by Evan "Heimlich" Lorentz, Game Designer at SOE Denver

Skaara presented an interesting dilemma for the designers to discuss. Though a hero character, he spent more episodes of the SG-1 television series "possessed" by the Goa'uld Klorel. This led to the question of exactly how this situation should be treated.

Some thought was given to the approach taken on Mark Devlin (and later used again on Brian Vogler), of having a single card act as a character on your turn and an adversary on your opponent's turn. This option was dismissed fairly quickly, however, since something about it implied a "back and forth" relationship between Skaara and Klorel that wasn't really very accurate.

Once it was decided the two should be separate cards, the question was whether or not to have them specifically interact with each other in any way. Should Skaara be automatically destroyed or "suppressed" somehow if the villain player played Klorel? This idea was also dismissed, because while it captured the story well, it wasn't great for gameplay -- it would always make playing Skaara a bit of a risk for the hero player.

As you know, the ultimate decision was to "do nothing" to specifically cover the Skaara/Klorel story. The assumption was that there could be many possible "story" explanations for the situation, should anyone find it odd. Skaara could be secretly possessed by a Goa'uld without the team's knowledge, apparently acting in the hero player's interest, but sometimes acting for the villain. He could be wearing one of the Goa'uld suppression devices depicted in the 3rd season episode "Pretense," which alternately allowed either the host or the Goa'uld to speak and act. Or perhaps one of the two crossed over from an alternate reality, as we saw characters do in episodes from "There But for the Grace of God" to "Point of View" to "The Road Not Taken."