Ruling — Return to Dark Tower

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Return to Dark Towerbg-256680-en-1e · Return to Dark Tower: Alliancesbg-298565-en-1e · Return to Dark Tower: Covenantbg-365139-en-1e

To setup the game, follow these steps:

App Setup

1. Launch the app on a device with Bluetooth capability and select 'start new game'.[1]

2. Follow the app prompts to sync your device to the Tower.[1]

3. Select your desired game mode, difficulty, and expansions.[1]

4. Select the number of players.[1]

5. Select your main goal and retrieve the matching companion card.[1]

6. Select your adversary, then place the matching adversary card and adversary token nearby.[1]

7. Select your foes (one level 2, one level 3, and one level 4) and place the matching foe cards and foe tokens nearby.[1]

8. Review your selections and press 'continue' to confirm.[1]

9. Follow the final setup directions in the app, such as adding skulls, spawning foes, and placing the main goal quest marker.[1]

World Setup

1. Place the game board so that each kingdom faces a different player.[2]

2. Ensure the Tower has batteries installed and all 12 seals in place, then turn the Tower on.[2]

3. Place the Tower in the center of the game board.[2]

4. Place the 16 buildings in their spaces.[2]

5. Create the supply by setting aside warrior tokens, spirit tokens, and exactly 24 skulls.[2]

6. Sort the gear cards into 6 separate face-up stacks, ensuring each stack has 3 copies of a single card.[2]

7. Shuffle the treasure cards together into a face-down deck, then draw the top 3 cards and place them in a face-up row to create the market.[2]

8. Shuffle the potion cards together into a face-down deck.[2]

9. Shuffle the corruption cards together into a face-down deck.[2]

10. Place the companion cards, quest markers, and haggle die near the game board.[2]

11. Create separate supplies of the blessing cards, wasteland tokens, offering tokens, charge tokens, and doom skulls, keeping doom skulls and regular skulls in separate supplies.[3][4]

12. If using only new treasures, shuffle them to make the treasure deck and market as normal; if combining with base game treasures, shuffle them together and use 4 cards for the market instead of 3.[3][4]

13. For monuments, the app will indicate which to include and their assigned kingdoms; for each, remove the corresponding building from the kingdom (as indicated on the monument card) and return it to the box, then place a foundation tile in that building's space and place the monument and its monument card (offering-side up) near that kingdom.[3][4] Note that skulls cannot be placed on foundations, and if a building was removed, any skulls that would have been placed there remain in the supply instead.[3][4]

Hero Setup

1. Decide which player will play as which hero or assign them randomly, and choose the start player.[5]

2. Each player places their hero board in front of them.[5]

3. Place the 3 hero virtue tiles for the hero in empty slots on the hero board, inactive side up.[5]

4. Place the hero figure on the citadel space in their home kingdom.[5]

5. Place the kingdom virtue tile for the home kingdom in an empty slot on the hero board.[5]

6. Collect starting resources from the supply (7 warriors and 1 spirit).[5]

7. If a hero starts in a kingdom with no citadel, place the hero in the citadel space where the foundation tile is.[3][4]

8. For the Reverent Astromancer, set aside invocations during setup and create a supply of protection tokens near the hero board.[6]

Additional Components

1. Place 8 influence tokens from the general supply onto the influence vessel to form the heroes' influence pool.[7]

2. Put 24 regular skulls into the skull bag (the app will instruct to replace some with power skulls based on the selected adversary and foes).[7]

[1] RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook · p.7 · App Setup

[2] RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook · p.4 · World Setup

[3] RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower: Covenant — Rulebook · p.3 · Game Setup

[4] RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower: Covenant — Rulebook · p.3

[5] RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook · p.6 · Hero Setup

[6] RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower: Covenant — Rulebook · p.8 ·  REVERENT ASTROMANCER 

[7] RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower: Alliances — Rulebook · p.2

Rule found, game on.

