Treasure Tables is on hiatus as of December 13th, 2007 -- after two years of daily posts, I needed a break. If you're looking for GMing material, I have two recommendations: the hundreds of posts in TT's archives, and my new project, the multi-author GMing blog Gnome Stew. Happy GMing! -- Martin

Weird U.S. Series for Modern Games

Sat. October 13, 2007 

I picked up a copy of Weird Las Vegas and Nevada for my upcoming Mage: The Awakening Sin City chronicle, and it turned out to be a great buy. It’s full of supernatural, bizarre and otherwise offbeat stuff about Vegas and Nevada, which is perfect for a World of Darkness game.

They publish a whole series of these, too — New Jersey (two volumes — I think that’s where they started), Michigan, California and more. You can see most of the titles on the Weird U.S. site, although Vegas isn’t on there. Here in Utah, Barnes & Noble carries a good selection of them in the travel section.

At $20 a pop they’re a good buy, and the fact that they’re full of short, detail-rich writeups makes them just about perfect for adapting to gaming purposes. If you’ve got a modern game that could use this kind of color, I recommend checking them out.

More posts about: Products for GMs, Worldbuilding

Comments

6 Responses to “Weird U.S. Series for Modern Games”

  1. John Arcadian on October 14th, 2007 8:07 am

    I went in and read one of their sample stories. It was the one about melonheads in Chardon,Ohio (Ohio being the state where I live). Gave me the willies. It was like reading a goosebumps story when I was a kid.

  2. Telas on October 14th, 2007 9:36 am

    Wife’s out of town, so I’m up later than I need to be, following random links, finding obscure web sites, etc.

    I somehow get from the Weird US page to LostDestinations.com. And then to this page, which freaked me the hell out.

    Thanks, Martin. Can I get my sleep back?

  3. Restless on October 14th, 2007 9:41 am

    Back in 2005 the guys from Weird U.S. had a show on the Discovery block on cable. Every once in a while old programs run around Discovery/History/A&E. You might want to check it out.

  4. Yax on October 15th, 2007 5:48 am

    @Telas: That story is indeed spooky. Could be great for the first games in a WoD campaign.

  5. Martin on October 15th, 2007 7:34 am

    You know what scares me? Gray text on a black background. :P

    Seriously, though, the LD story was neat — and definitely the right vibe for a WoD game. Thanks for the link.

  6. Walt C on October 17th, 2007 5:10 am

    I’m a Jersey boy, although I’ve been living just across the border in Pennsy for the last few years.

    I saw the Weird New Jersey mag at the time I was running my first Witchcraft game and almost used it.

    I did lay out the plans for a new Witchcraft campaign where we (IRL) would go visit one of these sites and then on subsequent weekends play an adventure based on the site (sort of a “now here’s what really happened” thing). This was feasible because we could be anywhere in the state within 2 hours.

    Unfortunately, the campaign never happened.