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. [1] 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.
Comments Disabled To "Weird U.S. Series for Modern Games"
#1 Comment By John Arcadian On October 14, 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 Comment By Restless On October 14, 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.
#3 Comment By Yax On October 15, 2007 @ 5:48 am
@Telas: That story is indeed spooky. Could be great for the first games in a WoD campaign.
#4 Comment By Martin On October 15, 2007 @ 7:34 am
You know what scares me? Gray text on a black background. 😛
Seriously, though, the LD story was neat — and definitely the right vibe for a WoD game. Thanks for the link.
#5 Comment By Walt C On October 17, 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.