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Message no. 1
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Alex Rudnick)
Subject: Otaku and "Decking Naked"
Date: Tue May 29 11:20:01 2001
Something I'd been thinking about recently was the early-SR concept of
Decking Naked. Apparently, at least in fiction and for NPCs, it was at one
point possible to plug oneself up to a trid line and interfcae with the
matrix with nothing but one's datajack and gray matter... although it was
considered near-suicidal, since there was nothing to insulate one's brain
from any IC encountered.

here's a couple of examples that I can think of:
In _Choose Your Enemies Carefully_, I believe... the Dodger plugs himself
up to the Matrix and has another Morgan-the-AI experience, without the aid
of his deck, while he's locked up in some mansion or another in England,
possibly one that belongs to one of the druid guys in the novel...

In _NAN: Vol 1_ there's a character in the "Peacekeeper" adventure in
there called RAM, a rather sociopathic decker.
"As a kid, he honed his considerable computer skills by running the Pueblo
Corporate Council Net naked. Encounters with various forms of unpleasant
black IC left him with brain damage." (NAN I, page 65)

So what do youse guys make of this? Otaku before we had Otaku?
Differences of interpretations of the SR world? ... or just
an error on somebody's part?

TGITH
Message no. 2
From: shadowrn@*********.com (shadowrn@*********.com)
Subject: Otaku and "Decking Naked"
Date: Tue May 29 11:40:01 2001
On Tue, 29 May 2001, Alex Rudnick wrote:

> Something I'd been thinking about recently was the early-SR concept of
> Decking Naked. Apparently, at least in fiction and for NPCs, it was at one
> point possible to plug oneself up to a trid line and interfcae with the
> matrix with nothing but one's datajack and gray matter... although it was
> considered near-suicidal, since there was nothing to insulate one's brain
> from any IC encountered.

I think this was using program carriers (the correct term escapes me) its
a cybernetic modification of three prongs extending out the back of the
hand, which plugged into an I/O port of some kind (whetever the decker
could find/rig up), and contained his persona chips, but nothing else, so
he had to use hacking pool to write programs, and headware memory to store
anything downloaded. this was definatly in SR1 (the story in the front of
Sr1 hardback has dodger using one of these), havent checked in sr3, but
if they're not there, I'm going to damn well create them :-) - I liked
the idea, after all if they're aware of the risks, and dont have
the..advantages of Otaku, why not!?

John

--
jconstable@*****.com
Diagonally parked in a parallel universe
Message no. 3
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Gurth)
Subject: Otaku and "Decking Naked"
Date: Tue May 29 13:10:10 2001
According to Alex Rudnick, on Tue, 29 May 2001 the word on the street was...

> Something I'd been thinking about recently was the early-SR concept of
> Decking Naked. Apparently, at least in fiction and for NPCs, it was at one
> point possible to plug oneself up to a trid line and interfcae with the
> matrix with nothing but one's datajack and gray matter... although it was
> considered near-suicidal, since there was nothing to insulate one's brain
> from any IC encountered.

You want to take a look at the first-edition main rulebook. It has
everything ever published about decking naked in it :) <plug>If you don't
have access to that book, go to
http://plastic.dumpshock.com/shadowrun/supplements.html and download Tech
Specs, which includes all that same stuff as well.</plug>

> So what do youse guys make of this? Otaku before we had Otaku?
> Differences of interpretations of the SR world? ... or just
> an error on somebody's part?

My guess is something that seemed like a cool idea at the time, but which
didn't work so well anymore when the game world took on a more solid shape.
FWIW, I wrote up a third-edition update of the naked decking rules only last
month, which will appear in the SR3 update for Running Gear (<more plug>the
SR2 version is still available from the URL above</more plug> :)

--
Gurth@******.nl - http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
Who needs that now?
-> NAGEE Editor * ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Page: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d-(dpu) s:- !a>? C+@ UL P L++ E W-(++) N o? K w+(--) O V?
PS+ PE(-)(+) Y PGP- t@ 5++ X(+) R+++(-)>$ tv+ b++@ DI- D+ G+ e h! !r y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998
Message no. 4
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Simon and Fiona)
Subject: Otaku and "Decking Naked"
Date: Tue May 29 23:15:01 2001
-----Original Message-----
From: Alex Rudnick <alex@**********.com>
To: shadowrn@*********.com <shadowrn@*********.com>
Date: Wednesday, May 30, 2001 1:26 AM
Subject: Otaku and "Decking Naked"



>So what do youse guys make of this? Otaku before we had Otaku?
>Differences of interpretations of the SR world? ... or just
>an error on somebody's part?
>

I always thought that it was a little throwaway rule that they put in solely
to explain why Dodger was attempting to jack in without a deck on the
original cover art.
Message no. 5
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Mister Incognito)
Subject: Otaku and "Decking Naked"
Date: Mon Jun 4 10:35:01 2001
Could someone post the rules for this along with the stats for the program
carrier- essence loss and price. Looks kinda interesting so I think I might
add it to our current game.

Thanks.
_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
Message no. 6
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Gurth)
Subject: Otaku and "Decking Naked"
Date: Mon Jun 4 14:00:03 2001
According to Mister Incognito, on Mon, 04 Jun 2001 the word on the street was...

> Could someone post the rules for this along with the stats for the program
> carrier- essence loss and price. Looks kinda interesting so I think I might
> add it to our current game.

Like I said last time :) download Tech Specs from
http://plastic.dumpshock.com/shadowrun/supplements.html which gives you
everything you need for decking naked, at least under SR1/2 rules. I can't
see a reason why it shouldn't work with VR 2.0/SR3/Matrix rules, though.

