A-way down South in Dixie

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by RyanW

Got a spare room? :)

'fraid not.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by tshiggins

Mason jars get used for "cannin'" all kinds of things. "Cannin'" occupies a lot of time, starting in about July, and it continues until October. A basement full of "cannin'" is evidence of a hard-workin', well-prepared family, and those who can do it well and consistently are highly respected -- especially since they have to spend long hours in a brutally hot kitchen.

Because I'm weird and because it seems whether I'm a player or GM, there will be PCs from the South who enjoy cooking, baking and "cannin", I've got a GURPS question.

Assuming a character has both Cooking and Housekeeping, which skill does he use for "cannin"?

This is relevant to a PC of mine and a PC in a campaign where I'm the GM. They both have Cooking (Southern* Cuisine and Cajun Cuisine respectively) at about four or five levels higher than their (still respectable) Housekeeping. Can they use their higher Cooking skill levels for canning fruit and making jam or is that exclusively Housekeeping?

The Cajun is also a master at Gardening, with a herb garden and an orchard, but I figure that skill at growing the incredients is not strictly speaking necessary to be good at canning or have a legendary jam recipie.

Aside from this GURPS question, I've also resurrected this thread because when I'm not playing a very Good Ole Boy Southern PC, I'm having to breathe life into a cast of NPCs where everyone is either Caribbean or Southern, mostly from the Gulf Coast and various Gulf of Mexico or Atlantic sea ports.

Desired advice and speaking patterns include:

Texas offshore oilmen, fishermen and general roughnecks from the Gulf Coast.
East Texans.
Very specifically; Houston, Galveston and Jefferson County, inc. Beaumont and Port Arthur.
Cajuns from East Texas and Louisiana, specifically Atchafayala Basin Cajuns.
Creoles, anything from Louisiana through every type of Caribbean immigrant.
Shrimp fishermen, crawdad pickers, oil rig workers and other riverine or nautical Louisiana types.
Mississippi, along the river, Jackson, Gulfport-Biloxi.
Alabama Gulf Coast.
Florida, Tallahassee and panhandle ('Lower Alabama'), as well as sea ports all round Florida, from Pensacola all the way up to Jacksonville.

*Grew up in Alabama, stationed in North Carolina for several years, on and off, married a Georgia girl and lived there for several years.

[Apollonian]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Because I'm weird and because it seems whether I'm a player or GM, there will be PCs from the South who enjoy cooking, baking and "cannin", I've got a GURPS question.

Assuming a character has both Cooking and Housekeeping, which skill does he use for "cannin"?

Either or, I should think. If I were running it and it mattered, I'd rule that Cooking includes a number of ways of preserving food, including more esoteric ones like smoking, curing, etc., while Housekeeping will cover the basic traditional preserving methods of the character's culture.

In both cases, they'll usually have the option of working with a substantial circumstance bonus from time taken, equipment, and reference materials, so they will usually be working (IMO) at Skill+4 at least.

Originally Posted by Icelander

Florida, Tallahassee and panhandle ('Lower Alabama'), as well as sea ports all round Florida, from Pensacola all the way up to Jacksonville.

Can't say much about true locals, but... I lived in Tally for five years as a member of the university community. In a lot of ways it's not that different from many other American cities because it has the state government and two major universities. (In other ways, ways to which I as an academic was not privy, I'm sure it's rather different.) The universities in question are Florida State University (Go 'Noles!) and Florida A&M University (Go Rattlers!). FAMU is an HBCU (Historic Black College/University). The FSU mascot is the Seminoles, and the school has an arrangement with the Seminole Tribe of Florida regarding this (though there is some controversy over it).

In any case, if you have any questions about FSU's library system, I can give you some answers that will be a decade out of date, but...

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Apollonian

Either or, I should think. If I were running it and it mattered, I'd rule that Cooking includes a number of ways of preserving food, including more esoteric ones like smoking, curing, etc., while Housekeeping will cover the basic traditional preserving methods of the character's culture.

Great. So both characters use their much higher Cooking at the appropriate Optional Specialty, as "cannin", as well as smoking and curing, are part of their particular specialized cuisines.

Originally Posted by Apollonian

In both cases, they'll usually have the option of working with a substantial circumstance bonus from time taken, equipment, and reference materials, so they will usually be working (IMO) at Skill+4 at least.

