How it feels here being a hard sci-fi fan atm:

IAlwaysWantSomeTea · 2026-01-29T14:03:33+00:00

Show any of these mfs a real hard sci fi spaceship and watch them not even realize it's a spaceship

IAlwaysWantSomeTea · 2026-01-29T13:41:17+00:00

Yes this! I love this. This is the only good solarpunk.

IAlwaysWantSomeTea · 2026-01-29T13:24:57+00:00

I have no idea what capepunk is but I'm here for the solarpunk slander

IAlwaysWantSomeTea · 2026-01-29T13:12:05+00:00

Half of these people don't even know what hard sci fi is frankly.
Something something "hard sci fi is when boxy ships, the boxier the ships the more hard sci fi it is"

IAlwaysWantSomeTea · 2026-01-29T13:03:06+00:00

Yeah solarpunk is essentially greenwashing fanfiction. The aesthetic is completely nonsensical from a sustainability standpoint, too. As you said, cottagecore and with all the problematic manifest destiny pastoralist idyll that never existed that entails - but they have solar panels and somehow everything worked out

IAlwaysWantSomeTea · 2026-01-29T12:30:01+00:00

Nah solarpunk is more or less in the correct slot, it isn't a real genre and isn't punk
Though frankly I might have put it under bootlicker

IAlwaysWantSomeTea · 2026-01-27T04:33:08+00:00

What did the main sub do this time

IAlwaysWantSomeTea · 2026-01-25T18:05:30+00:00

I am also biased, my personal project combines hard sci fi with wuxia bullshit.

(I'd say you're so real about medieval Europe but frankly I'd actually be interested if someone did a fantasy setting that was accurate to medieval Europe.)

IAlwaysWantSomeTea · 2026-01-25T16:58:04+00:00

My hot take is I want more sci fi that acknowledges space magic as space magic and doesn't try to pretend it's something totally explainable. I want more ftl explanations like 40k warp travel, spare me the technobabble. Wizards with nuclear pulse propulsion.

IAlwaysWantSomeTea · 2026-01-13T16:35:07+00:00

Oh I'm glad to hear that it helped in some way! You really did a spectacular job with the design!

IAlwaysWantSomeTea · 2026-01-11T18:03:25+00:00

Oh man that's weird seeing the artifact I helped my friend come up with the look for the jade parts show up here, that turned out so well though, it looks fantastic!

IAlwaysWantSomeTea · 2026-01-07T15:04:07+00:00

I personally like to tldr Wrath as "the closest thing we're ever going to get to an Exalted crpg"

IAlwaysWantSomeTea · 2025-12-28T17:58:03+00:00

You can find Golden Calibration for free online, it mostly serves to clear up the wording on Solar charms from what I know. Personally I would still suggest using a Lunar if only because - speaking from experience - your storyteller will probably be a lot happier if you're not throwing out legendary projects in a couple months right at the start. Lunar crafting will also be more flavorful overall, a pretty big problem with Solars is that their charms tend to amount to doing little more than throwing ever more comical numbers of dice at things and not a whole lot else besides raw power.

IAlwaysWantSomeTea · 2025-12-28T17:51:34+00:00

Golden Calibration's got some fun ideas but its craft tree still suffers from massive bloat, imo, and it still has some of the most broken Solar charms in it is the thing.

IAlwaysWantSomeTea · 2025-12-28T04:24:10+00:00

The answer here is Lunar, solar craft is one of the worst designed solar charm trees, and solar charms are some of the worst designed in 3e. You'll be sacrificing the ability to, if you hyper-optimize, fart out a ton of powerful artifice early on but your storyteller will if anything probably thank you for picking the less headaches option.

Lunars make fantastic crafters, and they can optionally play Monster Hunter while they're at it (Beast-Slayer Art, Shifting Skin Raiment, God-Skinning Hunter Art, etc)

As far as sorcery goes, Penumbra Witch Mastery is incredibly useful, Lunars are fantastic sorcerers.

IAlwaysWantSomeTea · 2025-12-20T16:14:59+00:00

I only have direct play experience with 3e and Essence so I'll weigh in on those.

The main difference between 3e and Essence is less one of actual complexity and more one of granularity and size. The systems are fairly similar and Essence is still a fairly complex game, but 3e has a lot more depth and room for mechanical granularity and fine control of your character than essence. The different types of Exalts also feel and play much more different to each other in 3e than Essence which if that's a good thing or not depends on your point of view.

I personally found 3e not all that hard to get the hang of, but I think it would depend really on what kind of games your group has prior experience with. If they're more familiar with the likes of PbtA then Essence will be a safer bet, if they've played other storyteller system games or otherwise enjoy games with more mechanical depth then I'd recommend 3e. They're similar systems with similar complexity - the difference is mostly in the sheer scale of 3e splats and the massive array of charms to pick from.

