Walpurgis U. is so geeky…
G'day
To set the stage, I am about to start a GURPS campaign set in a weird university in 1933. This university (Walpurgis University) is somewhere in the Pioneer Valley in western Massachusetts, in a town that is a shadow of Northampton Mass. in the way that Lovecraft's Arkham is a shadow of Salem. But I'm aiming more for a sort of Indiana Jones / Professor Challenger genre than Cthulhu Mythos.
The idea of Walpurgis U. is that amazing things are going on there, but that somehow they never make the news, or never make technological history. Wal. U. is often ten years ahead of the rest of the world (in, eg. building a working helicopter), and its field researchers are continually finding amazing things in obscure corners of the world. But Walpurgis is so unworldly or unlucky that it never manages to get the press it deserves or make technological history. For example, its 1916 expedition to Maple White Land returned in 1917 to announce that it had confirmed Professor Challenger's findings. And held a press conference the day the Germans torpedoed the SS. Lusitania. In 1933 four grad students in engineering built a working helicopter, but a frat boy went joy-riding in it and crashed it, killing a co-ed and losing his own arm: it was all the Regents could do to hush the whole thing up. Professor de Valetta of the chemistry department built a transmutator out of graphite and uranium, but abandoned the project whent he thing produced dangerous amounts of waste heat.
Walpurgis is also comically bad at all sports. They can't even win a baseball game when they have a Neanderthal hitter, or a football season when the whole forward line are hepped on Professor Presbury's extract of monkey glands. What athletic talent and scholarship money they do have is concentrated on obscure sports that other colleges barely play and that bring in no prestige whatsoever, such as fencing, biathlon, jai alai, kendo, lawn bowls, cricket, and judo.
I would like some suggestions of isolated fact that I can work into my campaign to make Walpurgis University extra-geeky, eg.
• Walpurgis University is so geeky that the ROTC company plays 'Little Wars' rather than doing infantry drill.
Any suggestions?
Regards,
Agback
G'day
To set the stage, I am about to start a GURPS campaign set in a weird university in 1933. This university (Walpurgis University) is somewhere in the Pioneer Valley in western Massachusetts, in a town that is a shadow of Northampton Mass. in the way that Lovecraft's Arkham is a shadow of Salem. But I'm aiming more for a sort of Indiana Jones / Professor Challenger genre than Cthulhu Mythos.
The idea of Walpurgis U. is that amazing things are going on there, but that somehow they never make the news, or never make technological history. Wal. U. is often ten years ahead of the rest of the world (in, eg. building a working helicopter), and its field researchers are continually finding amazing things in obscure corners of the world. But Walpurgis is so unworldly or unlucky that it never manages to get the press it deserves or make technological history. For example, its 1916 expedition to Maple White Land returned in 1917 to announce that it had confirmed Professor Challenger's findings. And held a press conference the day the Germans torpedoed the SS. Lusitania. In 1933 four grad students in engineering built a working helicopter, but a frat boy went joy-riding in it and crashed it, killing a co-ed and losing his own arm: it was all the Regents could do to hush the whole thing up. Professor de Valetta of the chemistry department built a transmutator out of graphite and uranium, but abandoned the project whent he thing produced dangerous amounts of waste heat.
Walpurgis is also comically bad at all sports. They can't even win a baseball game when they have a Neanderthal hitter, or a football season when the whole forward line are hepped on Professor Presbury's extract of monkey glands. What athletic talent and scholarship money they do have is concentrated on obscure sports that other colleges barely play and that bring in no prestige whatsoever, such as fencing, biathlon, jai alai, kendo, lawn bowls, cricket, and judo.
I would like some suggestions of isolated fact that I can work into my campaign to make Walpurgis University extra-geeky, eg.
• Walpurgis University is so geeky that the ROTC company plays 'Little Wars' rather than doing infantry drill.
Any suggestions?
Regards,
Agback
