Labyrinth Additional Tables

From Bravo Fleet

The Labyrinth Additional Tables are a story generation mechanism for the Fleet Action of 2024, Labyrinth. Members should consult the Labyrinth Campaign Guide on how to best use this resource.

These tables can be used in conjunction with the main Campaign Table. They add to the randomness of story development by helping members flesh out planets they may visit, or determine which antagonist they encounter. While some results in the Campaign Table direct members to these additional tables, their use is, as always, optional. The list may also be used for inspiration.

Random Complication

Sometimes, you just need to throw a spanner in the works. This table is designed to work with any story at any point in the arc. It helps if you want to add an additional twist or make the mission harder for your characters. You may have to do some work to implement the result in a story-appropriate manner.

  1. Your ship’s CO is incapacitated, forcing someone else to take command.
  2. A key system on the ship or piece of field equipment is damaged. It must be repaired before it can be used.
  3. An important piece of information turns out to be wrong, such as a key sensor reading being incorrect, or something your crew have been told has been a lie.
  4. Something - an item, a piece of technology, a resource - is essential to overcoming an obstacle, but acquiring it is difficult. It may be hard to get to, or in the hands of someone who doesn’t want to give it.
  5. An unexpected environmental hazard, in space or on a planet, makes the task at hand more difficult.
  6. A key character has gone missing. This could be a crewmember, or someone your ship has encountered. Regardless, finding them is essential to success.
  7. A critical misunderstanding hampers progress. This could be between the crew and an alien, or could be between crewmembers.
  8. A new, hostile force enters the situation (roll on the Antagonists table if necessary).
  9. The crew encounters a barrier of some kind that stops the characters from getting where they need to. This could be a literal barrier, the complexity of transporters not working, a phenomenon that needs navigating, or something else.
  10. Two (or more) characters refuse to work together, though success is contingent on their cooperation.
  11. Your characters pick up a distress call. Who is in need of help?

Random Planet

Multiple prompts from the Campaign Table direct your ship to encounter a new world. This table can help you flesh out what about the planet is noteworthy from a storytelling perspective. This does not flesh out the planet’s landscape or biome, or necessarily specify if it is inhabited and by whom.

  1. A planet with a pre-warp civilisation. Complete your mission while maintaining the Prime Directive.
  2. Ancient ruins of a long-dead civilisation are detected on the surface.
  3. The indigenous people of this planet have highly strange customs that are alien and difficult to navigate.
  4. An M-class planet with highly dangerous surface conditions, such as teeming with hostile fauna or volatile weather patterns.
  5. This planet and its population (who may or may not be sapient) are in the midst of a crisis. This may be, for eg, a natural disaster or a cataclysmic war.
  6. Something about this planet means your characters cannot trust their senses. They have odd visions, or struggle to control their emotions. Is there telepathy at work? Hallucinogenic flora? Or something else?
  7. This world is under threat from outsiders, who may seek conquest or resources (Use the Random Species or Antagonists tables to determine who is the aggressor)

Random Planetary Biome

Multiple prompts from the Campaign Table direct your ship to encounter a new world. This table can help you flesh out the planet’s landscape or biome, but will not always specify if it is inhabited and by whom.

  1. An aquatic planet with few landmasses and a diverse range of cetacean-life and fish-life that may be sentient or non-sentient.  The planet may be one deep ocean, may have astounding natural coral reefs to explore, or may have been developed with complex undersea cities.
  2. A tundra planet that's technically capable of sustaining life, even though the surface is an icy wasteland, prone to blizzards.  There may be sapient life living in caverns beneath the surface or the planet may only be home of mindless JJ Abrams-style monsters.
  3. A desert planet, offering little precipitation or vegetation. This may appear as sand dunes, as stony plains, as rocky mountains, or however else your imagination dictates.
  4. A Brigadoon-type planet that alternates between normal space and another non-corporeal dimension at a rhythm of your choosing.
  5. A planet demonstrating Hodgkin's Law of Parallel Planetary Development, offering a parallel in environment and population to a time period of Earth's past.
  6. A temperate forest planet, dominated by trees, that looks suspiciously like Vancouver, Canada.  These planets have a great biodiversity, including a wealth of insect, bird and mammal lifeforms.
  7. A demon-class planet, with temperatures in excess of 500 kelvin, barren landscapes, volcanoes galore, and a toxic atmosphere.  Perhaps the inhospitable environment can be navigated with shuttles and environmental suits, or perhaps the planet is an irradiated husk that can kill any lifeforms that comes near.
  8. A Class D planet that's little more than a lifeless rock in space.  However, your ship finds an orbital or planetary starbase that may be aligned with a Random Antagonist, Random Species or an entirely new species altogether.
  9. A rainforest planet where the plantlife grows so tall and so densely that an entire ecosystem of flora and fauna exists among the treetops.  An entirely separate ecosystem of rot and ruin thrives at the forest floor where absolutely no sunlight pierces through the tense treetops.
  10. A gem world.  While the planet has tropical, temperate and boreal climates, the landmasses are all formed of organic crystal.  From the mountains to the coral reefs, all made from crystals of different hues and reflective properties.  Even the oceans have the properties of liquid glass.
  11. A world of perpetual sandstorms.  Any landmasses, artificial structures or flora have been decimated by erosion.  The exact cadence of sandstorms can be adjusted, depending on if you're telling a story of tension or a story of ecological horror.  The standstorms may also whip up other precipitation, a hail of boulders, or lightning storms, whatever captures your imagination.
  12. A graveyard planet.  Roll again to determine the other features of the biome.

