Ruling — The Thing: The Boardgame

You asked

How do I play?

Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below counted as honest abstain

Asked with: The Thing: The Boardgamebg-295293-en-1e

I looked through The Thing: The Boardgame'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.

RULEBOOK The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook · p.15 · EXPOSING YOURSELF AS AN ALIEN

During Phase 5, by their own decision, an Alien player may reveal their Role and start playing as an Exposed Alien. Alternatively, they may be forced to do so during Phase 6, as a consequence of a Test. When an Alien is exposed, they must remove their Character from the game and discard any cards (r

RULEBOOK The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook · p.23 · A NOTE FROM THE DESIGNERS · Components

This version of the game offers an alternative game experience that differs substantially from standard 4-8 players version. You will not find all of the game's mechanics that create tension and bluff here (for the obvious reason of the lack of direct interaction between the players), mechanics whic

RULEBOOK The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook · p.8 · SPECIAL ACTION · ENCOUNTERS

It is possible that a player does not have the right cards to perform an action but does not want to lose a turn to change cards. Should this happen, the player may move their Character to the desired location and discard all of the Action Cards from their hand. Then they draw 1 card from the Action

RULEBOOK The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook · p.14 · PHASE 6. TESTS · TEST RESULTS

In this phase, players may check the Role of a Character using TEST A (Blood Test) and/or TEST B (Fire Test). Tests are used to reveal the Roles of the other Characters. Each player that has a Blood Bag (TEST A) and/or a Wire and a Flamethrower (TEST B) is eligible to perform up to one Test per type

RULEBOOK The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook · p.6 · GAME OVERVIEW · Phase 1. Weather Conditions · Phase 2. Base Maintenance and Rescue Helicopter Advancement · Phase 3. Alien Actions (only if the Alien has been exposed) · Phase 4. Draw Action Cards and Take Character Actions · Phase 6. Tests (only if at least 1 Character has the opportunity to perform a Test) · …

The Thing - The Boardgame is played over a series of rounds. In each round, the Leader (the first player) directs 6 to 8 phases, depending on certain conditions. The 8 phases are: The Leader determines the weather conditions by rolling the Weather Die. The Leader removes Fuel Tokens from the locatio

🔧 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 228 ms · ask 2440 ms · total 2670 ms

single-flight (PR-5)

queued 0 ms · generation 2670 ms

retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read

[{"page": 15, "score": 0.045455, "snippet": "During Phase 5, by their own decision, an Alien player may reveal their Role and start playing as an Exposed Alien. Alternatively, they may be forced to do so during Phase 6, as a consequence of a Test. When an Alien is exposed, they must remove their Character from the game and discard any cards (r", "headingPath": "EXPOSING YOURSELF AS AN ALIEN", "sharpsignalDocId": 995}, {"page": 23, "score": 0.045335, "snippet": "This version of the game offers an alternative game experience that differs substantially from standard 4-8 players version. You will not find all of the game's mechanics that create tension and bluff here (for the obvious reason of the lack of direct interaction between the players), mechanics whic", "headingPath": "A NOTE FROM THE DESIGNERS · Components", "sharpsignalDocId": 995}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.044916, "snippet": "It is possible that a player does not have the right cards to perform an action but does not want to lose a turn to change cards. Should this happen, the player may move their Character to the desired location and discard all of the Action Cards from their hand. Then they draw 1 card from the Action", "headingPath": "SPECIAL ACTION · ENCOUNTERS", "sharpsignalDocId": 995}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.044557, "snippet": "In this phase, players may check the Role of a Character using TEST A (Blood Test) and/or TEST B (Fire Test). Tests are used to reveal the Roles of the other Characters. Each player that has a Blood Bag (TEST A) and/or a Wire and a Flamethrower (TEST B) is eligible to perform up to one Test per type", "headingPath": "PHASE 6. TESTS · TEST RESULTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 995}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.043927, "snippet": "The Thing - The Boardgame is played over a series of rounds. In each round, the Leader (the first player) directs 6 to 8 phases, depending on certain conditions. The 8 phases are: The Leader determines the weather conditions by rolling the Weather Die. The Leader removes Fuel Tokens from the locatio", "headingPath": "GAME OVERVIEW · Phase 1. Weather Conditions · Phase 2. Base Maintenance and Rescue Helicopter Advancement · Phase 3. Alien Actions (only if the Alien has been exposed) · Phase 4. Draw Action Cards and Take Character Actions · Phase 6. Tests (only if at least 1 Character has the opportunity to perform a Test) · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 995}, {"page": 24, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Each player, starting with the Leader, must move their Characters. Each player must choose one of the two options below for each of their Characters: Place the Character in a location other than the Dormitory. If multiple Characters are in the same location, each of those Characters' Suspicion Disks", "headingPath": "PHASE 3. CHARACTER MOVEMENT", "sharpsignalDocId": 995}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Each Character player, starting with the Leader, draws as many Action Cards as they need to reach their maximum hand limit (normally 3 cards per player unless the base has run out of Food). Any time an Action Card must be drawn and there are no more in the deck, shuffle the discard pile to form a ne", "headingPath": "PHASE 4. DRAW ACTION CARDS AND TAKE CHARACTER ACTIONS · THE Action CardS · USE · REPAIR · SABOTAGE · 4.1 - CHARACTER MOVEMENT AND ACTION PLANNING", "sharpsignalDocId": 995}, {"page": 26, "score": 0.030622, "snippet": "This mode comes into play when the Generator is not working and the base is in the dark. During the Character Actions Phase, the Action Dice are rolled only AFTER assigning them to a Character. Possession of a Flashlight allows a Character to reroll up to 3 dice. The dice may be rerolled one at a ti", "headingPath": "DARKNESS · Escape of the Humans and Winning the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 995}]

