That is indeed an excellent and creepy list! #7 did it to me, besides all the others. :)
Living as I do in a small town, this thread hits home. Well done.
My particular favorites are the Lack of Animals and Pets, the speed of gossip with the reporter schtick, the abandoned furniture mill, 14 through 17 are simply brilliant, with 14 and 17 being my favorites. 20 is interesting, but that might be because my small town war memorial is about a block from my house. 24 has some possibility for some fun, since there are some small towns that have actually done some small things. If you look up the Battle of Athens, TN, you'll read about the last 'battle' fought in America, between returning WWII veterans and a very corrupt local government that popped up while they were away fighting the Germans.
I especially like the perky clerk who is exchanged every day, the self-correcting newspapers, and the plot with no-one having ancestors buried in the graveyard. (3, 6, 10). And, telling one guy something and the whole twon knows it.. that be quite creepy indeed (7).
Some of these plots are actually too subtle to be noticed by the players, though - no-one wearing blue is quite inconspicuous unless it's a bunch of sailors.
I'd also sum up all the "strange product" points into one.
Anyways, thanks for this, I'll use a few ^_^
This is excellent! Little quirky mysteries and general weirdness, without spelled-out explanations. Quite a few spark the imagination, as others has mentioned. I'm motivated to write up a few of these as well now!
A wonderfully creepy sub, and eerily accurate in some parts of real small towns, this will make a nice random list of oddities for my next Kult campaign, well done!
See, I was going over some old RPGnet posts of mine that I saved, and found this string of items I'd contributed to a thread about creepy Small Town Horror elements. To my pleasure, I found that I'd racked up 29 of them, and making 30 wasn't hard. No doubt others can think of more!
Actually, I figure that wearing blue would be pretty conspicuous really fast. For one, a good horror campaign is heavily investigative. For another - and here's the reason I picked blue for the color - no blue jeans. Never mind "no blue jeans" in a community in America ... none in a RURAL community in America. It'd be pretty astonishing.
It also struck me that if the scenario takes place during the 4th of July, you'd see a parade with NO one wearing the national colors ... not a cheerleader, not a color guard, not a marching band member, no one.
Very good sub. A couple seem to be variants of one another, but all in all, several useful stubs to get the old brain cooking. Thanks.
Mark
Plots (Mystical) (Encounter)
I loved this one. There were quite a few that were downright creepy. Most would make great Twilight Zone episodes!!
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