Random Phenomenon

Multiple prompts from the Campaign Table direct your character to some sort of phenomenon in deep space. This table can help specify what that is. It can also help you flesh out any kind of challenge. Rather than merely stellar anomalies, this table covers a variety of encounters with anything short of sapient life that your ship might face in deep space.

  1. A nebula with properties that challenge your ship; perhaps interference limits sensors, transporters, or other ship’s systems. It may be worthy of study, or an obstacle to survive.
  2. An uncharted asteroid field. It may be an obstacle to navigate, or contain precious minerals worth recovering or studying.
  3. A stellar nursery. The density of the clouds may challenge your ship in navigation, or it may be worthy of study.
  4. A cosmic radiation or ion storm. This may be a challenge to navigate or even survive, or be worthy of study.
  5. An exoplanet, or rogue planet, untethered to any star, worthy of examination or perhaps with a disruptive gravitic pull.
  6. A construction of some sort in deep space, created by a powerful sapient life. For example, the Dyson sphere encountered in TNG: Relics. Is it dangerous? Should it be studied further? Where are the creators?
  7. Stellar fauna that could be worthy of study, or has taken an interest in your ship that may be inconvenient.
  8. An area of space where it is prohibitively difficult to maintain a warp field. Sensors detect damage to subspace. Was this a naturally-occurring change, or the consequence of technology, such as the deployment of an isolytic weapon or a side-effect from a propulsion experiment.
  9. An uninhabited planet that isn't where it's supposed to be.
  10. A graviton ellipse. While starships would be wise to avoid the gravimetric distortion radiating from a graviton ellipse when it surfaces out of subspace, they are immediately drawn to a starship's electromagnetic fields. Often the artefacts of ancient space travellers can be found in the core of the ellipse, where no gravimetric distortions are experienced.

Random Underspace Effect

Many ships will travel through Underspace during the course of Labyrinth. But navigating to one’s destination is difficult, as is surviving it. This table provides complications and challenges a ship may face in Underspace. It can be used for any story, or in conjunction with a Campaign Table result directing you to an Underspace-based mission. In the latter case, some results (such as debris) may be repetitive; use this table for inspiration or reroll if needed.

  1. Your ship gets more lost - they thought they were making progress through Underspace to get to their destination, but have ended up in the wrong place. It will take time and work by the science team to find the path.
  2. A debris field floating through the tunnel. This must be carefully and safely navigated, but also may contain wreckage worthy of study.
  3. Turbulence caused by subspace ripples or gravitic anomalies. These localised fluctuations bring disruption your ship must navigate to not get lost or be damaged. They can happen very suddenly, hitting your ship without warning, or be detected up ahead as a challenge to prepare for.
  4. Time dilation caused by the ripples in subspace of the tunnels. This leads to discrepancies in how quickly or how slowly time passes aboard the ship. This could be a major problem, with entire sections experiencing time differently, or a subtler problem throwing off the ship’s computer systems. To escape, ships may need to carefully navigate or simply weather the problem until it levels out.
  5. Electromagnetic interference. This causes disruption to communications, navigation, or sensor systems. Your ship may experience erratic system responses that might make it harder to navigate or complete the task at hand.
  6. Energy drainage. The ambient energy levels within Underspace fluctuate unpredictably, draining power from your ship’s systems and leaving it vulnerable to sudden power failures or malfunctions.
  7. Micro-debris field. Spotted ahead or coming unexpectedly, debris from long-lost ships are in your way. This will need safely navigating or may cause your ship damage.

Random Ship Damage Table

This table provides outcomes for if your ship is damaged in some way. It does not specify how this has happened, but if your ship runs into serious trouble, you can use this table to randomise the nature of that damage. Feel free to increase or decrease the severity of the damage depending on your story.

