How to Run Session Zero for a Syndicate Campaign

Quark, wiping down the bar before a dangerous proposition

"Before we discuss terms, I need to know one thing: what kind of business are you in? The kind where people get hurt, or the kind where people get hurt but nobody admits it?"

This guide shows you how to run a Session Zero for a Star Trek: Syndicate campaign so that your table enters play with shared expectations, clear safety boundaries, and a crew concept built to survive the darkness ahead.

When to use this: Before the first session of any new Syndicate campaign — or when bringing new players into an ongoing one.
You will need: This guide, blank character sheets, a Heat tracker template, and ideally 2–3 hours of uninterrupted table time.
Time required: 2–3 hours for established groups; budget up to 4 for new groups or players unfamiliar with morally complex play.

This is not a tutorial

This guide assumes you know how to run a tabletop RPG. If this is your first time running STA, work through the STA 2e introductory material first. 📖 See STA Core Rulebook, Chapter 1 for foundational GM procedures.

Why Session Zero matters more here

Syndicate campaigns involve moral compromise, criminal activity, psychological pressure, and consequences that follow characters across sessions. The stakes for getting alignment wrong are higher than in a standard Trek campaign. If you want the reasoning behind this, see The Briefing Room: Why Session Zero Is Non-Negotiable for Dark Campaigns.

Before the Session: Prepare Your GM Brief

Do this alone, before anyone sits down.

1. Identify your campaign's rough shape

You don't need a full plot — you need a premise strong enough to pitch. Write down:

The inciting situation: What pulls the crew together? A job, a debt, a shared enemy, an opportunity too good to ignore?
The central tension: What moral question will the campaign keep returning to? (Loyalty vs. survival? Profit vs. principle? Justice vs. law?)
Your intended Flair: Which of the six Adventure Flairs feels closest to what you want to run? You don't need to lock this — it will be decided at the table — but have an opinion ready.

2. Pre-screen your own content comfort level

Know what you are not willing to run before you ask your players what they won't play. Common hard boundaries for GMs include:

Graphic depictions of violence against children
Sexual content above a specific threshold
Real-world trauma analogues that hit too close to personal experience

Make a private list. You'll need it in Step 5.

3. Prepare the safety tool handout

Before players arrive, write up a short reference card (physical or digital) with:

How to use the X-card at your table (see Step 3)
Your table's check-in phrase (something low-key — "how are we doing?" is fine)
Where to find the post-session debrief prompt (you can drop it in chat after the session)

At the Table: The Eight Steps

Step 1: Frame the Session Zero as a Job Briefing

Open the session before anyone picks up dice.

Tell the players directly:

"Before we play, we're going to spend time making sure everyone knows what kind of game this is, what the rules are at this table — not the mechanical rules, the human ones — and what kind of crew we're building together. This is the job briefing. Everything runs smoother if we do this right."

Do not apologize for spending time on this. Do not frame it as unusual. It is not unusual — it is professional.

If players are eager to get to character creation, acknowledge that and tell them they'll get there. This step comes first.

Step 2: Deliver the Pitch

Give players the campaign premise you prepared. Keep it to 3–5 minutes. Hit these points:

The world: Where are we operating? (Station, sector, post-war, fringe space, occupied territory?)
The situation: What is the crew's starting position? Desperate contractors? Established operators? New recruits to a larger organisation?
The tone: "This isn't Starfleet. Nobody's going to give you a medal. You're going to make choices that cost you something, and the campaign is about what you're willing to pay."
The question: Name the central moral tension. This hooks players into the right headspace before they build characters.

Then open the floor. Take questions. Adjust your premise based on what the group responds to — this is collaborative worldbuilding, not a pitch deck.

Let players push back on the premise

If three players light up at one element and two go quiet, that's data. The premise that excites the whole table will produce better play than the premise you arrived with. Be willing to revise.

Step 3: Deploy Safety Tools

This is not optional. Syndicate campaigns involve content that can land differently than anyone expects — including experienced players.

