Ruling — Call to Adventure

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Call to Adventurebg-238992-en-1e

To setup the game, follow these steps:

1. Sort through all game components, shuffle the decks, and prepare the play space.[1]

2. Shuffle all decks.[2]

3. Deal each player six Character cards: 2 Origins (brown with bronze), 2 Motivations (blue with silver), and 2 Destinies (red with gold).[1] (Note: If this is your first time playing, you may instead deal each player one Character card of each type [1]).

4. Each player chooses one of each type to keep, then removes the rest from the game.[1]

5. Deal every player one Hero card to form their starting hand, which should remain hidden.[1]

6. Give each player three Experience tokens.[1]

7. Place your chosen Origin face-up to the left, your Motivation face-up in the middle, and your Destiny face-down on the right (though you may look at your own Destiny at any time).[1]

8. Take a player board and place your character cards on it.[1]

9. Place your Hero marker on the third level of the Corruption tracker to indicate your Hero is neutral.[1]

10. In the center of the table, set up the three Story decks, the Hero Deck, and the Antihero Deck.[3]

11. Beside each deck, lay out a row of face-down cards; for a 1-3 player game, lay out four cards per Act, and for a 4-player game, lay out five cards per Act.[3]

12. Once play is ready to begin, turn the Act I cards face-up.[3]

13. Place the rune tray containing the Core Runes, the Ability Runes, and the Dark Runes within easy reach of all players.[3]

For Solo or Co-Op Play:

1. Follow the typical game setup with the following exceptions:[4]

2. Choose one Adversary by setting aside all Adversary cards and randomly selecting one.[4]

3. Begin the Adversary Quest by choosing the Adversary Quest card that matches your selected Adversary, as well as the Rise of the Adversary card.[4]

4. Equip the Adversary by setting aside all Antihero cards marked with a specific icon to form the Adversary's special deck.[4]

5. Set the Adversary's Power by placing Experience tokens on the Adversary (5 for a Solo game, 10 for a 2-player Co-op, etc.).[4]

6. Place the Adversary, Adversary Quests, and special decks across the table from you.[4]

[1] RULEBOOK Call to Adventure — Rulebook · p.4 · Setting Up the Game · 1. Deal the Cards · 2. Reveal Your Character · Play Example: Story Tableau

[2] RULEBOOK Call to Adventure — Rulebook · p.16 · Object of the Game · Set Up · On Your Turn · Casting the Runes · Draw a Hero Card DIAMOND Antihero Card SLASH (DARK RUNE) Ending An Act · Ending The Game

[3] RULEBOOK Call to Adventure — Rulebook · p.5 · 3. Prepare the Story Decks · Traits and Challenges

[4] RULEBOOK Call to Adventure — Rulebook · p.12 · Variant Rules: Solo and Co-Op Play · Set Up · The Adversary's Deck · Playing The Adversary's Cards · Solo/Co-Op vs. Competitive Play

Now you know — make it count.