  1. Your ship's engines have been severely damaged, estimating at least a day to repair, leaving you dead in space until such time.
  2. Your ship's weapons system has overloaded, causing them to go offline for at least an hour.
  3. Your ship's EPS grid has undergone a significant overload and has entered safety mode as a result, limiting your ship's overall power. This forces you to choose between which systems can operate at the same time and none of them at full power.
  4. Life support is critically damaged with an expected repair of 12 hours, just time before it would start affecting the crew, but the worsening life support will also slow down repairs if not properly managed.
  5. Your ship's internal forcefields are offline, meaning any hull breach will lead to decompression of compartments and entire sections of the deck.
  6. Your ship's subspace communication transceivers have overloaded, requiring multiple crew members to repair until ship-to-ship communication becomes possible again.
  7. Your ship's impulse engines and thrusters are damaged, making warp travel possible, but precise maneuvering will be inhibited.
  8. Your ship's replicator systems are offline, requiring the crew to eat meal-replacement rations for two days.
  9. Your ship's artificial gravity generators are offline in the saucer section only, requiring 12 hours of dedicated repairs by engineering crew until artificial gravity can be restored.
  10. Your ship's warp nacelles have sustained moderate damage, limiting your ship to warp speeds below warp 5.
  11. Your ship's EPS grid experiences a limited number of critical overloads, causing explosions from the flight control console on the bridge, in two science labs, from the large display in sickbay, and in the chief engineer's office in main engineering.

Random Antagonists

This table helps you choose a possible antagonist to be encountered in your story. Not all results are people who will always or certainly be hostile on sight. It is up to you to justify why, for example, a Cardassian ship may be ready to fight. The antagonist may not necessarily be violent, merely opposed to your mission in some way and could act as a rival rather than enemy.

  1. Klingon Empire
  2. Cardassian Union
  3. Gorn
  4. Romulan Free State
  5. Forces of an independent Romulan warlord
  6. Breen
  7. Tzenkethi
  8. Kzinti
  9. Talarian
  10. Tholian
  11. Pirates
  12. Vidiians
  13. Kazon Collective
  14. Species 8472
  15. Devore Imperium
  16. Hirogen
  17. Borg
  18. Malon Cooperative
  19. A non-sapient planetary or interstellar life that is unduly aggressive
  20. Other (Sheliak, Dosi)

Random Species

If you need a random species from somewhere in the galaxy to introduce to your story, use these tables. They are split between ‘local’ - species and powers often encountered by Starfleet ships - and ‘distant.’ You can of course skip to either table as suits your story.

For a larger and completely randomised list, with little to no differentiation of region or political significance, use this table: 1.

  1. Local (Alpha or Beta Quadrant)
  2. Distant (Delta or Gamma Quadrant)
  3. First Contact (a new, non-canon species)

Local

  1. Breen
  2. Cardassian
  3. Ferengi
  4. Gorn
  5. Klingon
  6. Orion
  7. Romulan Free State
  8. Romulan Republic
  9. Pakled
  10. Tholian
  11. Tzenkethi
  12. Talarian
  13. Other (Sheliak, Tamarian, Kzinti, etc)

Distant

  1. Devore
  2. Haakonian Order
  3. Hierarchy Central Command
  4. Hirogen
  5. Kadi
  6. Kazon Collective
  7. Malon Cooperative
  8. Ocampa
  9. Talaxian
  10. Turei
  11. Vidiian
  12. Dominion
  13. Other (Tosk, Kraylor, etc)

First Contact Table

Many stories may call for you to encounter a new species for the first time. This table does not craft the species from scratch for you, such as determining their name or (necessarily) their biology. It instead provides the dramatic hook that makes encountering this species interesting from a dramatic or storytelling perspective. Results may not always suit prompts (some specify conditions of their homeworld as a key facet, while the prompt may call for a deep space encounter far from home); as always feel free to reinterpret or reroll results as suits your story.

  1. They are in the earliest days of warp travel and could be contacted without breaking the Prime Directive, but are still beset with societal conflict and challenges.
  2. They are nomadic, with no set home either by cultural choice or ancient conflict.
  3. They are telepathic and struggle with the idea of not reading the thoughts of those around them.
  4. Their language defies the Universal Translator.
  5. They are on a holy crusade, undeterred by your presence against their determination.
  6. They're non-humanoid. Although they are technologically advanced and searching for other sentient life in the galaxy, they are fundamentally disgusted and disturbed by the humanoid form.
  7. While they are warp-capable, they do not have sufficient resources to create an extensive fleet. Their planet is in immediate danger of climate collapse or otherwise threatened by solar flares or asteroids. How much can and should your crew assist?
  8. They interact with one another entirely through virtual reality technology and appear to be on the brink of escalating into a hive mind.
  9. While negotiating first contact, members of your crew become infected with an airborne virus that the transporter biofilters can detect but don't have the capacity to eliminate from your crew members' bloodstreams.
  10. The planet is ruled by an oligarchy with representatives from each of the planet's landmasses. Upon negotiating with your crew, the oligarchy is split 50/50 on if they desire continued communication with the Federation.
  11. They are also engaged in first contact negotiations with a Random Antagonist.