Anywear Academy: A 5 day Educational Live-action Role-play STEM Camp

Create Your Charcter

Before creating a character for the Anywear Academy, it's helpful to have an understanding of the background of the Anywear Academy. Below is a short narrative to that effect, we hope that it offers you some inspiration for your character when you start creating them.

Story of Anywear Academy

< 🌏 >

The universe is a vast and wonderful place.

It is full of different beings who have their own cultures, technologies, and ecosystems.

When a ripple in space–time continuum was observed on Earth in the Sol system,

the scientists of the planet didn’t fully comprehend what they were seeing

or the gravity of their discovery.

Their lives, and those of every other human on Earth, were about to change.

What would start as a global effort to investigate the scientific anomaly would turn into

the largest, and most secretive operation dedicated to dimensional exploration.

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< 👑 >

Dubbed the Anywear Academy,

this organization which was founded by a dedicated group of scientists

has tasked itself to explore new civilizations and cultures for

the betterment of all life across these planes of existence.

Functionally the Anywear Academy is governed by a board of directors.

Historically, these have been members of the scientific community

who have shown themselves to be not only brilliant in their field,

but also moral and ethical.

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<⌛️>

As time has passed,

more and more technology has flowed into the Earth dimension,

and the process for reaching different dimensions at will has been perfected.

The culmination of this technology is Portals.

To avoid the possibilities of military uses of these portals,

the board of governors has chosen to keep this technology to itself,

away from the prying eyes of the world who would likely use it for their own personal gain.

This choice has led the Anywear Academy to operate in the shadows

away from the influence of other organizations or governments.

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<🤖>

Anywear Academy employees fill a variety of jobs and functions,

but they universally have a love for exploring new ideas and a growth mindset.

No matter what role they eventually fill,

every member of the Anywear Academy starts off at the same place,

working in the field and learning their tradecraft.

The culmination of this work is the creation of a Familiar.

These familiars serve as an integration of technology and emotion and

allow the scientists to easily interact with portals as well as help with communication.

The bond between a scientist and their familiars can be very close and special,

they become like another member of the family.

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<💖>

Bona Voluntate: Good intentions

Candidates have been selected to join the Anywear Academy

based on their aptitude, interests, and ability to work together in secret.

The Academy believes they are excellent prospects for Explorers,

but they first must be educated and trained.

This is the first class of the Anywear Academy.

Mistakes will be made, that’s expected. But fixing them—that’s the fun part!

A live-action roleplay (LARP) is an immersive experience where you will be assuming this character’s persona for many hours at a time so it is also important to keep in mind what's comfortable for you. We know this seems obvious, but there have been times when ideas don’t match reality as far as an individual's abilities.

Now, you will be creating your own Anywhere Academy character!

Your Anywhere Academy character could be as close or as different as you are in your actual life as you’d like.

Take a few minutes to come up with who you want to play during this experience.

It may be helpful to have a piece of paper to write it down as you think through it.

Character Sheet

To aid in helping you create your character, feel free to use our character sheet to develop a concept. Feel free to make a copy and edit your own!

Thanks to Samuel Lopez For helping to create this as part of the Summer 2024 UCSC Science Internship Program.

Anywear Academy Supplemental Character Sheet (Create a copy to edit).ppt

What's Your Role?

The first thing that you need to consider when you are trying to make a character in this setting is understanding where you fit into this LARP as a whole.

Are you primarily an actor, putting on several different characters throughout the entire process, or is your role more of a teacher, engaging the students in the tech lessons and crafting?
Most of the time you are going to be playing many characters as each world has its own set of characters which helps to tell the story.

Once you are assigned or have chosen those characters and you understand how they fit into the overall structure of the LARP you can move forward with developing a character background.

What's Your Story?

After you have chosen a character and understand how they fit into the overall LARP structure you can start working on a backstory. This doesn’t have to be terribly involved, but the more effort that you put into it, the easier you will find playing your character. This exercise will help you along the path of creating a detailed character that you will play during the LARP. Here are a few key aspects of a character background that you should include when coming up with yours.

