Demoscene RPG Manual

Adok/Hugi

Dear customer,

Congratulations for purchasing "The PC Demo Scene" (tm), the ultimate role playing game. With The PC Demo Scene, you have bought one of the most realistic, most entertaining, most educational but also least predictable games available. What follows are a few guidelines to help you master our product successfully.

If this is your first product from our Demo Scene collection and you cannot import any saved data from other products, bear in mind that at the beginning the inhabitants of this virtual world, the "Sceners" (tm), will regard you as a "Total Lamer"; no matter whether you are a hobby programmer using Turbo Pascal 6.0, a bookkeeper or the Chief Executive Officer of a world-wide software company in your real life. A Total Lamer has the character level 0. By diligent training - this means at this stage: getting to know the customs in "Sceneland" (tm), the most important Sceners and their "Productions" - you will get experience points and can move up to character level 9.

Once you have reached this level, your status will improve, too. Now you are no longer a Total Lamer but a "Lamer". You now have superficial knowledge about the habits in Sceneland. The majority of sceners still regards you as an evil intruder, which is why you should keep away from confrontations. But you now can select one of several possible careers. Do that in any case, otherwise your character level will sink again with time.

In our standard edition, the following careers can be chosen: the career of a coder, a graphician and a tracker. With our expansion set, which can be purchased separately, you can also become a sysop, designer, editor, swapper or ANSI-artist and combine several careers.

What career you choose, should depend on the skills you randomly earned at the beginning of the game. For instance, if your alter ego has no musical talent at all, you should not start a tracker career. It is possible to change your career whenever you want, but this will cause your character level to decrease.

Keep on training diligently, and soon your character level and your skills will improve. From character level 15 on you are no longer a Lamer but a "Newbie". Now you can communicate with the majority of the sceners without taking any risks. However, be careful of the "Elite".

At this stage one of your character values increases together with your character level provided you keep enough contact with the Sceners: your image in the scene. One hint which especially applies to the German part of Sceneland: It is always very effective if you are ready to communicate but act arrogantly and conceited. In this way the average sceners get to respect you. But never boast of something you have not achieved (the Sceners call that "posing"), and never claim other people's Productions for your own (the Sceners call that "ripping"). Once someone finds out the truth, both your image and your character level will decrease very fast, and only with great efforts will you be able to increase them again.

At character level 49 it is time to join a "Group". (In other RPGs, what we call a "Group" is usually called "party", but the word "Party" has another meaning in The PC Demo Scene.) Only in this way will you be able to get to character level 50, which makes you an "Average Scener". The more famous the group you join is, the faster your image will increase from now on. Alternately, you can also found your own group, but this makes everything much more difficult and hence is only recommended for experienced players.

Unless you have already done it, you should now release your first Productions. Depending on their quality they can have either a positive or a negative impact on your image. Of course it is easier to create Productions in a Group, which is the reason why you have joined one.

While you have mainly communicated with the rest of the inhabitants of Sceneland using "IRC", "Online Discussion Areas", "E-Mail", "Diskmags" and, in case you are using our expansion set, perhaps also "Snailmail" until now you should now consider visiting one of the many "Demo Parties". The impact on both your image and your wealth will be especially great if you take part in one of the "Compos" with a Production of yours or your group and reach a good place. You can invest the prize money for example in new equipment in order to make even better Productions. Do not worry, even bad places usually do not do any harm to your image, only objectively bad or even "ripped" releases can destroy every good image. Apart from the Compos, Demo Parties also offer a lot of entertainment. But beware, do not use too many computer games at Demo Parties. Otherwise your image might dwindle down to zero again and you might get the status of a "Quake Lamer", which is character level -1.

If everything runs okay, if you have released many good "Productions", if you have joined many respected Group and have survived a couple of group wars, you will reach character level 200 one day. From them on you belong to the "Elite". You can now set the rules for Sceneland. Your image will be so great that every scener will admire you. Depending whether you are rather good-natured or rather evil, you can now either introduce talented Newbies to the Scene and help them develop their skills or beat Lamers up. But many days will pass until you will reach this status.

So long, have fun with The PC Demo Scene!