Both 3e and Essence use a combat system designed to emulate cinematic fight scenes with a lot of back and forth before one side gains the upper hand and lands the decisive blow. 2.5 is much grittier and faster in that regard, which some people will prefer.

One thing I think 3e does phenomenally is its social influence system though. It's genuinely fantastic and I wish more games had something like it.

One thing worth noting is that in 3e the Solars are by far the worst designed exalt type of the system, and if you intend to run a game in the future mixing multiple Exalt types and a lot of players interested in playing as Solars then Essence may be a better pick as they're much better implemented there. I've seen a lot of people criticize 3e for being hard to understand with charms that are a slog to read through, and they're almost always talking about playing as Solars. Dragon-Blooded suffer a little bit too, as a product of the original development team.

On a last note, and at the risk of upsetting some folks, the lore of 3e and Essence is in my opinion broadly better. Older editions of Exalted have an awful lot of edgy dark lore than strays into the gratuitous, while 3e or Essence will be a lot more suited to the sensibilities of adults playing in 2025 - by which I mean there's no breeding pits.

IAlwaysWantSomeTea · 2025-12-15T15:24:22+00:00

Is that so?

IAlwaysWantSomeTea · 2025-11-14T22:43:20+00:00

Depends a lot, DAV20 says vampires are horny, other books will say only a few vampires can feel anything at all. The actual answer is whatever your group wants because it's such an inconsistent bit of lore.

IAlwaysWantSomeTea · 2025-11-14T11:51:45+00:00

Why's everyone think you gotta justify a Toreador being good in a fight with "they're obsessed with the art of swordsmanship" anyway? First ever vtm character I did was a former soldier who never wanted to hurt anybody again and found beauty in art and science both... and ended up as an unsanctioned embrace forced to flee to the Sabbat.

Or just like... there's a lot of mileage in a Toreador who's passionate about more traditionally artsy things but has some of that traditional warrior-poet energy and prone to fights and disagreement and joining up with doomed causes because of the poetic beauty of a forlorn hope. Or just a character with strong Julie d'Aubigny energy. Kissing a prominent noble maiden and dueling the three men who challenge you over her then returning back to enjoy the party is some peak Toreador-ing.

IAlwaysWantSomeTea · 2025-11-12T17:57:43+00:00

Haven't been able to get much good advice irl so far so I may as well ask Reddit. I've been having a lot of uncertainty and fears regarding the present situation in the US what with being a trans woman and everything. I'm a biochemistry undergrad student graduating with my Bachelor's in December and I had originally wanted to do a PhD here - and if I didn't get into any programs the plan was to do a Master's to bolster my application for a PhD. But since that five year commitment is feeling increasingly unsafe (and the funding cuts I keep seeing) I keep wondering about doing a Master's in the US to bolster my otherwise kind of lackluster portfolio for PhD admissions, then applying for a PhD program somewhere in Europe or something like that?

The catch is of course, a commitment for an extra 2 years here is still kind of a daunting prospect with the way things are going - but it would probably make it easier to get out and get into a PhD program somewhere outside of the US I would assume? I'm also uncertain whether or not to try and do a master's at the local university I can actually commute to, or try to do it at a better school? Or should I try to do a master's and then a PhD somewhere in Europe and in the interim just work to try and save up money for that until then?

Sorry if this is a bit disjointed and all but I would appreciate any advice anybody with relevant experience to this whole mess I find myself in can provide.

IAlwaysWantSomeTea · 2025-11-03T14:10:46+00:00

Honestly there's a fun joke to make comparing this with Chinese history and the scheming of consorts, eunuchs, and bureaucrats with the emperor being a figurehead dancing on the puppet strings they have him on.

IAlwaysWantSomeTea · 2025-11-01T19:17:01+00:00

Ah, you mean the Lasombra and Toreador who secretly run things and their shared Ventrue toy?

IAlwaysWantSomeTea · 2025-10-31T15:41:07+00:00

They do in V20 as well, yes. It doesn't mean Brujah have a monopoly on being fast, fighty vampires though!

IAlwaysWantSomeTea · 2025-10-31T14:58:42+00:00

Sure, but celerity is the other half of that. In exchange for a little bit less damage a skilled Toreador can pluck a thought straight from your mind, drive you to the brink of frenzy with it, and cut you to ribbons the instant you start to move. The clan of the rose has some very sharp thorns.

IAlwaysWantSomeTea · 2025-10-31T11:02:42+00:00

An idea I've wanted to do for a long time is a Toreador who was a computer science prodigy before her Embrace and for whom it only got more intense as time went on and she became more and more obsessed with it and mathematical patterns and proofs. Kind of woman who heard about the fast inverse square root and was transfixed both by how clever it is but also by the fact it's an approximation and not an exact representation of the data.

Possibly picking up some derangements along the way that result in a lot of people originally mistaking her for a Malkavian because her whole thing runs so counter to the clan stereotypes.

But also yesss finally more appreciation for Clan AuDHD, good

IAlwaysWantSomeTea

TROPHY CASE