Ruling — The Networks: Primetime

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: The Networks: Primetimebg-72321-en-1e

For standard multiplayer setup:

1. Place the scoreboard to one side of the play area, using the side that lists 'Network, Moguls, & Execs' for expansions.[1]

2. Find the setup board for your player count and connect it to the genre board.[1]

3. Create supply piles of cash tokens where players can reach.[1]

4. Separately shuffle the star, ad, and network decks and place them near the genre board.[1]

5. Create the show deck by separately shuffling the A shows and B shows, then stacking the A shows on top of the B shows, facedown; with 3 players, remove all B shows marked 4 from the game, and with 1-2 players, remove all B shows marked 4 and all A shows marked 3.[1]

6. Each player chooses a player board and takes 11 marker cubes in their color.[1]

7. Each player takes 3 Starter shows with their network logo on the back and places them faceup to the right of their player board, in any order, and places a marker cube on the top row of each show's season track (on the right).[1]

8. The player who most recently watched a show takes the 1st player token.[1]

9. Each player takes the starting cash listed on the setup board for their position in clockwise turn order, with the 1st player taking the lowest amount, the 2nd player taking the next-lowest, and so on.[1]

10. Refer to the card display section of the setup board to deal the indicated number of shows, stars, ads, and network cards faceup in the middle to create the display.[2]

For solo setup:

1. Follow normal setup using the 1-2 player setup board.[3]

2. Shuffle the 15-card solo deck.[3]

3. Choose a single marker cube of a different color than yours to act as the solo opponent's pass marker.[3]

4. Randomly decide whether you or your opponent gets the 1st player marker.[3]

5. Take starting cash based on whether you are 1st or 2nd player.[3]

[1] RULEBOOK The Networks: Primetime — Rulebook · p.2 · Solo Development: · GAME SETUP

[2] RULEBOOK The Networks: Primetime — Rulebook · p.3 · GAME SETUP · BEGINNER PILOT SEASON · PILOT SEASON

[3] RULEBOOK The Networks: Primetime — Rulebook · p.14 · SHOW & STAR EFFECTS · SETUP · OPPONENT TURNS · PASSING · END OF ROUND · SOLO SCORING

That settles it — whose turn was it?

