Re: Diversity on planets: I remember one show in Stargate SG1 where O’Neill and Sam were stranded at a stargate inside ice. They started to call it “The Ice Planet” because there was only ice no matter where you looked. Later it turned out that they were on Earth down in Antarctica! Because planets have diversity in climates and everybody just wrongly assumes that every alien planet has the same climate everywhere around the globe.

Side note: You got extra points for killing your red shirt in each “Episode” in Star Trek the 25th aniversary edition.

Your Star Trek alien was the Horta. Yes, I am a geek.

Ah, I keep coming up with comments.

There is an Eric Frank Russell novel “The Great Explosion” that deals with Earth rediscovering its long lost “colonies.” Of course, the fact that the entire eothos of a planet is summed up in the first contact, might put you off, but sterotypes do exist for a reason.

If you want to talk about meeting aliens, though, I recommend Eleanor Arnason’s “Ring of Swords” and “Woman of the Iron People”. Yeah the aliens are two armed bipeds, but she’s thought through her cultures and how they’d react to us Earthers.

Changing character concept mid game is a rookie move. I would say that the current campaign doesn’t fit the style of play that is desired for the player rather than character concept. It has been my experience that these players will put the already created character in no win situations in order to create a new character that fits the current flavor of the campaign. I am of the opinion that it is a want of the player to have a character that can overcome or blend with the available setting that provokes this type of change.

A lot of movies has been nothing but a mass of gore and special effects. The plot is often incidental.

I have seen and experianced when a character concept that really seems fun just falls short in practice. Sometimes they really can not be fixed with out massive changes. Trying to fix a character that will not work can only dig them deeper in the plot.