The X-Card

Explain the X-card clearly and without embarrassment:

"If anything that happens in play — a scene, a description, a direction the story is going — makes you uncomfortable enough that you want it to stop, you tap the X-card. We don't need a reason. We don't need an explanation. We skip or rewind, no questions asked."

The X-card can be a physical card on the table, a message in the chat (for online play), or simply the word "X" spoken aloud. What matters is that everyone knows it exists, that it will be respected, and that using it does not require justification.

Establish this before anyone feels they need it

Players who learn about the X-card mid-scene feel awkward using it. Establishing it here, in a neutral moment, makes it a standard tool rather than an emergency brake.

Lines and Veils

Run a Lines and Veils discussion. This is a two-minute conversation that prevents hours of discomfort.

Lines are content that does not appear in the game at all — not even off-screen.
Veils are content that may happen in the narrative but is handled at a fade-to-black level — implied, not described.

Ask each player to name at least one Line and one Veil. Record them. Common examples for Syndicate:

Category	Example Line	Example Veil
Violence	Torture described in graphic physical detail	Off-screen interrogation with implied methods
Relationships	Sexual content involving NPCs in positions of power over PCs	Romance and intimacy — fade to black
Substances	Characters driven to addiction as a core mechanic	Substance use present in the setting but not dramatised
Trauma	Childhood abuse depicted in scene	History of trauma referenced, not dramatised
Real-world events	Direct analogues to specific real tragedies	Thematic echoes of conflict or loss

You do not need consensus on every item — you need clarity. If one player names something as a Line, it becomes a table Line. No majority vote. No negotiation.

If two players' Veils conflict — one wants something kept off-screen, another wants to play through it — default to the more restrictive option. The session-ending discomfort of ignoring a Veil is never worth the dramatic payoff.

Establish how check-ins will work during play. Three approaches, pick one:

The Simple Pause: At any natural scene break, you say "how are we doing?" Players can answer honestly or pass.
The Traffic Light: Players can say "green" (good), "yellow" (slow down or redirect), or "red" (stop) at any time, without needing to explain.
Post-Scene Text: For online groups, a dedicated channel or direct message where players can flag discomfort without breaking immersion at the table.

Tell players which system you're using. The system matters less than that everyone knows it's there.

Step 4: Choose Your Adventure Flair

The Adventure Flair is the tonal anchor for your campaign. It tells the whole table what kind of story they're signing up for — and what kind of characters they should build.

Present the six Flairs. Give each one a sentence and point players toward the full descriptions in The Briefing Room: About the Flairs.

Flair	The Question It Asks	Reference Touchstones
The Heist	Can the crew pull off the impossible job?	Ocean's Eleven, Leverage
The Shadow Op	What are you willing to do when no one is watching?	Splinter Cell, le Carré
The Family	Who do you protect when everything else burns?	The Godfather, DS9's Bajoran arc
The Descent	How far is too far — and did you already cross it?	Breaking Bad, Macbeth
The Streets	How do you survive a system that isn't built for you?	The Wire, Babylon 5's Downbelow
The Conspiracy	Who actually runs things — and can you use that against them?	House of Cards, The X-Files

How to choose

Give players 5 minutes to discuss. You're looking for:

A primary Flair that most players are drawn to — this sets the campaign's dominant tone.
Up to one secondary Flair that the group finds interesting as a contrast or escalation.

More than two Flairs becomes unfocused. A campaign that is simultaneously a Heist, a Descent, and a Family drama has no centre. Choose the two that create the most interesting tension between them — or commit to one and run it clean.

If players are split between options, ask: "Which of these would make you most excited to show up to session two?" That's your answer.

Record the chosen Flair(s). They'll inform character creation in Step 6 and your GM prep going forward.

Step 5: Establish Tone and Moral Limits

This is the most important conversation in Session Zero.

Syndicate campaigns sit somewhere on a spectrum between gritty and consequential and genuinely dark. Neither end is wrong — but the whole table needs to be in the same place.

