Stargate SG-1/Chapter Three: How to be a Supervisor

Stargate SG-1: How to be a Supervisor
This text is ©1999 John Tynes
The Stargate intellectual property is owned by MGM/UA.

Chapter Three: How to be a Supervisor

The SGC Supervisor is responsible for running the Stargate simulation. This is a very important job. You will be working with some of the best and brightest minds that the U.S. government has to offer--the men and women who comprise the vanguard of career military and research personnel, and who will be working on perhaps the most important federal project since the development of the atom bomb.

Your goal is to both test and train these people by putting them through a series of mission-critical simulations that put them at the forefront of human exploration and adventure. They must be challenged, they must be stimulated, and they must be engaged.

As a Supervisor, you have three main roles: that of referee, storyteller, and simulator. Each role is described in this chapter.

Referee

As the referee, you have to know the rules of the simulation and interpret them during play. The players can have their characters try to do almost anything; the rules tell you how to determine if they succeed or fail. It's a three-step process:

Determine how hard the task is and pick a difficulty number.
Determine which skill is used for the task and have the player roll the skill dice. (If the character doesn't have the skill, the player rolls the appropriate attribute dice instead.)
If the player rolls equal to or higher than the difficulty number, the character succeeds. Otherwise, the character fails.

The rest of the rules build on this idea, with tips on how to pick difficulty numbers for different tasks. There are also plenty of examples to help you out.

The Virtue of Speed

The rules of this simulation are not meant to directly simulate reality in terms of physical or mental actions. This is a simulation of events experienced and decisions made, testing the participants' abilities to deal with the challenges of the STARGATE program and their suitability for assignment to SGC. Once these people enter the SGC program, abstractions such as skill dice and combat rules will be forgotten--so don't harp on them too strongly during the simulation. The rules are simply here to help you run an effective and unpredictable simulation.

It is much more important to keep the simulation moving along at a fast clip, in which the players must act quickly and decisively, than it is to follow every rule and exactingly compute every difficulty number. In the simulation, the players will have much more time to consider their actions than they will when they begin the real-life missions of the STARGATE program. A combat engagement that takes twelve seconds in real life may take twelve minutes in the simulation. As a result, you should always be willing to sacrifice adherence to the rules for the sake of speed. A player who grows used to twiddling his thumbs while you compute modifiers will be ill-prepared for the reality of the STARGATE program, while a player who grows used to making swift, pragmatic decisions under duress will be ready to perform.

Your trainees will be putting their lives on the line, and you must do everything you can to ensure that their training is swift and effective, no matter what the rules in this handbook might be. This is not a game.

Use Your Judgement

It is okay to follow the rules carefully at first. As a new Supervisor, you are being trained as much as the players are. But the point of the rules is to become familiar enough with them that you can forget about them and use your judgement instead. Instead of looking up every difficulty number, pick one arbitrarily, using your experience as a guide. Wing it. Improvise. The first simulation session you run in which you don't need to refer to this handbook even once will probably be the first truly useful session in terms of preparing our personnel, because it means you will have developed the confidence and quickness that are imperative to running a fast-paced simulation that challenges, stimulates, and engages the players.

Be Fair and Impartial

Although we expect you to run the simulation fast and loose, there is one line you should not cross: that of impartiality. Recall at all times that the men and women you are training will soon be operating in the real world of the STARGATE program, and there will be no affable Supervisor ready to drop a hint or fudge die rolls in their favor. They will be making life-and-death decisions for themselves and others, and they have to understand intuitively that there are real consequences for those decisions. This means that you should avoid giving the players a break if they're stumped or in trouble during a simulation session. If poor planning or bad luck have put their characters in a situation where death is the only outcome, so be it--better they die in the simulation than in the field.

Your Word is Final

Players who have military backgrounds will almost certainly understand that your word is final, but you will be dealing with individuals from other career paths as well. Not all will comprehend or respect the chain of command. In this simulation, you are the final arbiter of all situations. Your decisions are not superceded by statements in this handbook. If a player contests one of your decisions, it is up to you to agree or disagree--but having done so, that should be the end of the matter. You are encouraged to be diplomatic, however. The heavily interpersonal nature of this simulation means that a good working relationship between you and the players is important.

Storyteller

As mentioned earlier in this chapter, this is a narrative simulation. It models events and decisions rather than, say, the laws of gravity or the mechanics of an assault rifle. Interpreted somewhat broadly, this means that you are telling stories. You are a storyteller.

