KKP's The School Of All Trades: The Story
The Brochure:
Heyla and well met, Potential Student! We humbly thank you for your interest in The School of All Trades (TSOAT), a university for learning the skills that will help you achieve success in whatever trade you choose to pursue. Like other schools of higher learning, we offer the traditional classroom experience to our students. However, we at TSOAT also understand that experience in the real world applications of these skills is as vital as classroom instruction in helping the student to understand them more thoroughly. Hence, each class will have four phases: the instruction phase, the explore and practice (E&P) phase, the internship phase, and the assessment phase.
While the instruction and E&P phases are exactly what you would expect--lectures and a variety of assignments to provide the student with practice in the newly-learned skills--the internship and assessment phases offer a unique dimension to the learning experience. The internship phase is further practice in the learned skills, but in a real world setting and under the guidance of your instructor with safety protocols in place, allowing you to learn from your mistakes. The assessment phase is where you demonstrate what you've learned in the internship phase, without the aid of your instructor and, of course, without any of the safety protocols to guarantee you will remain uninjured--or even alive!--by the end of the experience. But there is no cause for alarm! Because we understand that each student learns at her own pace, we know that the students, themselves, must decide when they are ready for the assessment phase of the class. Thus, the students are able to practice for as long as necessary before putting their lives in potential danger to prove skill mastery. We understand that this is a shocking and extremely progressive teaching strategy--indeed, if not for our sovereign status and superior military force to aid us, critics would have succeeded in depriving others of such quality education--all in the name of an irrational fear of change. But time and time again, we've found that rushing students through a strict pacing schedule and forcing an assessment upon them before they are ready only results in their untimely and horrific deaths. This is unacceptable! As we are a learning institution, we insist that our students actually learn what they've come here to attain, so despite others' insistence that we adhere to conventional wisdom, we allow--nay, demand!--our students to learn at their own pace, so they may better survive assessment day!
This passion and dedication to our students is why those who survive to graduate go on to enjoy successful and happy lives. So why not attempt to be among those survivors and register today--especially since all services we provide are free?
The Game:
Heyla and welcome to The School of All Trades, the self-improvement roleplaying game (RPG) designed to help motivate us all to achieve our individual dreams and aspirations--otherwise known as our "real world ideal epic character design"--by linking our characters' Attributes, Skills, and Resources to our real world to-do lists, studies, work, tasks, resources, and anything else that we feel the need to improve. Thus, as we go about improving ourselves, so, too, are our characters improved, giving our characters more resources and options with which to complete their adventures, while simultaneously allowing us to feel satisfaction in the real and measurable progress we are making in our actual lives. It's multitasking at its best!
The Setting: An Overview
As the brochure excerpt from above demonstrates, you are playing the role of someone who, for whatever reasons, decided that change in your life is sorely needed, and because this eccentric--yet seemingly legitimate--university offers you, for free, the chance to learn the skills needed to bring about that change you so desire, you steadfastly ignore the odd references to sovereign states and life-threatening exams, as that was obviously added in for humor.
All seems well as the final bit of paperwork is completed and signed, making you an official student with an official class schedule. Smiling warmly, the university recruiter instructs you to meet her here at the office in the strip mall the day before your first class begins, as an entire day will be needed for orientation and a tour of the school. Baffled, you ask her why you simply can't go to the school directly, but she sidesteps the question and bids you a wonderful weekend. Too tired to really dwell on this dull subject, you return her smile and take your leave, anticipation for orientation building up inside you. When orientation day arrives, however, you find yourself wishing you had been more assertive and inquisitive when you had the opportunity.
The TSOAT advisor merrily greets you outside of the strip mall unit. You look around, confused, looking for other students and some kind of university-owned vehicle. Perhaps it hasn't arrived yet? Before you could ask, though, she's ushering you inside the little office and through a back door. You begin to protest, because you know for a fact that 1) that door wasn't there before, and 2) even if it had been there and you had simply overlooked it, it would have been just as easy to go around to the back, where you think the vehicle is apparently waiting for you. But before you can even form the words, you're shoved through the door, and your mind goes blank as you take in the environment that should have been a back parking lot, but is, instead, the main campus of The School of All Trades.
You suddenly wish that you had an extra day before class, because you're going to need at least that much time to recover from the shock of having everything you thought you knew about reality dumped down into the garbage disposal, ground up, and unceremoniously deposited among human waste at the sewage processing plant.
Ours isn't the only universe to exist. In addition to our universe, other single universes exist in infinite number. In turn, there are multiverses, a group of universes--equally in infinite number--that originally stemmed from one universe, the only thing separating them from each other being the choices that were made in that one, original universe. From there, we encounter clusters, infinite groups of multiverses which stem from a single multiverse. Then there are dimensions, realities unto themselves, not universes, not planes of existence. They're simply there, in a space all of their own. And, finally, there are so many other realities, frames-of-reference for which we have no name for. All of this together is called Totality.
The School of All Trades is a university that occupies its own, personal dimension. To obtain more students, staff are employed to scout those who have the potential to make it through the TSOAT program by visiting other areas of Totality. When students are in the internship and assessment phases of their classes, they are sent out to every part of Totality, inserted into the different realities as if they belonged there, and placed in key positions that, due to a chain reaction of events, will put them in situations that culminates in adventures that require them to use everything they have learned in order to, at best, ensure a "happy ending," or at the very least, ensure that they simply survive.
In this way, you and other players have a solid perspective from which to define your characters that can also, loosely, lend a plausible connection between their needs and yours (both you and your character are looking for a means of achieving your dreams; as this is something you can relate to in both the fictional game and the real world, your character becomes a very real symbol of yourself), while still having the freedom to play in whatever genres and worlds you and your group prefer.
Hoping You Enjoy TSOAT,
KeeperS Karu
aka TheKeeper of Keeper's Krew Productions