You asked
How do I play?
Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below counted as honest abstainAsked with: Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Skull & Shackles – Base Setbg-151007-en-1e
I looked through Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Skull & Shackles – Base Set's rulebook and couldn't find a solid answer to that one — and I'd rather tell you so than guess at your table. Try asking it another way, or ask me about setup, turns, or how the game ends: those I know cold.
The closest rulebook passages are below — check them before ruling.
Anyone can play a card whenever the card allows it. Playing a card means using a power on that card by revealing, displaying, discarding, recharging, burying, or banishing that card or by performing another action specified by that card. If a power says using it counts as playing a boon, it counts a
Once you've played a scenario, whether you won or lost, rebuild your character deck (see Between Games, below). Put all other cards back into the box. If you're playing an adventure and you successfully complete a scenario, you may proceed to the next scenario on the adventure card. If you've succes
6 BASE SET RULEBOOK Decide Whether You’re Playing a Standalone Scenario, an Adventure, or the Skull & Shackles Adventure Path. A scenario is intended for a single play session, an adventure consists of a number of linked scenarios, and an Adventure Path is a series of linked adventures. We recommend
When you encounter a card, you-and only you-can go through the following steps. No one else can perform these steps for you, though other players might be able to play cards to help you deal with the encounter's challenges. During each of these steps, you and the other players may perform only the s
Preparation is essential to a successful voyage. If your crew and your ship aren't supplied with the things you need, you'll just have to find them along the way… or take them by force. Choose Your Character . Each player chooses one character card; this represents the character you'll be playing in
🔧 debug — where this ruling came from
- outcome
- ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below
- warm abstain
-
- this ruling — W1 — generic warm abstain · receipt: none (generic)
- corpus profile
- live,vps
- answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only)
- gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
- timings
- search 266 ms · ask 3422 ms · total 3690 ms
- single-flight (PR-5)
- queued 0 ms · generation 3690 ms
- retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
- [{"page": 9, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "Anyone can play a card whenever the card allows it. Playing a card means using a power on that card by revealing, displaying, discarding, recharging, burying, or banishing that card or by performing another action specified by that card. If a power says using it counts as playing a boon, it counts a", "headingPath": "Playing Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 1274}, {"page": 19, "score": 0.048139, "snippet": "Once you've played a scenario, whether you won or lost, rebuild your character deck (see Between Games, below). Put all other cards back into the box. If you're playing an adventure and you successfully complete a scenario, you may proceed to the next scenario on the adventure card. If you've succes", "headingPath": "Ending a Scenario, Adventure, or Adventure Path · STRATEGY: ADVICE FOR SOLO PLAY", "sharpsignalDocId": 1274}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.044796, "snippet": "6 BASE SET RULEBOOK Decide Whether You’re Playing a Standalone Scenario, an Adventure, or the Skull & Shackles Adventure Path. A scenario is intended for a single play session, an adventure consists of a number of linked scenarios, and an Adventure Path is a series of linked adventures. We recommend", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1274}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.044758, "snippet": "When you encounter a card, you-and only you-can go through the following steps. No one else can perform these steps for you, though other players might be able to play cards to help you deal with the encounter's challenges. During each of these steps, you and the other players may perform only the s", "headingPath": "Encountering a Card", "sharpsignalDocId": 1274}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.042744, "snippet": "Preparation is essential to a successful voyage. If your crew and your ship aren't supplied with the things you need, you'll just have to find them along the way… or take them by force. Choose Your Character . Each player chooses one character card; this represents the character you'll be playing in", "headingPath": "Setting Up", "sharpsignalDocId": 1274}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.040573, "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 : At the start of your turn, flip the top card from the blessings deck faceup onto the to", "headingPath": "Your Turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 1274}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Multiple characters can choose the all characters start at the ship's location. same starting location. If your ship is anchored to a specific location, Draw Starting Hands . Each character card includes a hand size for that character. Draw that number of cards from your character deck. The characte", "headingPath": "Setting Up", "sharpsignalDocId": 1274}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "For example, if you have 3 players, you’ll use all of the location cards listed for 1, 2, and 3 players, but you won’t use any of the location cards listed for 4, 5, or 6 players. Put the location cards you’re using faceup in the middle of the table. Build the Location Decks. Each location card has ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1274}]
- citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
- []
- boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
-
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1274 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1274 boosted
- answered-before recall
-
no past answered ruling for this game matched closely enough
similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)
- debug row recorded
- Sep 7, 2026 13:22 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: Skull & Shackles – Base Set — Rulebook (corpus doc 1274) | Playing Cards | p.9 | 0.048916 (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: Skull & Shackles – Base Set — Rulebook (corpus doc 1274) | Ending a Scenario, Adventure, or Adventure Path · STRATEGY: ADVICE FOR SOLO PLAY | p.19 | 0.048139 (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: Skull & Shackles – Base Set — Rulebook (corpus doc 1274) | p.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)) | 300 | |
| #4 | RULEBOOK Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Skull & Shackles – Base Set — Rulebook (corpus doc 1274) | Encountering a Card | p.10 | 0.044758 (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: Skull & Shackles – Base Set — Rulebook (corpus doc 1274) | Setting Up | p.4 | 0.042744 (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: Skull & Shackles – Base Set — Rulebook (corpus doc 1274) | Your Turn | p.8 | 0.040573 (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: Skull & Shackles – Base Set — Rulebook (corpus doc 1274) | Setting Up | p.7 | 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 |
| #8 | RULEBOOK Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Skull & Shackles – Base Set — Rulebook (corpus doc 1274) | p.6 | 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 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 Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Skull & Shackles – Base Set — Rulebook (corpus doc 1274) | Encountering a Card | p.10 | #4 | 0.044758 (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 Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Skull & Shackles – Base Set — Rulebook (corpus doc 1274) | Ending a Scenario, Adventure, or Adventure Path · STRATEGY: ADVICE FOR SOLO PLAY | p.19 | #2 | 0.048139 (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: Skull & Shackles – Base Set — Rulebook (corpus doc 1274) | Setting Up | p.4 | #5 | 0.042744 (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 Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Skull & Shackles – Base Set — Rulebook (corpus doc 1274) | Merisiel, the rogue | p.12 | #14 | 0.026667 (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 Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Skull & Shackles – Base Set — Rulebook (corpus doc 1274) | Valeros, the Fighter · Taking Damage | p.14 | #19 | 0.024749 (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 Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Skull & Shackles – Base Set — Rulebook (corpus doc 1274) | Turn Overview · Encountering a Card · Attempting a Check · Playing a Card · Encountering a Villain · A Few Rules That Are Easy to Forget | p.32 | #15 | 0.026145 (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 Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Skull & Shackles – Base Set — Rulebook (corpus doc 1274) | p.6 | #3 | 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 | |
| #8 | RULEBOOK Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Skull & Shackles – Base Set — Rulebook (corpus doc 1274) | Playing Cards | p.9 | #1 | 0.048916 (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
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 |
|---|
generation — timing and the path taken
- timing split
- retrieval 266 ms · first delta 3587 ms · total 3690 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 266 ms · ask 3422 ms · gateway work 3690 ms · total 3690 ms
- tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
- 3146
- tokens out (what the answerer generated)
- 9
- tok/sec
- 176.5 tok/sec — 9 output tokens in 0.051 s of generation
- live seat (read from the running child)
- answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 34s ago)
- answerer host (measured by rulesage)
- reachable (for 23h, 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
- ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below
- abstain rationale
-
I don't have enough information.
BOILERPLATE, not reasoning: this is the answerer's fixed abstention phrase, the same sentence it emits whenever it declines. It records THAT the answerer declined and never why — no per-ruling reason was captured, because none was sent. Hostile corpus/LLM text, rendered escaped
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 1204), 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.