The Darkness Dial

Ask the group to place themselves on this spectrum:

Setting	What it means in play
Grey	Moral ambiguity, double-dealing, and compromise — but nobody gets truly destroyed. Characters can fail, suffer, and grow. Consequences are real but survivable.
Dark	Real loss, permanent consequences, and corruption arcs. Characters can be broken. The world does not bend for the protagonists. Not everyone makes it out.
Brutal	Unrelenting pressure, systemic hopelessness, and the possibility of irredeemable outcomes. Run this with care and experienced players only.

Most Syndicate campaigns land at Dark. If you're new to morally complex play, start at Grey and let the stakes escalate naturally. You can always push darker as trust builds at the table.

If players are split between Grey and Brutal, start at Dark and calibrate from there. Do not start at Brutal and try to walk it back — that's the wrong direction.

Redemption vs. Corruption

Ask the table directly:

"Is this a campaign where characters can find redemption — where the arc bends toward something better — or is this a campaign about how good intentions corrode under pressure?"

Both are valid. Neither is more sophisticated than the other. What matters is that the table agrees.

If the answer is redemption possible: Build in release valves. Let small wins land. Don't make every choice a trap.
If the answer is descent is the story: Signal that clearly. Players who build optimistic characters in a descent campaign will get hurt — and not in a fun way.

A crew split between a player who wants redemption and one who wants descent can work, but both players need to know that's the dynamic going in.

Name the accountability norm

Syndicate characters do bad things. The table needs to agree on what accountability looks like:

In-fiction accountability: Characters face consequences within the narrative — arrest, betrayal, reputation loss, psychological cost.
Player accountability: Players are expected to engage with consequences, not deflect or rewrite them retroactively.

This is not about punishing players. It is about establishing that the campaign's moral weight is real. A crew that can make any choice with no cost is not playing a Syndicate campaign — they're playing a power fantasy.

Step 6: Build the Crew Together

Character creation in Syndicate happens collaboratively. Do not let players build in isolation.

Start with the crew, not the individual

Before anyone fills in a stat block, establish:

1. How does this crew know each other?
Give players a simple prompt: "You have a history. You've worked together, owe each other, or need each other. What's the connection?"

Generate at least one interpersonal bond per pair of characters. These become your first set of Contacts.

2. What does the crew do?
What is their stated business? What do they tell people they do vs. what they actually do? This shapes the setting stakes and the opening job.

3. What does the crew want?
Establish a shared crew goal — not "we want to survive" (that's a minimum, not a goal), but "we want to control the Cardassian shipping lane" or "we want to bring down the Syndicate lieutenant who burned us." This gives you your campaign spine.

Individual characters

Once the crew concept is established, individual character creation proceeds. 📖 See STA Core Rulebook, Chapter 3 for core character creation procedures.

For Syndicate-specific modifications:

Value alignment: At least one Value should reflect the character's relationship to compromise or ethics. Not "I believe in the greater good" — show the crack in the armour. "Survival first, questions later" is a Syndicate Value.
Contacts: Each character begins with at least two Contacts — an ally and a complication. These are not just NPCs; they are leverage points and obligations. See The Dossier: Contacts for how Contacts function mechanically.
Background heat: Every character has a reason someone in the galaxy wants something from them — a debt, a secret, a past job. This doesn't need to be mechanically formalised yet, but name it. It becomes material.

Crew coherence check

Before closing character creation, run this quick check:

Question	If the answer is no...
Does each character have a reason to work with the others?	Add a bond or shared history before finalising.
Is there a role gap that will create friction (no social operator, no tech specialist)?	Either fill the gap or name it as a known crew weakness.
Does any character feel fundamentally misaligned with the chosen Flair?	Talk to that player now — adjust the character concept or adjust the Flair.
Do any two characters share a Line violation in their backstory?	Flag it, adjust it, or confirm both players are comfortable.

