I’m basing my campaign in the Dominion War, from 2373 onwards. I have been part-running (flavour and background, including Captains Log entries) in our WhatsApp group with episodes of actual play face-to-face.
I am trying to keep it as far as possible within the observed and/or expanded Canon (for example, the last 2 parter episode they successfully located and recovered the USS Tien ah Mien, which was reported lost at the end of Season 5, but present at a battle at the end of Season 6), but obviously the established Canon is finite and there is lots of scope.
The main ship, an Akira class with a small amount of tech researched from the Dominion fighter Sisko recovered to Starbase 375, is about to undertake it’s primary mission, operating in a similar manner to the Desert Rats from North Africa in WW2. The ship carries a large complement of fighters, as well as a new variant of runabout. The whole crew is made up of survivors of the 7th Fleet massacre; every crew member has the “Survivor of the 7th Fleet” Trait - examples of how this have been used include a rerolled d20 vs the JemHadar, and another player deciding to develop PTSD which made all rolls significantly harder when encountering the Jem Hadar. The USS Nighthawk has spent the last 3+ week’s being retrofitted at 375 for operations within Cardassian space, and is being joined by the USS Appalachia (Steamrunner class) and the USS Savannah (New Orleans class); both of these ships are fitted out with long range, specialist sensors as standard.
The squadron is preparing to depart for the McAllistar C5 Nebula as their forward operations base; the Appalachia and Savannah have been operating in the Briar Patch for a month or so tweaking and refining sensors to cut through interference from the Nebula, as this is the area of space within Federation Space most like the C5, although all ships have had to have additional hull shielding to protect against the Nebula (as in the TNG episode).
Long Range scans have shown minimal Dominion activity in the area around the Nebula, so Starfleet believe they avoid the corrosive cloud; and at several light-years across, there is plenty of space for Federation, or other, interlopers to hide…