The field work carried out by SGC is often exciting. Our personnel are exploring alien worlds, helping oppressed populations, and protecting our national security. As a storyteller, you need to bring that excitement to your simulations.

You may find the prospect daunting, but don't be worried. The basic elements of storytelling can be seen in something as familiar as the telling of a joke, something you've probably done numerous times. Let's take a joke and see what it can tell us:

Two guys are drinking in a bar at the top of a tall building. One guy says, "You know, when you're up this high off the ground, the wind is just amazing. Why you can jump right out that window and the wind will blow you back inside!" The other one doesn't believe him. "No way!" So the first guy goes over to a window, pops it open, and jumps right out. Then--whoosh! He's back inside again. The second guy gets really excited and goes to try it himself. He jumps out the window and falls to his death.

Back at the bar, the first guy sits down and has another drink. The bartender wipes a glass clean and shakes his head. "You're a mean drunk, Superman."

This simple joke demonstrates three basic elements of storytelling: description, pacing, and revelation.

Description

Description governs what you say to set a scene and explain action. It's important in storytelling because it gives the audience a mental picture of what's going on--it puts them into the scene. Too much description is bad because the audience can't process everything you're telling them. Too little description is bad because the audience will not understand what you're telling them as well as they need to.

In the joke, there's very little description. We know the characters are in "a bar at the top of a tall building." That's as much as we need to set the scene, since most audiences will know what a bar is and what a tall building is.

Too much description might be, "a sports bar with lots of baseball memorabilia on the walls--signed balls, jerseys from famous players, that sort of thing." This description would be fine if the type of bar were important to the story, but in this case, it's just not needed.

Too little description might be, "a bar." We're missing critical information here, namely that the bar is at the top of a tall building. Clues later in the joke will still help the audience figure out the scene, but the audience will have to work to fill in the gaps. They need to know this information for the story to work most effectively.

There's another piece of description in this joke that we should look at, this time describing action. After the second guy jumps out the window, the first one goes back to the bar and has another drink. This description isn't essential--the punchline still works okay without it. But it makes the punchline more effective because it emphasizes the personality of the character. He didn't scream, he didn't call the medics, he didn't try to stop the other fellow. He just went back to the bar and took a drink. That simple callousness makes the punchline--"You're a mean drunk, Superman."--all the more effective.

In summation, use description to communicate the essentials of a scene, but also to express the particular flavor of a scene. Too much description is boring. Too little description is confusing.

Pacing

Pacing governs the speed with which you tell the story. When you're working with words, pacing generally means choosing when to use more words and when to use less. Using more words for a scene suggests to the audience that time is moving slowly, that they can afford to examine and consider. Using fewer words for a scene suggests that time is short, and that decisions must be made quickly.

Take a look at the joke again. The second paragraph, in which the first guy goes back to the bar, has a drink, and the bartender cleans a glass and shakes his head, is sort of a bumper between the climactic action of the man jumping out the window and the punchline. It creates suspense. We've seen the climactic action, and we're wondering what's going to happen next--how will this situation be resolved and explained? The few extra words used in this little section raise the level of anticipation, so that when the punchline comes, the audience has had a chance to get ready for it and is primed to receive it.

On the other hand, we use very few words to start the joke. There's just one sentence before we hit the first line of dialogue, which is where the main part of the joke begins. We're skipping as quickly as we can to the meat of the story, because the preamble is nothing more than preparation for what's coming up. We need to capture the audience's interest, and lots of words about the bar are not going to do that. The interesting part is the strange statement made by the first character, because that's what triggers everything else that happens.

In summation, use pacing to control the flow of the story. Compress details and time when nothing interesting is going on, or when things are happening very quickly and you want to communicate a sense of urgency. Expand details and time when important things are occurring, or when you want to create tension leading up to a revelation.

Revelation

Revelation governs the interesting part of stories: the unexpected. Stories need to have surprises in them, whether they be surprises of plot or of character. Without revelation, stories have no appeal and the audience quickly loses interest.

However, such revelation should not be purely arbitrary. There must be an internal logic at work so that things ultimately make sense--to the storyteller, at least, if not the audience, since the storyteller can see behind the scenes, as it were. Revelation can be used to cause interest, to sustain interest, and to reward interest.

In our joke, the first revelation is that a character claims he can jump out the window and be blown back in, and then proves it. This is a surprise to the audience, and it causes interest. They want to know what's going to happen next, given this surprising premise.