🔧 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 252 ms · ask 8942 ms · total 9197 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 9197 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "Before the game begins, sort through all game components, shuffle the decks, and prepare the play space. During setup, each player begins creating a Character. Deal each player six Character cards: 2 Origins (brown with bronze) 2 Motivations (blue with silver) 2 Destinies (red with gold) Each player", "headingPath": "Setting Up the Game · 1. Deal the Cards · 2. Reveal Your Character · Play Example: Story Tableau", "sharpsignalDocId": 1048}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.047643, "snippet": "In the center of the table, set up the three Story decks, the Hero Deck, and the Antihero Deck. If this is your first time playing, we recommend removing the Allies and Adversaries from the story decks (as well as their related cards: Noble , Sole Survivor, Vow of Vengeance, Heir to the Throne , Mas", "headingPath": "3. Prepare the Story Decks · Traits and Challenges", "sharpsignalDocId": 1048}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.047619, "snippet": "Acquire Traits and overcome Challenges to build the hero with the highest Destiny score! Shuffle all decks, then: Deal each player 2 Origin, 2 Motivation, and 2 Destiny cards, plus 1 Hero card and (see page 2). Reveal each hero's chosen Origin and Motivation, leaving their Destiny hidden (see page 2", "headingPath": "Object of the Game · Set Up · On Your Turn · Casting the Runes · Draw a Hero Card DIAMOND Antihero Card SLASH (DARK RUNE) Ending An Act · Ending The Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 1048}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.047379, "snippet": "While the core rules of Call to Adventure focus on competitive multiplayer, it is also designed for solo and cooperative play! Preparing a Solo or Co-Op game follows typical game set up (see pages 2-3), with the following exceptions: Choose One Adversary : Set aside all Adversary cards, then randoml", "headingPath": "Variant Rules: Solo and Co-Op Play · Set Up · The Adversary's Deck · Playing The Adversary's Cards · Solo/Co-Op vs. Competitive Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 1048}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.044563, "snippet": "You may not attempt the Adversary challenge until after your last turn. When any player begins their turn with nine Story cards, all players must face the Adversary. Starting with that player, each player attempts the Adversary challenge. If your result equals or exceeds the difficulty, you succeed!", "headingPath": "Defeating the Adversary · Rune Probability", "sharpsignalDocId": 1048}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "On your turn, when you gain a trait or overcome challenge, you add it to your Story tableau (or put the challenge in the discard pile, if you failed). Before taking any other actions, you then reveal the next card from the deck and place it face up beside that Story deck. If one of the decks runs ou", "headingPath": "How are new Story cards revealed during the game? · What happens if one of the decks runs out of cards? · If another player has revealed Act II cards but I have less than three cards under my Origin, can I try to gain Act II cards? · What is included in my 'Story?' · When an ability causes me to reroll an attempt, what happens? · Can I add extra runes to that second attempt?", "sharpsignalDocId": 1048}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "The runes give Call to Adventure the element of chance, but you can improve the odds by building your hero's Abilities. When you 'cast the runes' you throw them on the table to see which sides land face-up. You cast these three runes during every challenge. Whenever you attempt a challenge, check yo", "headingPath": "Reading the Runes · Core Runes · Ability Runes · Dark Runes", "sharpsignalDocId": 1048}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "5 Reading the Runes The runes give Call to Adventure the element of chance, but you can improve the odds by building your hero’s Abilities. When you “cast the runes” you throw them on the table to see which sides land face-up. Core Runes Dark Runes You cast these three runes during every challenge. ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1048}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setting Up the Game · 1. Deal the Cards · 2. Reveal Your Character · Play Example: Story Tableau", "sharpsignalDocId": 1048}, {"page": 16, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Object of the Game · Set Up · On Your Turn · Casting the Runes · Draw a Hero Card DIAMOND Antihero Card SLASH (DARK RUNE) Ending An Act · Ending The Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 1048}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "3. Prepare the Story Decks · Traits and Challenges", "sharpsignalDocId": 1048}, {"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Variant Rules: Solo and Co-Op Play · Set Up · The Adversary's Deck · Playing The Adversary's Cards · Solo/Co-Op vs. Competitive Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 1048}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1048 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1048 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 0.89191 of 1767 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 17, 2026 15:17 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 Call to Adventure — Rulebook (corpus doc 1048)	Setting Up the Game · 1. Deal the Cards · 2. Reveal Your Character · Play Example: Story Tableau	p.4	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Call to Adventure — Rulebook (corpus doc 1048)	3. Prepare the Story Decks · Traits and Challenges	p.5	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
