Everything's Fine: The Disaster Deck
A complete guide to running a HSEEP-compliant tabletop exercise — from pre-exercise planning through documentation. Generates the full ExPlan → EEG → AAR/IP package automatically.
Overview
Everything's Fine is a facilitated tabletop exercise tool for local government emergency management and disaster essential non-EM experienced staff. It puts your team through a realistic emergency scenario, forces real coordination decisions, and ends with an AI-generated debrief — all in 45–90 minutes.
Unlike traditional tabletop exercises, it doesn't require a trained external facilitator. The game structure, scenario cards, and built-in discussion prompts guide teams through the exercise on their own. The AI debrief replaces what normally takes hours of manual AAR preparation.
What you'll need
- ✓ A screen everyone can see (TV, projector, or shared laptop)
- ✓ 1–8 participants, each with a role (Incident Commander is required; 4–8 suggested for best discussion)
- ✓ Optional: printed AAR worksheets for individual note-taking
- ✓ Optional: a designated evaluator per group to complete the EEG via QR code
The Hex Board
The game is played on a hexagonal board that radiates outward from a center scenario card. Five arms extend in different directions — one for each response category. An inject slot sits just below center.
Center hex — Scenario
The triggering emergency. Placed automatically at the start. Defines the conditions your team is responding to.
Inject slot — Mid-exercise disruption
When the team triggers an inject, a complication card lands here. Up to 3 injects per exercise.
Five response arms
Each arm has 4 slots for action cards in that category. Slots unlock by adjacency — you must place cards touching existing cards. This forces prioritization.
The adjacency rule
You cannot place a card in an empty slot unless it touches at least one card that's already on the board. Since the scenario card starts in the center, the first card in each arm must go in the slot immediately adjacent to it. From there, the arm extends outward as cards are placed. This creates natural pressure — you can't spread thin across all five arms simultaneously.
Response Categories
Every action card belongs to one of five categories, each representing a different dimension of emergency response. The hex board's arms are color-coded by category.
Physical response to the incident: suppression, containment, evacuation, search and rescue, and immediate life-safety actions.
Managing the stuff: equipment, personnel, facilities, contracts, and supply chains needed to sustain operations.
Internal and external information flow: interoperability, situational awareness, information sharing protocols.
Managing what the public knows: media releases, social media, rumor control, warning dissemination, and community messaging.
Command, control, and inter-agency coordination: EOC activation, ICS structure, policy decisions, and stakeholder management.
Running an Exercise
Set up (5 minutes)
Open the app and go through the three-step lobby: select a deck, choose a scenario, and assign roles. Every participant picks a role — Incident Commander is required. Other roles (Operations, Logistics, Public Information, Liaison, Finance, Safety) are optional but recommended.
The Incident Commander drives the exercise and makes final calls when the group disagrees. Other roles advocate for their function's priorities.
Scenario reveal
The scenario card appears and is read aloud. It describes initial conditions, key stressors, and training objectives. The team discusses briefly — what's the immediate priority? What's unknown? Then click "Understood" to place the scenario on the board and begin.
Card placement rounds
The hand panel shows all available action cards, grouped by category. Players discuss which actions to take in priority order. Select a card, read its discussion prompt to the group, debate it, then place it on the matching arm of the board.
There's no right answer — the discussion is the point. Cards can also be discarded if the team decides the action isn't appropriate for this scenario. You can also add notes to any card before placing it (e.g., "we don't have a MOU with the county for this").
Trigger injects
At natural pause points — or when the facilitator wants to raise pressure — hit the ⚡ Inject button. A complication card appears: a media crisis, a resource failure, an escalating condition. The team must adapt their plan. Up to 3 injects per exercise.
End the exercise
When the team is satisfied with their response plan (or time runs out), click "Finish & AAR." The board freezes. The After-Action Review begins.
Injects
Injects are mid-exercise complications drawn from a scenario-specific deck. They simulate the way real emergencies evolve unexpectedly: conditions worsen, resources disappear, media pressure intensifies, or inter-agency friction surfaces.