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 995 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true

base rulebook doc 995 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 17:47 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 Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	EXPOSING YOURSELF AS AN ALIEN	p.15	0.045455 (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 Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	A NOTE FROM THE DESIGNERS · Components	p.23	0.045335 (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 Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	SPECIAL ACTION · ENCOUNTERS	p.8	0.044916 (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 Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	PHASE 6. TESTS · TEST RESULTS	p.14	0.044557 (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 Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	GAME OVERVIEW · Phase 1. Weather Conditions · Phase 2. Base Maintenance and Rescue Helicopter Advancement · Phase 3. Alien Actions (only if the Alien has been exposed) · Phase 4. Draw Action Cards and Take Character Actions · Phase 6. Tests (only if at least 1 Character has the opportunity to perform a Test) · …	p.6	0.043927 (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 Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	PHASE 3. CHARACTER MOVEMENT	p.24	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
#7	RULEBOOK The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	PHASE 4. DRAW ACTION CARDS AND TAKE CHARACTER ACTIONS · THE Action CardS · USE · REPAIR · SABOTAGE · 4.1 - CHARACTER MOVEMENT AND ACTION PLANNING	p.8	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
#8	RULEBOOK The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	DARKNESS · Escape of the Humans and Winning the Game	p.26	0.030622 (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 52 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 Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	4.2 - EXECUTE CHARACTER ACTIONS · COOPERATION BONUS	p.11	#14	0.026861 (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
#2	RULEBOOK The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	PHASE 3. CHARACTER MOVEMENT	p.24	#6	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
#3	RULEBOOK The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	DARKNESS · Escape of the Humans and Winning the Game	p.26	#8	0.030622 (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 Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	A NOTE FROM THE DESIGNERS · Components	p.23	#2	0.045335 (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
#5	RULEBOOK The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	Weapons and Items · DYNAMITE AND MOLOTOVS · FIREARMS	p.19	#29	0.0125 (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 The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	PHASE 5. LEISURE ROOM AND ACCUSATIONS	p.14	#9	0.029727 (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 Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	SPECIAL ACTION · ENCOUNTERS	p.8	#3	0.044916 (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 Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	TEST RESULTS	p.15	#10	0.029469 (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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 228 ms · first delta 2557 ms · total 2670 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 228 ms · ask 2440 ms · gateway work 2670 ms · total 2670 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3398
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 9
tok/sec: 173.1 tok/sec — 9 output tokens in 0.052 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 52s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 24h, checked 4s 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 925), 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.