🔧 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 296 ms · ask 9446 ms · total 9747 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 9747 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.047183, "snippet": "1 Place the game board so that each kingdom faces a different player. 1 2 Make sure the Tower has batteries installed and all 12 seals in place. Turn the Tower on; it will beep and lights will pulse. Place the Tower in the center of the game board. 2 3 Place the 16 buildings in their spaces. 3 4 Set", "headingPath": "World Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.046204, "snippet": "You will need to have the official Return to Dark Tower game app downloaded on one device with Bluetooth capability. 1 Launch the app on your device and select 'start new game.' 1 2 Follow the prompts in the app to sync your device to the Tower. 2 3 Select your desired game mode, difficulty, and exp", "headingPath": "App Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}, {"page": 23, "score": 0.046161, "snippet": "You lose the game immediately in any of the following situations: /rightArrow When a hero would gain their third corruption. /rightArrow When you have to take a skull from the supply and there are none. /rightArrow When the sixth month ends. If you lose the game, press the 'game lost' button on the ", "headingPath": " LOSING THE GAME  ·  WINNING THE GAME  · COMPLETING THE MAIN GOAL · DEFEATING THE ADVERSARY ·  GAME SEEDS  ·  APP ICON GUIDE ", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Decide which player will play as which hero or assign them randomly. Choose who will be the start player. Each player then carries out their own setup. 1 Place your hero board in front of you. 1 2 Place the 3 hero virtue tiles for your hero in empty slots on your hero board, inactive side up. 2 3 Pl", "headingPath": "Hero Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.032002, "snippet": "Follow the base game setup with the following changes: 1 World Setup: During world setup, create separate supplies of the blessing cards, wasteland tokens, offering tokens, charge tokens, and doom skulls. Doom skulls and regular skulls should be kept in separate supplies. 1 2 Treasures: If you are u", "headingPath": "Game Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 906}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.031545, "snippet": "/one.tf World Setup: During world setup, create separate supplies of the blessing cards, wasteland tokens, oﬀering tokens, charge tokens, and doom skulls. Doom skulls and regular skulls should be kept in separate supplies. /two.tf Treasures : If you are using only the new treasures, shuﬄe them and m", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 906}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.03031, "snippet": "Take the Battle action to battle a foe on your space and remove them from the game board. You can only take the Battle action while on a space with a foe. If more than one foe is on your space, choose one. Calculate your automatic Advantages. Open the battle screen to select a foe. Select a number o", "headingPath": "B) BATTLE · STARTING THE BATTLE · USING ADVANTAGES · APPLYING THE RESULTS ·  REMOVING FOES ", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}, {"page": 21, "score": 0.029437, "snippet": "At the end of your turn, you must take a skull from the supply and drop it into the Tower. If you cannot drop a skull because the supply is empty, the heroes lose! When you drop a skull, it might emerge from the Tower, cause the Tower to rotate, or cause events to occur. If skulls emerge, place them", "headingPath": "3. End of Turn ·  PLACING SKULLS ", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "App Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "World Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 906}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 906}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Hero Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": " REVERENT ASTROMANCER ", "sharpsignalDocId": 906}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 905}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 379 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 379 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 0.89740 of 3002 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 19, 2026 13:07 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 Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	World Setup	p.4	0.047183 (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 Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	App Setup	p.7	0.046204 (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 Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	 LOSING THE GAME  ·  WINNING THE GAME  · COMPLETING THE MAIN GOAL · DEFEATING THE ADVERSARY ·  GAME SEEDS  ·  APP ICON GUIDE 	p.23	0.046161 (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 Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	Hero Setup	p.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))	300
#5	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower: Covenant — Rulebook (corpus doc 906)	Game Setup	p.3	0.032002 (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 Return to Dark Tower: Covenant — Rulebook (corpus doc 906)		p.3	0.031545 (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 Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	B) BATTLE · STARTING THE BATTLE · USING ADVANTAGES · APPLYING THE RESULTS ·  REMOVING FOES 	p.16	0.03031 (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 Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	3. End of Turn ·  PLACING SKULLS 	p.21	0.029437 (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 63 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 — 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.

one thing that looks wrong and is not: a row a floor seated can carry a fused rank LARGER than the pool size above it. The floors draw from the whole fused list, not only from the passages the re-ranker scored — so a rank past the pool is a floor reaching down for something the re-ranker would never have seen, which is exactly what the floors are for.

read at	document	heading	page	fused rank	fused RRF score	carried by	how it got its slot
#1	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower: Covenant — Rulebook (corpus doc 906)	Game Setup	p.3	#5	0.032002 (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 Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	App Setup	p.7	#2	0.046204 (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 Return to Dark Tower: Covenant — Rulebook (corpus doc 906)	 REVERENT ASTROMANCER 	p.8	#13	0.027313 (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 Return to Dark Tower: Covenant — Rulebook (corpus doc 906)		p.3	#6	0.031545 (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 Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	 LOSING THE GAME  ·  WINNING THE GAME  · COMPLETING THE MAIN GOAL · DEFEATING THE ADVERSARY ·  GAME SEEDS  ·  APP ICON GUIDE 	p.23	#3	0.046161 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	Hero Setup	p.6	#4	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
#7	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	World Setup	p.4	#1	0.047183 (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 Return to Dark Tower: Alliances — Rulebook (corpus doc 905)		p.2	#11	0.028219 (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	guaranteed a slot by the one-slot-per-book floor

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	App Setup	p.7	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	World Setup	p.4	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower: Covenant — Rulebook (corpus doc 906)	Game Setup	p.3	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower: Covenant — Rulebook (corpus doc 906)		p.3	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	Hero Setup	p.6	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower: Covenant — Rulebook (corpus doc 906)	 REVERENT ASTROMANCER 	p.8	no quote on the wire
[7]	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower: Alliances — Rulebook (corpus doc 905)		p.2	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 296 ms · first delta 5083 ms · total 9747 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 296 ms · ask 9446 ms · gateway work 9747 ms · total 9747 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3483
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 894
tok/sec: 195.2 tok/sec — 894 output tokens in 4.580 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 22s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 1s 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 308), 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.