOOSE PLAYER ROLES · 2. CHOOSE SIN", "sharpsignalDocId": 1041}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "3. CHOOSE ACOLYTES", "sharpsignalDocId": 1041}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "5. CHOOSE MAP", "sharpsignalDocId": 1041}, {"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "7. FINAL PREPARATIONS", "sharpsignalDocId": 1041}, {"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "5. CHOOSE MAP", "sharpsignalDocId": 1041}, {"page": 16, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SIN REACTIONS · SPEND A REACTION TOKEN · MOVE A MONSTER · START A FIGHT WITH THE CURRENT HERO", "sharpsignalDocId": 1041}, {"page": 17, "quote": null, "headingPath": "UNITE OR FALL", "sharpsignalDocId": 1041}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1041 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1041 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 0.90720 of 2263 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 5, 2026 15:14 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 Others — Rulebook (corpus doc 1041)	5. CHOOSE MAP	p.11	0.047643 (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 Others — Rulebook (corpus doc 1041)	BEGINNING OF ROUND STORY TASKS · DECIDE THE FIRST HERO · HERO TURNS · SPEND A TURN TOKEN · MOVE AND TAKE AN ACTION · MOVE · …	p.14	0.046544 (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 Others — Rulebook (corpus doc 1041)	4. CHOOSE STORY	p.9	0.046239 (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 Others — Rulebook (corpus doc 1041)	1. CHOOSE PLAYER ROLES · 2. CHOOSE SIN	p.8	0.045921 (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 Others — Rulebook (corpus doc 1041)	MISSIONS · HERO NUMBER	p.20	0.043935 (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 Others — Rulebook (corpus doc 1041)	VICTORY AND DEFEAT · GAME SEQUENCE · START OF ROUND · HERO TURNS · SIN REACTIONS · END OF ROUND	p.13	0.04329 (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 Others — Rulebook (corpus doc 1041)	5. CHOOSE MAP	p.10	0.032787 (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 Others — Rulebook (corpus doc 1041)	SIN CARDS · TOKENS	p.24	0.030415 (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 80 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 Others — Rulebook (corpus doc 1041)	1. CHOOSE PLAYER ROLES · 2. CHOOSE SIN	p.8	#4	0.045921 (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 Others — Rulebook (corpus doc 1041)	UNITE OR FALL	p.17	#14	0.027151 (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 re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK The Others — Rulebook (corpus doc 1041)	3. CHOOSE ACOLYTES	p.9	#22	0.02375 (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 re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK The Others — Rulebook (corpus doc 1041)	SIN REACTIONS · SPEND A REACTION TOKEN · MOVE A MONSTER · START A FIGHT WITH THE CURRENT HERO	p.16	#9	0.029958 (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 re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK The Others — Rulebook (corpus doc 1041)	5. CHOOSE MAP	p.10	#7	0.032787 (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 The Others — Rulebook (corpus doc 1041)	7. FINAL PREPARATIONS	p.12	#15	0.027047 (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 re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK The Others — Rulebook (corpus doc 1041)	5. CHOOSE MAP	p.11	#1	0.047643 (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
#8	RULEBOOK The Others — Rulebook (corpus doc 1041)	4. CHOOSE STORY	p.9	#3	0.046239 (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 Others — Rulebook (corpus doc 1041)	4. CHOOSE STORY	p.9	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK The Others — Rulebook (corpus doc 1041)	1. CHOOSE PLAYER ROLES · 2. CHOOSE SIN	p.8	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK The Others — Rulebook (corpus doc 1041)	3. CHOOSE ACOLYTES	p.9	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK The Others — Rulebook (corpus doc 1041)	5. CHOOSE MAP	p.10	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK The Others — Rulebook (corpus doc 1041)	7. FINAL PREPARATIONS	p.12	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK The Others — Rulebook (corpus doc 1041)	5. CHOOSE MAP	p.11	no quote on the wire
[7]	RULEBOOK The Others — Rulebook (corpus doc 1041)	SIN REACTIONS · SPEND A REACTION TOKEN · MOVE A MONSTER · START A FIGHT WITH THE CURRENT HERO	p.16	no quote on the wire
[8]	RULEBOOK The Others — Rulebook (corpus doc 1041)	UNITE OR FALL	p.17	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 103 ms · first delta 4634 ms · total 8127 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 103 ms · ask 8022 ms · gateway work 8127 ms · total 8127 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2788
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 693
tok/sec: 201.5 tok/sec — 693 output tokens in 3.440 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 27s 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: NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 971), 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.