Well, yeah. It's not as if I was worried about them failing, I was more wondering whether their canned fruit or family recipie jam were well-regarded (if using Housekeeping skill level) or widely famous (using Cooking skill level).

Now I can tell the player of 'Nonc' Morel that his canned figs, peaches or paw paw butter are not simply extremely good (Housekeeping at skill 15), but actually gifts fit for a king... or a centenarian billionaire (Cooking (Cajun) at skill 20, I think).

Originally Posted by Apollonian

Can't say much about true locals, but... I lived in Tally for five years as a member of the university community. In a lot of ways it's not that different from many other American cities because it has the state government and two major universities. (In other ways, ways to which I as an academic was not privy, I'm sure it's rather different.) The universities in question are Florida State University (Go 'Noles!) and Florida A&M University (Go Rattlers!). FAMU is an HBCU (Historic Black College/University). The FSU mascot is the Seminoles, and the school has an arrangement with the Seminole Tribe of Florida regarding this (though there is some controversy over it).

Ok, so a couple of questions.

What neighbourhood, suburb or area would be suitable for someone who was equal parts beach bum and redneck? As in, the kind of area where young men race boats and other watercraft, water skiing or kite surfing might be done by the more affluent (but ideally still vulgar) and boys might have long blond hair and walk around wearing beach clothing or overalls with diesel and grease in them.

What's a high school where the football team is all important? If it matters, who were top dogs around fifteen years ago?

If a Tallahassee lad were to join the Navy right out of high school, would he almost certainly be working class or would it be considered reasonably normal for an athletic boy from a middle class family to do so, assuming that he was bored with classroom instruction and had an interest in firearms, engines, boats, swimming, diving, parachuting, extreme sports, adrenaline and explosives, so he figured he'd get paid for playing with Uncle Sam's toys?

In other words, is avoiding college and joining the military as an enlisted man viewed as exclusively something for people who have no economic alternative, or is it a fairly normal career choice, like learning a skilled trade?

When talking about things back home, what would Bo Johnson call his home? Would he refer to how things were back in Florida? In Tallahassee? Tally? His specific neighbourhood or suburb?

What regional eccentricities of speech identify someone as from around Tallahassee? How do I differentiate Bo Johnson, out of Tallahassee, FL, from Dale Johnson (no relation), out of Houston, TX, as well as from Dr. Alfred L. Lapointe (born in DRC, college in Austin, TX, PhD in English literature from Cambridge, UK, no accent unless he's trying for one)?

Originally Posted by Apollonian

In any case, if you have any questions about FSU's library system, I can give you some answers that will be a decade out of date, but...

Well, perhaps just, if any of your fellow academics had secretly found out that the supernatural was real and were studying it without coming out and saying so, which departments would they have been from and what courses would they have been teaching?

[doctorevilbrain]

Scots people don't like to be called Scotch, because it's a drink.

[Apollonian]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Ok, so a couple of questions.

What neighbourhood, suburb or area would be suitable for someone who was equal parts beach bum and redneck? As in, the kind of area where young men race boats and other watercraft, water skiing or kite surfing might be done by the more affluent (but ideally still vulgar) and boys might have long blond hair and walk around wearing beach clothing or overalls with diesel and grease in them.

In Tallahassee? None of them. Tallahassee has no waterfront; the closest thing in town is probably one of the lakes... However, if he's set on being a beach bum, he probably spent all his weekends at Panama City or St. George Island, both about 2 hours west of Tallahassee. If you want him to be a real beach bum sort, he's probably going to have to have grown up in south Florida, out near Pensacola, or on the Atlantic coast.

Now the redneck side is a lot easier; he probably just lives outside of town. Maybe the grandfolks have a homestead out in the country. I had a buddy at FSU who was pretty much in that situation - his mom lived on a couple acres about 30 minutes outside of town and that's where we'd go for a bonfire once a year. He'll favor trucks or muscle cars, most likely, and the boats will be fast fishing boats, not cigarette boats or cabin cruisers.

Either way, he's almost certainly going to be big into fishing.

Originally Posted by Icelander

What's a high school where the football team is all important? If it matters, who were top dogs around fifteen years ago?

All of them. It's the American South. I'm only barely kidding. Exceptions will generally be schools where academic matters are very, very important. State champs 2002.

Originally Posted by Icelander

If a Tallahassee lad were to join the Navy right out of high school, would he almost certainly be working class or would it be considered reasonably normal for an athletic boy from a middle class family to do so, assuming that he was bored with classroom instruction and had an interest in firearms, engines, boats, swimming, diving, parachuting, extreme sports, adrenaline and explosives, so he figured he'd get paid for playing with Uncle Sam's toys?

