Ruling — The Prodigals Club

← The Prodigals Club

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: The Prodigals Clubbg-181796-en-1e

To play the game, follow these steps:

1. Setup:

* Choose two or three competitions to play.[1]

* Set up the game boards according to the number of players (use the specific side for 2–3 players or 4–5 players).[1]

* Find the five central cards specific to your chosen competition combination.[1]

* Shuffle the 2 white-bordered central cards and place them face down on the central board.[1]

* Shuffle the 3 black-bordered central cards and place them face down on top.[1]

* Place the round counter, the renaissance man tile, and the bonus action tiles on the board.[1]

* For each competition, shuffle the set of cards with two icons on the back and place them face down near the board, then shuffle the single-icon set and place them on top.[1]

* For each stack of tiles, mix up the double-icon set and stack them face down near the board, then mix up the single-icon set and stack them on top.[1]

* Turn up the first central card.[1]

* (In a four-player game with election and society competitions) Players take handicaps: the first player takes three, the second takes one, the third takes one, and the fourth has no handicap.[2]

2. The Round:

* Errands Phase: In order as shown on the central board, players take turns placing an errand boy on an unoccupied space on one of the game boards.[3]

* When placing an errand boy, you immediately perform the corresponding errand, which may result in taking cards or having an immediate effect on your score.[3]

* You must place an errand boy on your turn.[3]

* On the possessions game board, if you choose an errand that offers a chance to sell or exchange, you must sell or exchange at least one possession.[3]

* You may take more than one set of cards in the same round, but once all card-taking spaces are full, no one may take the last set.[3]

* Actions Phase: Once all players have placed all their errand boys and performed their errands, players take turns playing actions.[3]

* Actions are represented by cards; you may play as many as you like on your turn, in any order.[3]

* White-bordered cards are one-time events that are discarded by the end of the round.[4]

* Black-bordered cards can be used multiple times and are placed on your player board (which has room for six).[4]

* Dame Beatrice Phase (in the society competition): After the actions phase and the Hyde Park phase (if playing election), compare each player's influence markers with the Dame Beatrice tile.[5] The tile specifies which markers must move one space straight up.[5]

* Advance the Round: Move the round marker to the next space.[6] On the possessions board, rotate the borough indicator ahead to the next borough.[6]

* At the end of the round, you must discard down to 4 cards.[3]

3. Ending the Game:

* The game lasts five rounds, or until one player reaches a score of zero in one of the competitions.[7]

4. Scoring:

* The player with the lowest final score wins.[7]

* Your final score is determined by your highest-scoring competition.[7][6]

* In the possessions competition, your score is the amount of money you have (if you have possessions at the end of the game, turn them in for the value on the tile plus 3 pounds each).[6]

* In the election competition, your score is marked on the election scoreboard (maximum of 44).[6]

* In the society competition, your score is the sum of the values underneath your four markers on your player board.[6]

* Ties are broken using the second-highest scores (or third-highest if playing three competitions).[6]

[1] RULEBOOK The Prodigals Club — Rulebook · p.2 · Game Boards · Setting Up the Central Board · Setting Up the Game · Central Cards · Cards

[2] RULEBOOK The Prodigals Club — Rulebook · p.3 · Example:

[3] RULEBOOK The Prodigals Club — Rulebook · p.4 · Errands · Taking Cards with 2 or 3 Players · Actions

[4] RULEBOOK The Prodigals Club — Rulebook · p.5 · White-Bordered Cards · Black-Bordered Cards · Taking the Central Card

[5] RULEBOOK The Prodigals Club — Rulebook · p.9 · Errands in the Society Competition · Dame Beatrice

[6] RULEBOOK The Prodigals Club — Rulebook · p.10 · Advance the Round

[7] RULEBOOK The Prodigals Club — Rulebook · p.1 · Overview

One rule clearer, zero feelings hurt.