The second revelation is that when the other character tries jumping out the window, he falls to his death. This is a surprise, since the first character did this without harm. The audience's interest is now sustained, because they want an explanation for the disparity between the two actions.

The third and final revelation is that the first character is actually Superman, and he used his superhuman powers to fly back in the window in order to pull a nasty prank. This rewards the audience's interest, since they now understand what's been going on.

All three revelations work hand-in-hand, and ultimately they all make sense. The internal logic works, and the result is an entertaining story.

In summation, use revelation to create the highlights of a story--the defining features that will cause interest in the audience, sustain that interest, and finally reward it.

Simulator

Although the role of "simulator" may not sound exciting, this is actually one of the most creative and colorful aspects of your job as Supervisor. You will be preparing and running simulations of SGC field operations, and you need to do so accurately. Given the nature of SGC, this means coming up with the sort of original and challenging situations that SGC operatives face in real life.

We'll focus on five areas you should pay special attention to in your role as simulator.

Worlds

Even the limited number of SGC field operations to date have visited numerous alien worlds, with a variety of cultures, climates, plants, wildlife, and so forth. In your simulation sessions, you should strive to present a comparable variety of worlds. Keep in mind that most Stargate destinations known to SGC are from a master list compiled by the Go'ald, which means they generally lead to worlds (or regions of worlds, rather) that are hospitable to human life--the preferred host species of the Go'ald. The worlds you create in your simulations should generally be capable of supporting human life, or else should have some other sort of strategic use to the Go'ald. Destinations that are not derived from the Go'ald master list, however, could lead anywhere, even to worlds where humans cannot survive.

People

One of the most fascinating aspects of the STARGATE program is the people our personnel encounter. We suspect there are tens of thousands--perhaps hundreds of thousands--of humans out there, descended from transplanted Earthlings many centuries ago. These people represent a variety of cultures, since although the Go'ald were based in Egypt they recruited human slaves from around the world. In your simulations, you should strive to present many different types of pre-industrial Earth cultures, many of whom may have changed in bizarre ways thanks to Go'ald social engineering or simple cultural dynamics. Because so many SGC field operations have hinged on interpersonal situations, it is important that you present credible individuals with realistic goals and passions. The players should learn how to deal with many different cultures and viewpoints, and attempt to resolve conflict through mediation rather than combat where possible. This is our first step into a larger world, and we want that step to be as peaceful as possible.

Technology

Instances of alien technology ("xenotech") have cropped up repeatedly in SGC field operations to date. The Stargates themselves, of course, are one prominent example. Most other instances have been items of Go'ald manufacture, such as the energy staff, the powered armor, and the fighter craft. But items from other alien cultures have cropped up as well, and the study of xenotech is one of our most important goals since such technology could have both military and civilian applications here on Earth. In your simulations, endeavor to create and introduce new xenotech items so that your players will face the challenge of coming to grips with alien and advanced technology. Some items may be useful, some may be harmful, and some may simply be inscrutable.

Danger

The STARGATE program has faced numerous threats in the course of its work, the greatest of which to date is the threat posed by the Go'ald. Still, instances of Go'ald activity have been fairly rare, and we have avoided direct conflict with them where possible until we can learn more about the Go'ald and the other alien species out there. Most of the danger faced by SGC personnel in the field has come from transplanted human cultures, since these people regard us as strangers and possibly invaders and since their cultures bear little resemblance to our own. Every SGC mission carries a substantial element of risk, and your simulations should not skimp on danger. A number of SGC personnel have been injured or killed even in the brief time we have been carrying out our operations, and this is a trend we expect to continue. Exploration of the unknown is hazardous, and your trainees should respect this and exercise due caution.

Mystery

Perhaps the most exciting element of the STARGATE program is the voyage into mystery our personnel undertake each time they step through the Stargate. We have already learned a lot, but there are many, many questions to answer. We know next to nothing about the makers of the Stargates, for example, or about the alien species present in the universe other than the Go'ald. Even aside from issues of xenoculture, however, there are the mysteries of humanity's past. The diverse human populations taken by the Go'ald in the past represent a time-capsule view of human history, and there is much to learn from our fellow humans across the stars. There are also many bizarre situations to encounter and explore, and much to learn. Your simulations should include interesting mysteries to solve, in order to hone the minds of your trainees and prepare them for the sorts of surprises in store for them once training is complete.

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