In other words, is avoiding college and joining the military as an enlisted man viewed as exclusively something for people who have no economic alternative, or is it a fairly normal career choice, like learning a skilled trade?

It might be slightly unusual depending on family background, but the military is by no means a last chance for someone's career. It might actually be expected, if he has a family history of military enlistment.

Originally Posted by Icelander

When talking about things back home, what would Bo Johnson call his home? Would he refer to how things were back in Florida? In Tallahassee? Tally? His specific neighbourhood or suburb?

He would probably call it Tallahassee, or Tally. (But remember that I'm not FROM Tallahassee - I just lived there for a while...)

Originally Posted by Icelander

What regional eccentricities of speech identify someone as from around Tallahassee? How do I differentiate Bo Johnson, out of Tallahassee, FL, from Dale Johnson (no relation), out of Houston, TX, as well as from Dr. Alfred L. Lapointe (born in DRC, college in Austin, TX, PhD in English literature from Cambridge, UK, no accent unless he's trying for one)?

Not a lot, actually. The local accents varied from standard American with a bit of a Southern drawl to very deep African-American or Southern accents depending on the person. Again, university/government town - lots of non-natives in there. So the accents are going to be more on the other side unless Bo wants to play up his Southern-ness.

Originally Posted by Icelander

Well, perhaps just, if any of your fellow academics had secretly found out that the supernatural was real and were studying it without coming out and saying so, which departments would they have been from and what courses would they have been teaching?

Any of them? I mean, that's really broad. If they found out and decided to change their majors (as opposed to someone who's already received an advanced degree), it would probably be to something relevant like anthropology or environmental science, depending on what they thought was most useful. What they probably would have is an interesting collection of research requests in special collections and Interlibrary Loan.

Some local color: If Bo knew or was interested in anyone from the artsy side of FSU, he probably got dragged down to the Railroad Square "arts district" - basically about a single block of warehouses that are (as of around 2004) being turned into studios and such. It's a good spot for New Age weirdos to hang out in a town that's not really into New Age weirdos.

Also - and mostly unrelated, but it's the kind of thing I think a non-local might not know - the Florida state capital building is extremely phallic. It's a skyscraper flanked by two domes, and these are beautifully framed when you're driving west on Apalachee Parkway toward downtown.

Also also. Near Tallahassee is Wakulla Springs, where they filmed a few Tarzan movies... and The Creature from the Black Lagoon. It's lovely, has a historic hotel on the premises, and would make for a very good set piece, what with the alligators and the flocks of vultures.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Apollonian

In Tallahassee? None of them. Tallahassee has no waterfront; the closest thing in town is probably one of the lakes...

Well, hell, I just figured the metropolitan area had to stretch down to the ocean, whether in the form of suburbs or what.

That's what I get for picking a pretty name and not looking more closely at a map.

Originally Posted by Apollonian

However, if he's set on being a beach bum, he probably spent all his weekends at Panama City or St. George Island, both about 2 hours west of Tallahassee. If you want him to be a real beach bum sort, he's probably going to have to have grown up in south Florida, out near Pensacola, or on the Atlantic coast.

I'm pretty set on him having a wide range of aquatic hobbies and extensive experience with numerous methods of going entirely too fast on water, even before joining the Navy.

I think that moving him a couple of hours west is probably best, even though it is clearly a lot more fun saying 'Tallahassee' than 'Panama City' or any number of smaller towns by the seaside there. 'Choktaw Beach', 'Miramar Beach' and 'Okaloosa Island' might be promising names, if any of them are suitable. 'Bagdad' has a certain cachet, too, and 'Avalon Beach' is nice and romantically named.

As long as the locals can be fairly Southern, (Burt Reynolds, Sonny Shroyer, pretty much every character in 'Cool Hand Luke' who wasn't Paul Newman), but some of them make their living catering to tourists having fun on beaches, we ought to be good.

Originally Posted by Apollonian

Now the redneck side is a lot easier; he probably just lives outside of town. Maybe the grandfolks have a homestead out in the country. I had a buddy at FSU who was pretty much in that situation - his mom lived on a couple acres about 30 minutes outside of town and that's where we'd go for a bonfire once a year. He'll favor trucks or muscle cars, most likely, and the boats will be fast fishing boats, not cigarette boats or cabin cruisers.