🔧 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 168 ms · ask 3584 ms · total 3756 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 3756 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 2, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "Bleed: 3mm 2 1 Place the scoreboard to one side of the play area. Note: The side that lists 'Network, Moguls, & Execs' is used for expansions. 2 Find the setup board for your player count and connect it to the genre board. 3 Create supply piles of cash tokens where players can reach. 4 Separately sh", "headingPath": "Solo Development: · GAME SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 849}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.048652, "snippet": "Bleed: 3mm 10 Shuffle the Pilot Season deck and deal each player 4 cards. Each player follows the steps on the right to choose which cards they keep. Afterward, return all unselected Pilot Season cards to the game box. 11 Refer to the card display section of the setup board. Deal the indicated numbe", "headingPath": "GAME SETUP · BEGINNER PILOT SEASON · PILOT SEASON", "sharpsignalDocId": 849}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.047131, "snippet": "Bleed: 3mm Follow normal setup, using the 1-2 player setup board. To set up your solo opponent, shuffle the 15-card solo deck and choose a single marker cube of a different color than yours to act as their pass marker. Your opponent does not use any other components. Randomly decide whether you or y", "headingPath": "SHOW & STAR EFFECTS · SETUP · OPPONENT TURNS · PASSING · END OF ROUND · SOLO SCORING", "sharpsignalDocId": 849}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Your lineup is where you place the shows currently running on your network. Each of the 3 timeslots in your lineup can hold 1 show. When you produce a new show, you must place it in your lineup and cancel the show it replaces (pg. 8). Your lineup has 3 timeslots: daytime , primetime , and late night", "headingPath": "a LINEUP · b TIMESLOTS · c GREEN ROOM · d RERUNS · e ROUND SCORING TRACK", "sharpsignalDocId": 849}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "You can attach stars and ads to your shows to score more viewers and generate ad income. Whenever you attach a card to a show, slide it behind the show with the viewers and income/ expenses showing on the right . The attachment slot icons on each show card tell you how many stars and ads you can att", "headingPath": "Attaching Stars & Ads to Shows · GAME ROUNDS · Actions", "sharpsignalDocId": 849}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "4 a b c e With 4 players, the display is made up of 7 shows, 5 stars, 5 ads, and 4 network cards. Shows how much cash each player starts with, based on initial turn order. Lists the faceup cards that are dealt to the display at the start of each round. When a player passes during the round, they pla", "headingPath": "PILOT SEASON · KEY CONCEPTS GAME BOARDS & DISPLAY · a STARTING CASH · b DISPLAY REFERENCE · c PASS TRACK · d GENRE TRACKS · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 849}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "10 If a show has 1 or more wild slots, you may replace a star or ad attached to it with a card of the opposite type, as long as the show ends up with a set of attachments that match its slots. When you pass, place a marker cube in the leftmost column of the pass track that doesn't have a cube yet. C", "headingPath": "Example: · Replacing Cards in Wild Slots · PASSING · Passing Last · END OF ROUND", "sharpsignalDocId": 849}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "In multiplayer games, experienced players can opt to take their turns in variable order, based on their scores for the previous round. This makes drafting more strategic, but can significantly increase playtime, especially at larger player counts. For the first round, choose a 1 st player and assign", "headingPath": "CLASSIC TURNS VARIANT", "sharpsignalDocId": 849}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Solo Development: · GAME SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 849}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAME SETUP · BEGINNER PILOT SEASON · PILOT SEASON", "sharpsignalDocId": 849}, {"page": 14, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SHOW & STAR EFFECTS · SETUP · OPPONENT TURNS · PASSING · END OF ROUND · SOLO SCORING", "sharpsignalDocId": 849}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 849 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 849 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 0.90457 of 1488 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Oct 24, 2026 23:10 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 Networks: Primetime — Rulebook (corpus doc 849)	Solo Development: · GAME SETUP	p.2	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 The Networks: Primetime — Rulebook (corpus doc 849)	GAME SETUP · BEGINNER PILOT SEASON · PILOT SEASON	p.3	0.048652 (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 Networks: Primetime — Rulebook (corpus doc 849)	SHOW & STAR EFFECTS · SETUP · OPPONENT TURNS · PASSING · END OF ROUND · SOLO SCORING	p.14	0.047131 (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 Networks: Primetime — Rulebook (corpus doc 849)	a LINEUP · b TIMESLOTS · c GREEN ROOM · d RERUNS · e ROUND SCORING TRACK	p.5	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 Networks: Primetime — Rulebook (corpus doc 849)	Attaching Stars & Ads to Shows · GAME ROUNDS · Actions	p.7	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 Networks: Primetime — Rulebook (corpus doc 849)	PILOT SEASON · KEY CONCEPTS GAME BOARDS & DISPLAY · a STARTING CASH · b DISPLAY REFERENCE · c PASS TRACK · d GENRE TRACKS · …	p.4	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 Networks: Primetime — Rulebook (corpus doc 849)	Example: · Replacing Cards in Wild Slots · PASSING · Passing Last · END OF ROUND	p.10	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 Networks: Primetime — Rulebook (corpus doc 849)	CLASSIC TURNS VARIANT	p.14	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 21 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 Networks: Primetime — Rulebook (corpus doc 849)	Solo Development: · GAME SETUP	p.2	#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
#2	RULEBOOK The Networks: Primetime — Rulebook (corpus doc 849)	SHOW & STAR EFFECTS · SETUP · OPPONENT TURNS · PASSING · END OF ROUND · SOLO SCORING	p.14	#3	0.047131 (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 The Networks: Primetime — Rulebook (corpus doc 849)	Example: · Replacing Cards in Wild Slots · PASSING · Passing Last · END OF ROUND	p.10	#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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK The Networks: Primetime — Rulebook (corpus doc 849)	Attaching Stars & Ads to Shows · GAME ROUNDS · Actions	p.7	#5	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
#5	RULEBOOK The Networks: Primetime — Rulebook (corpus doc 849)	PILOT SEASON · KEY CONCEPTS GAME BOARDS & DISPLAY · a STARTING CASH · b DISPLAY REFERENCE · c PASS TRACK · d GENRE TRACKS · …	p.4	#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
#6	RULEBOOK The Networks: Primetime — Rulebook (corpus doc 849)	COMPONENTS · OVERVIEW · CREDITS · Graphic Design: · Solo Development:	p.1	#10	0.02886 (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 Networks: Primetime — Rulebook (corpus doc 849)	CLASSIC TURNS VARIANT	p.14	#8	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK The Networks: Primetime — Rulebook (corpus doc 849)	GAME SETUP · BEGINNER PILOT SEASON · PILOT SEASON	p.3	#2	0.048652 (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 Networks: Primetime — Rulebook (corpus doc 849)	Solo Development: · GAME SETUP	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK The Networks: Primetime — Rulebook (corpus doc 849)	GAME SETUP · BEGINNER PILOT SEASON · PILOT SEASON	p.3	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK The Networks: Primetime — Rulebook (corpus doc 849)	SHOW & STAR EFFECTS · SETUP · OPPONENT TURNS · PASSING · END OF ROUND · SOLO SCORING	p.14	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 168 ms · first delta 1329 ms · total 3756 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 168 ms · ask 3584 ms · gateway work 3756 ms · total 3756 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3325
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 474
tok/sec: 201.9 tok/sec — 474 output tokens in 2.348 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 29s 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 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 784), 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.