Personality

Your character's personality can often share space with your own personality.

Think about what motivates your character and any similarities that you might share as a person with your character.

Is your character mysterious and untrusting or open, gregarious, and light-hearted?

These are really outward-facing questions, meaning the answers will dictate the tone in which your character interacts with the players.

Occupation

First, what is your character's job?

Whether you are playing Fairy Royal, the Super Villain, the Mayor, or just an Anywear Academy Agent will influence in what capacity and tone you will interact with your Trainees.

Background

Next, what's your character's backstory?

The players are going to be interacting with your character constantly, and having a detailed background keeps your character fresh and interesting.

Where are you from?
How did you come to work for the Anywear Academy?

This little bit of character-building work will help to inform your character's motivations.

Motivations

What motivates your character?

This is by far the most challenging aspect of character creation for veteran or first-time players alike, so don’t worry if this takes some time or if you need to bounce ideas off someone else.

Having the previous steps detailed will go a long way to informing these motivations.

It might be helpful to fall back on common tropes like:

Protector/Guardian
Leader/Motivator
Healer/Communicator
Tactician/Organizer

Getting Into Character

Now that you created your character, you can start to putting things together not just on paper, but in real life.

Decide on something small first, for example, will your character speak with an accent?

Then, if you are doing this with other staff:

Pair off and describe your character to a partner.
Include things like your backstory, how you got involved with the Anywhere academy, and what their goals are, try to flesh out this character during this time.
Once you’ve given something of an overview, try role playing as if you are now doing an icebreaker for the characters. Two truths and a lie? Could be fun!

Example

As the organizer of this camp, I want to play an Anywear Academy Agent and an Elven Princess (Fairy Royal).

When I am Agent, I will be facilitating daily events for the players and initiating the missions into different worlds. My researcher character’s name is Tara Thompkins, a cheerful scientist excited about expanding Anywear Academy in the future. She was recruited to the Anywear Academy after a successful career at NASA. She wants to help the Trainees achieve their goals and see Anywear Academy succeed. When I am roleplaying as Tara, I put on a pair of fake glasses and I hold a notebook almost as a prop and pretend to take notes/make calculations occasionally. I act interested in the students’ findings and excited about their discoveries!

My Elven princess character’s name is Talisa, and she has lived in the Elphame her entire life as a part of royalty. She is unaware of the existence of humans and other dimensions, so she will act surprised whenever she is confronted with Anywear Academy Trainees. She wants to protect her kingdom and the other Elves at all costs, as well as protect nature. When I am roleplaying as Talisa, I put on a flower headband and have a more playful manner of movement. I might be a bit apprehensive to the Trainees at first because I do not know of the humans’ existence. When I open up to the Trainees, I will be sweet and dutiful, and I might have questions about human-world things that the Traines mention in conversation.

When I am roleplaying as Tara, the researcher, my knowledge of the other dimensions is limited to whatever the players tell me about their missions. When I am roleplaying as Talisa, the Elven princess, my knowledge is limited to the Elphame dimension.

Remembering to separating information can be just as important as distinguishing the role, motivation, and background of your characters.

How to Transition In and Out-of-Character?

When you are occupied with in-game periods, often abbreviated to IG, it is important that you do your best to not break character. Some players have a hard time immersing themselves in this type of game, and the more that you model for them that type of dramatis personae the easier it will be to get their acceptance of the activity.

It is often important to have a way of signaling to the group when you are moving from an in-game moment to an out-of-game moment.

An obvious physical motion like a 360-degree turn or raising arms above your head can be useful to communicating to transitioning in or out of game.
Often taking off a signature piece of your character's clothing can be a very effective cue.

You can come up with this together with your Trainees or Staff.

Establish and practice this cue at the beginning of your experience.

Essential Staff Characters for Anywear Academy

Agent of the Anywear Academy

Court Fairy(ies)

Fairy Royal

Mayor

Supervillain (Shapeshifter)

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