Ruling — The Thing: The Boardgame

You asked

How do I take my turn?

Answered counted as answered

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

After all Encounters have been resolved, the Leader performs the following steps to take a turn:

1. The Leader picks up and shuffles all of the Action Cards in the Active Cards stack.[1]

2. The Leader must turn over and play at least 1 Action Card from the stack.[1]

3. The Leader assigns the effect of the turned-over card to any 1 Character that is still standing in any location where the action on the card can be taken.[1]

4. If there are no available Characters that can perform the action, the Leader must still choose a Character and lay that Character down.[1]

5. After the action has been performed, the chosen Character is laid down, meaning they cannot be assigned any more cards in the current round.[1]

6. After each Action Card is completed, the Leader may choose to reveal another card, or stop and discard the rest of the cards face down in the discard pile without looking at them.[1]

[1] RULEBOOK The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook · p.11 · 4.2 - EXECUTE CHARACTER ACTIONS · COOPERATION BONUS

The sage rests. The game continues.

🔧 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 145 ms · ask 2403 ms · total 3948 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 1396 ms · generation 2552 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 8, "score": 0.046671, "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": 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": 0.032258, "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": 25, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "The actions of the Characters are now resolved (escape via the Rescue Helicopter, using the base rules, may be attempted at the beginning of this phase). To resolve each Character's action, the Leader rolls the 3 Action Dice and, after looking at the results, decides which Character to assign those ", "headingPath": "PHASE 5. CHARACTER ACTIONS", "sharpsignalDocId": 995}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.030769, "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": 26, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Dormitory: The player of a Character in this room may choose the result of one Action Die during a roll. To do so, lay the Character down and turn the die to show the desired face. Kennel: If the Kennel card is drawn during Phase 4, the Alien assimilates 1 Dog currently in the Kennel (if any), follo", "headingPath": "Location and Character Changes", "sharpsignalDocId": 995}, {"page": 18, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "When he is in the Weather Station and is assigned a USE Action Card, he rolls the Weather Die twice and may choose the preferred result. When he is in the Armory and is assigned a USE Action Card, he may draw 3 cards, keep 1, and discard the other 2. He has his own Flashlight and does not suffer the", "headingPath": "BENNINGS · MACREADY · NORRIS · CLARK · DR. BLAIR · WINDOWS · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 995}, {"page": 26, "score": 0.029412, "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: [{"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "4.2 - EXECUTE CHARACTER ACTIONS · COOPERATION BONUS", "sharpsignalDocId": 995}]
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: 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 0.93792 of 741 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Oct 24, 2026 20:23 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)	SPECIAL ACTION · ENCOUNTERS	p.8	0.046671 (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)	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
#3	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	0.032258 (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 5. CHARACTER ACTIONS	p.25	0.03125 (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)	EXPOSING YOURSELF AS AN ALIEN	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
#6	RULEBOOK The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	Location and Character Changes	p.26	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
#7	RULEBOOK The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	BENNINGS · MACREADY · NORRIS · CLARK · DR. BLAIR · WINDOWS · …	p.18	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
#8	RULEBOOK The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	DARKNESS · Escape of the Humans and Winning the Game	p.26	0.029412 (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	#25	0.012658 (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
#2	RULEBOOK The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	DORMITORY · GENERATOR ROOM · AVAILABLE ACTIONS: · KENNEL · KITCHEN (and PANTRY)	p.21	#16	0.025827 (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
#3	RULEBOOK The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	THIRD ACTION CARD · FOURTH ACTION CARD	p.13	#23	0.013158 (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 The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	FIRST ACTION CARD · SECOND ACTION CARD	p.12	#19	0.014085 (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 The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	WAREHOUSE · AVAILABLE ACTIONS: · WEATHER STATION · SETUP: None.	p.22	#39	0.010204 (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)	Location and Character Changes	p.26	#6	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	Setup	p.4	#30	0.011236 (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
#8	RULEBOOK The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	SPECIAL ACTION · ENCOUNTERS	p.8	#1	0.046671 (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 Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	4.2 - EXECUTE CHARACTER ACTIONS · COOPERATION BONUS	p.11	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 145 ms · first delta 1383 ms · total 3948 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 1396 ms · retrieval 145 ms · ask 2403 ms · gateway work 2552 ms · total 3948 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3305
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 206
tok/sec: 201.4 tok/sec — 206 output tokens in 1.023 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 30s ago)
gateway schema (read from the running child): schema head 0042_definer_search_path (live revision not readable by this principal)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 5h, 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 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.