#3	RULEBOOK Call to Adventure — Rulebook (corpus doc 1048)	Object of the Game · Set Up · On Your Turn · Casting the Runes · Draw a Hero Card DIAMOND Antihero Card SLASH (DARK RUNE) Ending An Act · Ending The Game	p.16	0.047619 (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 Call to Adventure — Rulebook (corpus doc 1048)	Variant Rules: Solo and Co-Op Play · Set Up · The Adversary's Deck · Playing The Adversary's Cards · Solo/Co-Op vs. Competitive Play	p.12	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
#5	RULEBOOK Call to Adventure — Rulebook (corpus doc 1048)	Defeating the Adversary · Rune Probability	p.13	0.044563 (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 Call to Adventure — Rulebook (corpus doc 1048)	How are new Story cards revealed during the game? · What happens if one of the decks runs out of cards? · If another player has revealed Act II cards but I have less than three cards under my Origin, can I try to gain Act II cards? · What is included in my 'Story?' · When an ability causes me to reroll an attempt, what happens? · Can I add extra runes to that second attempt?	p.15	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
#7	RULEBOOK Call to Adventure — Rulebook (corpus doc 1048)	Reading the Runes · Core Runes · Ability Runes · Dark Runes	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 Call to Adventure — Rulebook (corpus doc 1048)		p.7	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 25 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 Call to Adventure — Rulebook (corpus doc 1048)	Setting Up the Game · 1. Deal the Cards · 2. Reveal Your Character · Play Example: Story Tableau	p.4	#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 Call to Adventure — Rulebook (corpus doc 1048)	3. Prepare the Story Decks · Traits and Challenges	p.5	#2	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
#3	RULEBOOK Call to Adventure — Rulebook (corpus doc 1048)	Ending the Game · Play Example: End of Game	p.10	#10	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
#4	RULEBOOK Call to Adventure — Rulebook (corpus doc 1048)	Game Rules	p.1	#22	0.012195 (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 Call to Adventure — Rulebook (corpus doc 1048)	How are new Story cards revealed during the game? · What happens if one of the decks runs out of cards? · If another player has revealed Act II cards but I have less than three cards under my Origin, can I try to gain Act II cards? · What is included in my 'Story?' · When an ability causes me to reroll an attempt, what happens? · Can I add extra runes to that second attempt?	p.15	#6	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK Call to Adventure — Rulebook (corpus doc 1048)	Story Icons · Expanding the Game · Allies · Adversaries	p.11	#9	0.02971 (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 Call to Adventure — Rulebook (corpus doc 1048)	Object of the Game · Set Up · On Your Turn · Casting the Runes · Draw a Hero Card DIAMOND Antihero Card SLASH (DARK RUNE) Ending An Act · Ending The Game	p.16	#3	0.047619 (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 Call to Adventure — Rulebook (corpus doc 1048)	Variant Rules: Solo and Co-Op Play · Set Up · The Adversary's Deck · Playing The Adversary's Cards · Solo/Co-Op vs. Competitive Play	p.12	#4	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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Call to Adventure — Rulebook (corpus doc 1048)	Setting Up the Game · 1. Deal the Cards · 2. Reveal Your Character · Play Example: Story Tableau	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Call to Adventure — Rulebook (corpus doc 1048)	Object of the Game · Set Up · On Your Turn · Casting the Runes · Draw a Hero Card DIAMOND Antihero Card SLASH (DARK RUNE) Ending An Act · Ending The Game	p.16	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Call to Adventure — Rulebook (corpus doc 1048)	3. Prepare the Story Decks · Traits and Challenges	p.5	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Call to Adventure — Rulebook (corpus doc 1048)	Variant Rules: Solo and Co-Op Play · Set Up · The Adversary's Deck · Playing The Adversary's Cards · Solo/Co-Op vs. Competitive Play	p.12	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 252 ms · first delta 6188 ms · total 9197 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 252 ms · ask 8942 ms · gateway work 9197 ms · total 9197 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3537
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 569
tok/sec: 194.5 tok/sec — 569 output tokens in 2.925 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 22h, checked 3s 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: 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

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 978), 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.