Step 7: Introduce the Setting Stakes

Give players a brief operational briefing on the campaign's mechanical landscape. This is not a rules tutorial — it is orientating the crew before the first job.

Heat

Heat is the crew's accumulated attention from authorities, rivals, and anyone else who wants leverage over them. It is tracked at the crew level, not the individual level.

Tell players:

"Heat is not a death sentence — it's pressure. Low Heat means you move freely. High Heat means every operation gets harder, riskier, and more expensive. The goal isn't to avoid Heat forever; it's to manage it well enough that it doesn't close off your options."

You do not need to teach the full Heat mechanic right now. You need players to know it exists and that it will shape play from the first session. For full mechanical definitions, see The Dossier: Heat.

Reputation

Reputation tracks how specific factions and individuals regard the crew. Unlike Heat, Reputation is directional — high Reputation with the Orion Syndicate may mean low Reputation with Bajoran resistance cells.

Establish which factions are relevant in your region. Players may not start with much Reputation with any of them — that's normal. It is earned.

The Favor Bank

Name-drop the Favor Bank now so players build characters with mutual obligation in mind. Contacts are not just allies — they are people the crew owes, and people who owe the crew. That two-way ledger is the social infrastructure of underworld life.

End Session Zero with a brief verbal summary of what was agreed. This is not a formal document — it is a shared acknowledgment.

Cover these points:

The campaign premise: One sentence.
The Flair(s): Named and confirmed.
Darkness level: Where you landed on the dial.
Lines and Veils: A brief summary (you don't need to re-list everything — players remember their own).
Safety tools in use: X-card, check-in system, how to flag discomfort.
The first session hook: What happens when everyone sits down next time?

Close with:

"Everyone good? Then we know what kind of game this is. Let's get to work."

Common Complications

If this happens…	Do this
A player is vague about their Lines — "I'm fine with anything"	Don't accept it. Push gently: "What's something that would make you want to stop and step back from a scene?" Everyone has a threshold; they just feel awkward naming it. Give them a moment.
Players can't agree on a Flair	Ask which Flair combination creates the most interesting tension rather than the most comfortable consensus. If still split, pick two and commit — but flag that you'll be calibrating tone early.
One player's character concept is fundamentally incompatible with the crew	Address it directly at the table, not in a side conversation later. Give the player the choice: adjust the concept to fit the crew, or adjust the crew premise to accommodate the concept. Don't let it slide.
A player wants to play a Starfleet character "going straight"	This can work, but establish now what their relationship to the crew's criminal activities is. Are they complicit? Wilfully blind? Actively compromised? Vague idealism crashes into Syndicate-level stakes fast.
Post-session debrief reveals a Line was crossed	Acknowledge it directly at the start of the next session. Don't minimise it. Adjust the campaign accordingly. See The Briefing Room: Managing Emotional Safety in Dark Campaigns.
A player misses Session Zero	Run a condensed version before their first session — at minimum, safety tools, Flair, and their character's connection to the crew. Don't let a player walk into a Syndicate campaign cold.
The group wants to skip Session Zero entirely	They are wrong, but you can't force it. Run the safety tools portion as an absolute minimum, even if it takes ten minutes. Lines and Veils and the X-card are not optional in this kind of campaign.
Players keep drifting toward standard Trek heroism mid-discussion	Name the drift: "This sounds like a Starfleet campaign. Is that what we want?" Then redirect to the Flair discussion. Sometimes players need permission to lean into the darker premise.

After the Session: Before You Prep Session One

Before you close your notes on Session Zero:

[ ] Record all Lines and Veils somewhere you will see them during prep.
[ ] Note the agreed Flair(s) and Darkness level — these filter every scene you write.
[ ] Document the crew's shared goal and interpersonal bonds — these are your first plot hooks.
[ ] Set the starting Heat level (usually 0 or 1 — establish a baseline before the first job changes it).
[ ] Note the first session hook — you committed to one in Step 8. Prepare it.