Either way, he's almost certainly going to be big into fishing.

That sounds pretty much what I was imagining, with the caveat that I'll probably have to move Bo so that he'll live by the sea.

As for boats and other watercrafts, I was imagining small boats with outboard motors, as well as maybe water scooters/jet skis/sea-doo. In fact, I think I might make his father's current job either renting or selling a variety of personal watercraft and small boats.

Originally Posted by Apollonian

All of them. It's the American South. I'm only barely kidding. Exceptions will generally be schools where academic matters are very, very important. State champs 2002.

Fair enough.

At 6'3" and 200 lbs., I imagined that Bo might be a star pass rushing linebacker (mainly to avoid 'everyone was QB1'). Might it be better to make him a tight end or safety?

What position would you make him?

Originally Posted by Apollonian

It might be slightly unusual depending on family background, but the military is by no means a last chance for someone's career. It might actually be expected, if he has a family history of military enlistment.

It's not unlikely that at least some uncles and great-uncles might have been military men and, for that matter, his father might well have a military background. It's just that his parents ought to have been both wealthy and willing enough to put him through college, but Bo chose differently. I'm wondering how they feel about and that how people in his home town would view it.

I imagine that if Bo had been able to tough out four more years of classroom instruction and go to college before joining the Navy as a naval aviator or officer with engineering background, his parents would have been overjoyed. And Bo might have enjoyed being a naval aviator and been good at it, the only problem was that he was not willing to do four years of mats and physics before Uncle Sam* would hand him toys to play with. Not when he could join on a Delayed Entry Program while still a senior in high school and demand a chance at BUD/S, actually having decent high school grades despite being focused in other areas (star athletes get away with a lot) and, of course, having the physique of someone whose hobbies include a lot of what SEALs have to learn (swimming, boating, running, diving, etc.).

*Not Uncle Tom.

Originally Posted by Apollonian

Not a lot, actually. The local accents varied from standard American with a bit of a Southern drawl to very deep African-American or Southern accents depending on the person. Again, university/government town - lots of non-natives in there. So the accents are going to be more on the other side unless Bo wants to play up his Southern-ness.

I imagine he grew up with a fairly pronounced accent and that he's not made any special attempt to lose it, but more than a decade in the SEALs probably at least modulated it, so that it's present, but not as strong.

Unlike all of the PCs, Bo doesn't speak multiple languages and have either a superlative education or the remarkable collection of disparate knowledge collected by a genius autodidact. He's smart enough to have made it through SEAL selection and training, but he's not nearly as smart as any of the PCs. In GURPS terms, he hasn't spent any points on languages and that reflects a relative lack of linguistic facility.

Bo is a lot better at practical problem-solving under pressure than he is at book learning, or a lot of other things, for that matter, like acting out a role, picking up auditory cues and mimicking, music, etc. Basically, Bo is good at being a SEAL or the Monster Hunting equivalent, but wouldn't be any good if the CIA tried to recruit him to be a superspy covert operative assassin.

Originally Posted by Apollonian

Any of them? I mean, that's really broad. If they found out and decided to change their majors (as opposed to someone who's already received an advanced degree), it would probably be to something relevant like anthropology or environmental science, depending on what they thought was most useful. What they probably would have is an interesting collection of research requests in special collections and Interlibrary Loan.

Well, I was more wondering what fields of study you'd imagine were plausible for a) Realizing the possibility of the existence of the supernatural through some of your research (assuming that the supernatural really did exist in the setting) and b) Gathering data on monsters, magic or both through academic research that will pass muster with unaware university authorities.

Originally Posted by Apollonian

Some local color: If Bo knew or was interested in anyone from the artsy side of FSU, he probably got dragged down to the Railroad Square "arts district" - basically about a single block of warehouses that are (as of around 2004) being turned into studios and such. It's a good spot for New Age weirdos to hang out in a town that's not really into New Age weirdos.

I expect Bo will have made friends with girls of all kinds, though by preference they'd usually have been closer to the 'Girls Gone Wild'/'Whoo-girl' spectrum than artsy types or anyone too serious about their academics. But as long as someone was willing to be fun and consequence-free with him, I don't think he really objected too much to whatever hobbies someone might have had.