🔧 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 104 ms · ask 19941 ms · total 32001 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 11954 ms · generation 20047 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 5, "score": 0.047883, "snippet": "Send an errand boy here to reserve that spot in the play order next round. Y our play order will not actually change until the end of the round, as explained on page 10. At the beginning of the game, it is an advantage to go first. In later rounds, you might want to go last if you are deciding wheth", "headingPath": "Reserving a Spot in the Order · Bonus Action Tiles · After the Actions Phase · Errands on the Central Board", "sharpsignalDocId": 1102}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.047163, "snippet": "White-bordered cards are one-time events. Y ou play the card and do what it says. All the white-bordered cards you play will be discarded by the end of the round. (Y ou can keep them in front of you as you play them. Some effects refer to cards previously played this round.) A black-bordered card ca", "headingPath": "White-Bordered Cards · Black-Bordered Cards · Taking the Central Card", "sharpsignalDocId": 1102}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.046898, "snippet": "The setup for all three competitions is illustrated below, although the standard game is two competitions in any combination. Each competition has its own board and components. Choose two competitions and leave the third one's components in the box. You can also play all three simultaneously if ever", "headingPath": "Game Boards · Setting Up the Central Board · Setting Up the Game · Central Cards · Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 1102}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.046871, "snippet": "Player setup depends on the number of players. Use the table at the bottom of this page as a quick-reference guide. Each player chooses a colour and takes a player board and errand boys (top hat figures) in that colour. The number of errand boys is determined by the number of players, as shown in th", "headingPath": "Cards · Player Boards and Errand Boys · Player Setup in the Possessions Competition · Player Setup in the Election Competition · Player Setup in the Society Competition · Determine Play Order · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 1102}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.045139, "snippet": "The game ends at this time if any player's score in any competition is zero or less. During the round, a player might drop to zero and then go back up (because of Hyde Park or Dame Beatrice). That does not end the game. What matters is players' scores after Hyde Park and Dame Beatrice. The game will", "headingPath": "Check for End of Game · Mark the New Play Order · Example · End of Round · Clear the Boards", "sharpsignalDocId": 1102}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.044796, "snippet": "Each player has a certain number of top hat figures representing errand boys. The number of errand boys depends on the number of players and on whether you are playing 2 or 3 competitions, as explained on the previous page. In order, as shown by the markers on the central board, players take turns p", "headingPath": "Errands · Taking Cards with 2 or 3 Players · Actions", "sharpsignalDocId": 1102}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.042925, "snippet": "In general, these icons indicate that you move one marker to an adjacent empty space in one of the directions depicted. Other movement depictions are explained on the back page. 2-3 If multiple moves are depicted, you do them one at a time, always into empty spaces. You may move the same influ- ence", "headingPath": "Moves on the Scoreboard · Symbols on the Scoreboard", "sharpsignalDocId": 1102}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "It is a four-player game with the election and society competitions. The first player must take 3 handicaps. There is no possessions competition, so he ignores line 1 above. He takes an election handicap, a society handicap, and another election handicap. In other words, he gains 2 votes and moves h", "headingPath": "Example:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1102}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game Boards · Setting Up the Central Board · Setting Up the Game · Central Cards · Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 1102}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Example:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1102}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Errands · Taking Cards with 2 or 3 Players · Actions", "sharpsignalDocId": 1102}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "White-Bordered Cards · Black-Bordered Cards · Taking the Central Card", "sharpsignalDocId": 1102}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Errands in the Society Competition · Dame Beatrice", "sharpsignalDocId": 1102}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Advance the Round", "sharpsignalDocId": 1102}, {"page": 1, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Overview", "sharpsignalDocId": 1102}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1102 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1102 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 0.90509 of 2908 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 7, 2026 03:03 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 Prodigals Club — Rulebook (corpus doc 1102)	Reserving a Spot in the Order · Bonus Action Tiles · After the Actions Phase · Errands on the Central Board	p.5	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
#2	RULEBOOK The Prodigals Club — Rulebook (corpus doc 1102)	White-Bordered Cards · Black-Bordered Cards · Taking the Central Card	p.5	0.047163 (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 Prodigals Club — Rulebook (corpus doc 1102)	Game Boards · Setting Up the Central Board · Setting Up the Game · Central Cards · Cards	p.2	0.046898 (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 Prodigals Club — Rulebook (corpus doc 1102)	Cards · Player Boards and Errand Boys · Player Setup in the Possessions Competition · Player Setup in the Election Competition · Player Setup in the Society Competition · Determine Play Order · …	p.3	0.046871 (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 Prodigals Club — Rulebook (corpus doc 1102)	Check for End of Game · Mark the New Play Order · Example · End of Round · Clear the Boards	p.10	0.045139 (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 Prodigals Club — Rulebook (corpus doc 1102)	Errands · Taking Cards with 2 or 3 Players · Actions	p.4	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
#7	RULEBOOK The Prodigals Club — Rulebook (corpus doc 1102)	Moves on the Scoreboard · Symbols on the Scoreboard	p.9	0.042925 (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 Prodigals Club — Rulebook (corpus doc 1102)	Example:	p.3	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 27 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 Prodigals Club — Rulebook (corpus doc 1102)	Game Boards · Setting Up the Central Board · Setting Up the Game · Central Cards · Cards	p.2	#3	0.046898 (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 Prodigals Club — Rulebook (corpus doc 1102)	Example:	p.3	#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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK The Prodigals Club — Rulebook (corpus doc 1102)	Errands · Taking Cards with 2 or 3 Players · Actions	p.4	#6	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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK The Prodigals Club — Rulebook (corpus doc 1102)	Other combinations are similar:	p.12	#17	0.026519 (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 Prodigals Club — Rulebook (corpus doc 1102)	Overview	p.1	#18	0.026491 (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
#6	RULEBOOK The Prodigals Club — Rulebook (corpus doc 1102)	Advance the Round	p.10	#16	0.027444 (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 Prodigals Club — Rulebook (corpus doc 1102)	Errands in the Society Competition · Dame Beatrice	p.9	#12	0.027912 (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
#8	RULEBOOK The Prodigals Club — Rulebook (corpus doc 1102)	White-Bordered Cards · Black-Bordered Cards · Taking the Central Card	p.5	#2	0.047163 (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 Prodigals Club — Rulebook (corpus doc 1102)	Game Boards · Setting Up the Central Board · Setting Up the Game · Central Cards · Cards	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK The Prodigals Club — Rulebook (corpus doc 1102)	Example:	p.3	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK The Prodigals Club — Rulebook (corpus doc 1102)	Errands · Taking Cards with 2 or 3 Players · Actions	p.4	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK The Prodigals Club — Rulebook (corpus doc 1102)	White-Bordered Cards · Black-Bordered Cards · Taking the Central Card	p.5	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK The Prodigals Club — Rulebook (corpus doc 1102)	Errands in the Society Competition · Dame Beatrice	p.9	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK The Prodigals Club — Rulebook (corpus doc 1102)	Advance the Round	p.10	no quote on the wire
[7]	RULEBOOK The Prodigals Club — Rulebook (corpus doc 1102)	Overview	p.1	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 104 ms · first delta 2194 ms · total 32001 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 11954 ms · retrieval 104 ms · ask 19941 ms · gateway work 20047 ms · total 32001 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3508
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 879
tok/sec: 50.0 tok/sec — 879 output tokens in 17.592 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 25s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 5s 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 1032), 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.