Campaign Table Guide
Campaign Tables are a plot generation tool for writing campaigns. Using a series of tables, members can randomly generate their overall mission premise, as well as key details such as the locations their stories occur and the challenges and allies encountered on the way. These random tables provide each member with a unique story that both cleaves to the themes of the campaign while giving space for creative decisions. Campaign Tables can also be used as a selection of story options, where writers use them for inspiration or choose their preferred result.
Tables have been used for the following campaigns:
Using a Tables
Members may use any means they wish to randomly generate a result on the table, from dice to a random number generator. Calculator.net has a simple program allowing members to set the lowest and highest possible results. Simply generate a number, compare it to the table, and you have your result!
Results include story prompts or flesh out details for your plot. They may direct you to another table. Note down your result, advance to that next table, and continue until you have generated enough results for your story.
No writer is compelled to only use randomly generated results. As stated, members may use the tables for inspiration or choose their preferred results. Some may use a mix. It is also perfectly acceptable to simply reroll, keeping a certain randomness while rejecting results that may be unwanted.
This last part is critical. The purpose of the Campaign Table, as well as offering dynamic storytelling options, is to provide surprise and twists even for the writer. But it is always possible that results over the course of the whole FA could be repetitive, or add a new dynamic that doesn’t fit, or are simply not to the writer’s taste. Members should never feel bound by an undesirable result. If there’s something different on the table you like more, choose it!
You can be as secretive or open about your results as you like, just as you can be secretive or open about your story plans under any other circumstances.
Types of Table
There are two kinds of tables: the main Campaign Table and the Additional Tables.
Campaign Table
The Campaign Table is the first set of tables members should go to. The Campaign Table generates a plotline or story prompt relevant to the main campaign story. It may span inciting events, major plotlines, and exciting resolutions. Different campaigns will have different tables; some may offer a series of prompts for a main story conceit, with other tables fleshing out details specific to certain themes and results. Others may offer branching paths, developing a whole story arc.
Additional Tables
While the Campaign Table generates mission prompts, the Additional Tables flesh out the detail. A generated mission prompt might bring a ship into conflict with an enemy - but who is that enemy? Where is this conflict taking place? This is where the Additional Tables come into play.
There are a variety of tables which can be used to determine multiple details about a plot. They can help you decide on an antagonist, generate a whole new planet, or explain what about a whole new alien species makes an interaction challenging.
Some Campaign Table results direct you to a specific Additional Table. Others are there for members to use as much as suits them. Some, like the Random Complication table, can be consulted if a member wants to add a little more depth or challenge to their plotline.
As with all tables, the Additional Tables can be used as a list of options to be chosen from.
Interpreting Results
Once again, nothing on the various tables is set in stone. A story must abide by the main mission briefing for the campaign, but results can be changed or adjusted as members wish. Results can be rerolled, details of the results can be changed, or the desired option from the table can simply be chosen instead.
This can happen for a number of reasons. The Random Antagonists table might set your ship against a Star Trek villain you don’t particularly care about, or have already featured plenty in your stories. You might resolve one prompt and wish to roll for another, only to receive a response that's either far too similar to what you've already done, or far too drastic a change. If a result doesn’t make sense, reject it and start again, or simply edit it.
You can ask for help in the #stories channel of the Discord server if you’re not sure how to put results together - but if your results aren’t generating a story prompt for you on their own, then that suggests something doesn’t fit. There is a difference between getting the opinions of other members, and asking them to write your plot for you! It is best to come to the community with specific questions about your results rather than simply providing people with a list of results and asking someone else to interpret.
Likewise, while the Intelligence Office is on hand to help understand and navigate the Campaign Table, you do not need the IO’s permission to change your results or reinterpret them. If you’re not sure a change is appropriate, check the pertinent mission briefing and other relevant fleet canon wiki articles - they will lay out the boundaries of the campaign’s events. Likewise, the IO is not here to tell you how to write any generated mission prompt.
Examples
To demonstrate how one can use the table and then turn these results into a plot prompt, here are some examples of a Labyrinth Campaign Table in action. Please note that these and the chosen ship names are illustrative and are not indicative of any planned stories.
USS Constellation, Phase 1
In this phase, the Captain rolls a 3 on the ‘Inciting Incident’ table: ‘An Underspace aperture has manifested somewhere unexpected and is causing phenomena disruptive to the local area.’ From there, they proceed to the ‘Local Underspace Table’ and roll a 4: ‘Debris from Underspace has emerged from the aperture.’
This presents a storyline about the Constellation investigating debris from Underspace drifting into the local area, which could be about the curiosities of scientific investigation, uncovering untold mysteries from debris that could be centuries old. Or that debris could be potentially dangerous, perhaps containing unstable technology that might provide a risk to the nearby area. It is, however, a very open storyline at this point.
To give themselves more guidance and perhaps provide the key conflict of this arc, the Captain rolls on the ‘Random Complication’ table, and gets a 7: ‘A critical miscommunication hampers progress.’ To add another faction into this situation, they roll on the Random Species table, picking the ‘Local’ table to make sure they get a result which is appropriate to being in Federation space, and roll a 12: ‘Talarian.’
Now, a more dramatic conflict is arising: the aperture could be near the Talarian border, and investigation of it, and the debris emerging, has triggered a potentially dangerous clash with the Talarians. But what is the critical miscommunication that has caused this? They decide the Talarians have assumed Starfleet are trying to control the aperture, rather than investigate the debris, and consider this to be a potential threat. This results in the following mission prompt:
The USS Constellation detects the opening of an Underspace aperture in neutral space near the Talarian border. On investigating, they find debris from long-dead Underspace travellers is emerging, debris that must be contained and studied. Local Talarian forces also investigate, but a miscommunication leads to them believing Starfleet seek to control the aperture for themselves, which could endanger the Talarian Republic’s borders. Can the Constellation convince them their motives are purely peaceful, when withdrawing could mean leaving the potentially dangerous debris behind?