As the PCs are all apparently asexual, married to their jobs (or even Fanatical about them) or else so socially awkward that it amounts to cruel and unusual punishment when someone attractive of any preferred sex notices them, Bo Johnson, as one of the six NPC members of their Monster Hunting team, will be a contrast to their dour dating lives by having a series of ill-advised hook-ups with types he really should have grown out of dating.

Not everything you need to rescue your allies from is necessarily physical danger.

Originally Posted by Apollonian

Also - and mostly unrelated, but it's the kind of thing I think a non-local might not know - the Florida state capital building is extremely phallic. It's a skyscraper flanked by two domes, and these are beautifully framed when you're driving west on Apalachee Parkway toward downtown.

You're right. I had no idea. :-)

Originally Posted by Apollonian

Also also. Near Tallahassee is Wakulla Springs, where they filmed a few Tarzan movies... and The Creature from the Black Lagoon. It's lovely, has a historic hotel on the premises, and would make for a very good set piece, what with the alligators and the flocks of vultures.

In my one and only visit to the Florida panhandle, around thirty years ago, my father dragged us to see something jungly and swampy, which had a connection to movies he liked. We ate gator, (dolphin? in Icelandic, it translated to the same thing as dolphins are called here, but are people even allowed to hunt dolphins?) and a number of other creatures I had not previously realised that humans ate.

I don't actually remember any details except the weird food and terrifying swamp people (to my young eyes, at least), but it might have been Wakulla Springs.

In any case, very, very different from the other parts of Florida that I have visited, mostly concentrated within a hundred miles of Miami, Tampa and Orlando, respectively.

I mostly picked Tallahassee because I liked the sound of the name, it seemed appropriately located and because Bo Johnson is meant to be from the northern Florida of rednecks, gators and strong accents, not the southerly*, tourist and retirement community parts.

*But not at all Southern.

[Icelander]

Any Texans living near Houston or somebody who knows such a person, how do y'all talk, an' act an' sich?

What will serve to illustrate that a character is a Texan from Galveston, Houston, Port Arthur or other neighboring communities, as opposed to someone from the Alabama-Mississippi Black Belt or, indeed, any other parts of the Deep South?

How are Texas oil rig roughnecks, boaters, sailors and coastal industry people (inc., I suppose, small town football players) different from West Texas oilmen, ranchers and small town football players?

What are local foods that are popular in and around Galveston and Houston?

What would someone visiting from Louisiana, either rural Cajun or urban New Orleans, make of people in Houston and Galveston?

What about a foreigner who had visited most of the Gulf Coast and lived in Florida for a while, what would he find notable about Galveston, Houston, Beamont, Port Arthur and any places within driving distance he might visit?

[dcarson]

Your comment on languages made me wonder. From what claims to be an official forum, a 2012 post.

As you know, language school is now a required part of the SEAL training curriculum, post SEAL Qualification Training. French, Spanish, Farsi, Urdu, Pasto, and other Arabic languages are taught. Additional language training is considered by the Team based on future assignment and operation areas.

Tallahassee was Seminole territory before they were driven out in the 1820s. This might make for sites of battles and massacres having mystical aspects.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by dcarson

Your comment on languages made me wonder. From what claims to be an official forum, a 2012 post.

Well, Bo went through BUD/S around 2004 or so and he retired from the Navy in 2014.

He might have attended some Arabic, Farsi, Pashto or Urdo training in the latter parts of his career, but given that biographies and memoirs indicate that plenty of SEALs in the 2000s and even 2010s only had enough command of languages in their operational area to recognize a couple of words, I doubt he realistically needs points in any languages in GURPS terms.

Briefly, yes, it is true that the SEALs are adopting many of the methods that work for the Special Forces in operating among the local populace, but the majority of people who were SEALs at the height of Afghanistan had not yet attained the linguistic and cultural proficiency that the Powers That Be would like to see for the future FID and irregular warfare arm of NAVSPECWARCOM.

It's still plausible enough to differentiate Navy SEALs from Army Special Forces by keeping in mind that the SEALs do Extreme Watersports, i.e. have a more comprehensive training regimen in operating at sea, boating, diving and in unusual infiltration techniques, whereas the Special Forces are Warrior Diplomats, better at languages, cultures and social stuff. It's not an exact cut-off and is a matter of degree, but it's still a fairly valid set of stereotypes.

Originally Posted by dcarson

Tallahassee was Seminole territory before they were driven out in the 1820s. This might make for sites of battles and massacres having mystical aspects.

It might indeed.