When to trigger an inject is a judgment call. Suggestions:
- ⚡After the team has placed 4–6 cards and feels like they have a handle on the situation
- ⚡When discussion stalls or the team gets too comfortable
- ⚡At natural transition points (e.g., after completing one response arm)
Each inject card lands on the board in the inject slot and includes discussion questions the team should address before continuing. The inject log appears in the AAR.
After-Action Review
The AAR screen gives every player a structured self-assessment and generates an AI-powered debrief, with a printable AAR available for export. The full Training Report with a formal Improvement Plan is generated through a Full Exercise Workshop.
Board Summary
A visual recap of every action card placed by response arm, with team notes and the inject timeline. Printable as a standalone board summary PDF.
Individual Player Assessments
Each player fills out a role-specific self-assessment: four 1–5 rating scales (coordination, communication, decision-making, resource management) plus open-ended responses.
AI-Generated Debrief
Claude AI analyzes the full session — board decisions, notes, injects, and player assessments — and generates structured findings calibrated to your team's experience level: Strengths, Gaps, Recommendations, and NIMS Alignment.
Exercise Evaluation Guide (EEG)
Designated evaluators complete per-group EEGs during the exercise via QR code on any device. Observable tasks are specific to the scenario's FEMA Response Core Capabilities. Results stream live to the facilitator dashboard.
HSEEP Documentation Package
Every exercise run through a Full Exercise Workshop generates a complete HSEEP-compliant documentation package — the same deliverables a professional facilitator would produce, automatically. Each document is printable as a PDF.
Exercise Plan (ExPlan)
Generated from the host setup page before the exercise. Includes THIRA linkage statement, training objectives, participating organizations, exercise schedule, ground rules, and Exercise Sponsor authorization block.
Exercise Evaluation Guide (EEG)
One evaluator per group, accessed via QR code. Questions auto-loaded from the scenario's FEMA Response Core Capabilities. Ratings, observable tasks, and observations feed to the facilitator dashboard in real time.
Training Report / AAR
Full After-Action Report with AI-generated findings, role-specific assessments, board visualization, inject log, core capabilities exercised, and formal Improvement Plan (IP) table — pre-seeded from AI findings, editable before printing.
The platform aligns with NIMS, ICS, and ESF throughout:
- ▸Action cards are tagged to NIMS components, ICS sections, EOC functions, and Emergency Support Functions (ESF 1–15). Scenario-specific cards load automatically for each incident type.
- ▸Roles include all ICS Command and General Staff positions plus all 15 ESF lead roles.
- ▸Scenarios are tagged to FEMA Response Core Capabilities, organized by hazard category, and rated by difficulty.
- ▸AI debrief is calibrated to team experience level and evaluates performance against NIMS doctrine.
Facilitator Tips
🎯 Let conflict surface
When players disagree about which card to place next, that's the exercise working correctly. Don't rush to resolve it — ask the IC to make the call and document the dissent. Conflict reveals real coordination gaps.
📌 Use the note field
Before placing a card, use the note field to capture caveats: "We don't have an MOU with county for this," "this assumes Highway 9 is passable," or "PIO hasn't been trained on this yet." These notes feed the AI debrief.
⚡ Time your injects
The first inject works best when the team has gotten comfortable. The second should stress-test whatever they just decided. If you have a third, save it for the final 15 minutes to see how they adapt under fatigue.
📋 Don't skip the AAR
The board is the artifact of what the team thought they would do. The AAR is where they learn why some of those assumptions were wrong. Budget at least 20 minutes for individual assessments before triggering the AI debrief.
✏️ Custom cards for advanced exercises
For experienced teams, use the Create Card feature to add organization-specific actions — your actual mutual aid partners, your real protocols, your specific equipment caches. This makes the exercise feel less like a training game and more like a real response planning session.
Ready to run a HSEEP-documented exercise?
The demo is free, no account required. Run a full exercise and generate an AI debrief in under an hour. See the full documentation package with a subscription.