Unpopular opinions go here

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I agree to an extent, but I think that is over-accentuated as a result of sweet tea. Sweet tea includes a LOT of sugar. The higher extreme tends to be what a few of my friends have referred to as "church sweet," which is the extraordinarily sweet tea made by the old ladies in the local churches.

IME, a LOT of southern meals lean on copious amounts of savory vegetables. We eat more meat nowadays due to accessibility, but meat was generally more of a special occasion thing. Despite how many restaurants emphasize the meat, that's often the "special side" in Southern cuisine. The vegetable or fruit dishes are where it's at! However, we do use a lot animal fat (and butter!) to flavor our dishes. Southern green beans, for example, are often slow cooked with fatback, salt pork, or some other variation of lardon.

I can tell you one thing that non-Southerners put sugar in that most Southerners do not: cornbread. In the South, cornbread is savory and not sweet. Many Southerners even complain that cornbread outside of the South more closely resembles a sweet "cake" than what we consider proper savory cornbread. I also know that expat Southerners and non-Southerners often have difficulties replicating Southern cornbread, and there is a reason for that: the corn meal. Yes, the South uses different corn meal than you can find elsewhere in the United States and likewise here in Austria. Southern corn meal is naturally sweeter and thus doesn't need sugar added for making cornbread. (IME, honey will typically be favored over sugar to sweeten cornbread.) This is why I sometimes have my relatives ship me cornmeal from home. It makes a real difference in taste.

Apparently the same issue is why southern biscuits are different. Which is ... weird. Shouldn't the same flour available in the South be available elsewhere?

I can certainly confirm that cornbread north of the Mason-Dixon and west of the Mississippi is baffling and disappointing. I've given up on trying it at this point, because it always makes me sad. (I have been converted to non-Southern biscuits, though.)

 

[Nikosandros]

Gary constantly contradicted himself in his writing, sometimes within the span of a single year's Sorcerer's Scrolls. And then, in his posting here on ENWorld, he regularly contradicted what he'd said back when he was writing for TSR. Rewriting history to make him a clear and consistent communicator requires ignoring the very abundant paper trail.

I remember when DMPrata, the author of ADDICT (a document about BtB initiative and surprise in AD&D), was hoping to get clarifications from Gary on Dragonsfoot and Gary just flatly contradicted basic stuff from the rules...

 

[overgeeked]

I remember when DMPrata, the author of ADDICT (a document about BtB initiative and surprise in AD&D), was hoping to get clarifications from Gary on Dragonsfoot and Gary just flatly contradicted basic stuff from the rules...

That's the problem with making it up as you go. Don't write anything down so no one will catch you out.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I remember when DMPrata, the author of ADDICT (a document about BtB initiative and surprise in AD&D), was hoping to get clarifications from Gary on Dragonsfoot and Gary just flatly contradicted basic stuff from the rules...

For those who haven't read it ... ADDICT is thoroughly, completely, 100% entertaining.

And it explains why 99.9% of all tables (the number is approximate, yet also completely true) chose some version of, "Aw, let's wing it," when it came to surprise and initiative in 1e.

 

[overgeeked]

For those who haven't read it ... ADDICT is thoroughly, completely, 100% entertaining.

And it explains why 99.9% of all tables (the number is approximate, yet also completely true) chose some version of, "Aw, let's wing it," when it came to surprise and initiative in 1e.

It's also ahistorical as all hell. No one had to deal with all that nonsense because no one had access to all that nonsense. When the AD&D PHB was released initiative was "both sides roll 1d6, high roll goes first." That's it. All that other stuff was added later and most people ignored it because they already had a system that worked, i.e. the original AD&D PHB.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

It's also ahistorical as all hell. No one had to deal with all that nonsense because no one had access to all that nonsense. When the AD&D PHB was released initiative was "both sides roll 1d6, high roll goes first." That's it. All that other stuff was added later and most people ignored it because they already had a system that worked, i.e. the original AD&D PHB.

I wouldn't say it is completely ahistorical. The issue is that while the basic rules (for surprise, initiative) are seemingly simple, the game, including even within just the base PHB and DMG and MM had numerous additional complications.

So once you started adding things like spellcasting, multiple attacks, missile attacks (and bonuses for that, as applicable), weird corner cases (like the Specator that uses a d8), certain magic items that create exceptions, and so on ... and that's assuming you aren't using the psionic rules, well, it gets messy.

So while it is an extreme example, especially by adding in some of the later UA rules ... it's still shows you just how weird it can get.

(And yes, most tables defaulted to some version of rolling a d6, with the main variant I am aware of being adding time for spellcasting)

 

[overgeeked]

(And yes, most tables defaulted to some version of rolling a d6, with the main variant I am aware of being adding time for spellcasting)

That's what makes it ahistorical. Yes, the accumulated rules over the entire life of the edition amounted to a complicated mess. But that's irrelevant as basically no one actually played that way. It's one example of how dry, written text doesn't quite capture the realities outside of those dry, written texts. Reality is sometimes far messier or far simpler than texts suggests.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

That's what makes it ahistorical. Yes, the accumulated rules over the entire life of the edition amounted to a complicated mess. But that's irrelevant as basically no one actually played that way. It's one example of how dry, written text doesn't quite capture the realities outside of those dry, written texts. Reality is sometimes far messier or far simpler than texts suggests.

Right. But even the rules in the Core Three (PHB + MM + DMG) were a complicated mess. It was never just Roll d6. Really. Because the AD&D system was full of exceptions and special cases that didn't always play well with each other.

So it's one thing to say that it's ahistorical as to how people mostly played; but it's not ahistorical as to what the rules actually were. The idea that people ignored a lot of the rules ... well, that's a different issue.

 

[overgeeked]

Right. But even the rules in the Core Three (PHB + MM + DMG) were a complicated mess. It was never just Roll d6. Really. Because the AD&D system was full of exceptions and special cases that didn't always play well with each other.

Again, not accurate. The MM came out in 1977. The PHB came out in 1978. The DMG came out in 1979. There were not rules to play characters by until the PHB in 1978. By the time the DMG came out in 1979 people had already been playing for a year. Most groups simply stuck with the rules from the PHB, regardless of what later books added. So yes, it was just roll 1d6. Because that's what's in the PHB.

So it's one thing to say that it's ahistorical as to how people mostly played; but it's not ahistorical as to what the rules actually were. The idea that people ignored a lot of the rules ... well, that's a different issue.

It's historically accurate to say most people ignored the rules. It's not historically accurate to compile a list of all the rules after 10+ years of a game's life cycle and suggest that is how people actually played. Which is what ADDICT is doing. It's not "look how silly the rules eventually became after a decade" it's "look how impossible it is to play AD&D as written." Duh. Because people didn't play it as written.

 

[billd91]

It's also ahistorical as all hell. No one had to deal with all that nonsense because no one had access to all that nonsense. When the AD&D PHB was released initiative was "both sides roll 1d6, high roll goes first." That's it. All that other stuff was added later and most people ignored it because they already had a system that worked, i.e. the original AD&D PHB.

Not really. The AD&D PHB already includes a bunch of complications with surprise (rangers, monks). The initiative rules already are calling out the complications of multiple attacks by experienced fighters, haste and slow spells, and weapon lengths that a DM is empowered to adjudicate with common sense (as uncommon as that is...). It is not ahistorical for ADDICT to incorporate them. It's not even ahistorical to incorporate a whole bunch of DMG complications even if the DMG came out a year later since they were intended to be part of the rules of 1e's core experience.