--
Gurth@******.nl - http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
Who needs that now?
-> NAGEE Editor * ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Page: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d-(dpu) s:- !a>? C+@ UL P L++ E W-(++) N o? K w+(--) O V?
PS+ PE(-)(+) Y PGP- t@ 5++ X(+) R+++(-)>$ tv+ b++@ DI- D+ G+ e h! !r y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998
Message no. 7
From: shadowrn@*********.com (shadowrn@*********.com)
Subject: Otaku and "Decking Naked"
Date: Sun Jun 10 11:00:01 2001
On Mon, 4 Jun 2001, Mister Incognito wrote:

> Could someone post the rules for this along with the stats for the program
> carrier- essence loss and price. Looks kinda interesting so I think I might
> add it to our current game.
>

sorry for the delay in replying, just got access to my books;

from Sr1, page 111:

"This feat requires a Program Carrier to let you slot Persona chips loaded
for Sensor, Masking, and Evasion into a suitable port. You have to jack
into a dataport at the same time. to get in, you need an Input/Output
Port or Slave Module. "Wait a minuite", you say, "what about the Bod
program? Wheres the MPCP?" Well chummers, your Willpower is the MPCP when
you do this electron dance. Any damange the MPCP would take, you take
personally. Its marked off on your Mental Condition Monitor. If you get
knocked out, you're dumped. Black IC still kills you, just like always.
You can use headware memory space for downloading data, and you have an
I/O rating equal to your Intelligence. Utilites? No, you cant carry
those. You have to write all your Programs on the fly, using your hacking
pool. On the upside, if you do have Wired Reflexes, or a vehicle
control rig, you do get the dice bonus to your Initiaive Roll, but if you
run into anything nasty, that may only mean you get to die faster"

Program Carrier .2 Essence 25,000 NuYen

I hope its Ok to post a chunk like that out of the book, but i figured its
no longer in print, doesnt appear in any of the newer sourcebooks, so its
not like I can say "go out and buy Sourcebook X"

--
jconstable@*****.com
Diagonally parked in a parallel universe
Message no. 8
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Sebastian Wiers)
Subject: Otaku and "Decking Naked"
Date: Sun Jun 10 11:50:07 2001
>from Sr1, page 111:
>
>"This feat requires a Program Carrier to let you slot Persona chips loaded
>for Sensor, Masking, and Evasion into a suitable port. You have to jack
>into a dataport at the same time. to get in, you need an Input/Output
>Port or Slave Module. "Wait a minuite", you say, "what about the Bod
>program? Wheres the MPCP?" Well chummers, your Willpower is the MPCP when
>you do this electron dance. Any damange the MPCP would take, you take
>personally. Its marked off on your Mental Condition Monitor. If you get
>knocked out, you're dumped. Black IC still kills you, just like always.
>You can use headware memory space for downloading data, and you have an
>I/O rating equal to your Intelligence. Utilites? No, you cant carry
>those. You have to write all your Programs on the fly, using your hacking
>pool. On the upside, if you do have Wired Reflexes, or a vehicle
>control rig, you do get the dice bonus to your Initiaive Roll, but if you
>run into anything nasty, that may only mean you get to die faster"
>
>Program Carrier .2 Essence 25,000 NuYen


Note that the old "program on the fly" rules were pretty harsh- you had to
alocate hacking pool dice equal to the square of the rating of the program
you wanted. You'd probably need some big chages to get this to work in SR3,
both rules and "game world logic" wise.
When playing with this under SR2 rules, I did manage to create a character
who had (only when using a program carier) a hacking pool in excess of 25
dice. Most of it came from reaction (HP used to be equal to matrix
reaction, iirc)- wired reflexes and reaction enhancers. Made the character
a pretty nasty samurai, but not a great decker...

-Mongoose
Message no. 9
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Valeu John EMFA)
Subject: Otaku and "Decking Naked"
Date: Sun Jun 10 12:35:01 2001
> On Mon, 4 Jun 2001, Mister Incognito wrote:
>
>
> > Could someone post the rules for this along with the stats for the
> program
> > carrier- essence loss and price. Looks kinda interesting so I think I
> might
> > add it to our current game.
> >
>
> sorry for the delay in replying, just got access to my books;
>
> from Sr1, page 111:
>
> "This feat requires a Program Carrier to let you slot Persona chips loaded
> for Sensor, Masking, and Evasion into a suitable port. You have to jack
> into a dataport at the same time. to get in, you need an Input/Output
> Port or Slave Module. "Wait a minuite", you say, "what about the Bod
> program? Wheres the MPCP?" Well chummers, your Willpower is the MPCP when
> you do this electron dance. Any damange the MPCP would take, you take
> personally. Its marked off on your Mental Condition Monitor. If you get
> knocked out, you're dumped. Black IC still kills you, just like always.
> You can use headware memory space for downloading data, and you have an
> I/O rating equal to your Intelligence. Utilites? No, you cant carry
> those. You have to write all your Programs on the fly, using your hacking
> pool. On the upside, if you do have Wired Reflexes, or a vehicle
> control rig, you do get the dice bonus to your Initiaive Roll, but if you
> run into anything nasty, that may only mean you get to die faster"
>
> Program Carrier .2 Essence 25,000 NuYen
>
> I hope its Ok to post a chunk like that out of the book, but i figured its
> no longer in print, doesnt appear in any of the newer sourcebooks, so its
> not like I can say "go out and buy Sourcebook X"
>
> --
> jconstable@*****.com
> Diagonally parked in a parallel universe
>
[Valeu John EMFA]
Hmmm.... I thought you were talking about Otaku and their frames and
the Deep Resonance. Using their brains only
to hack the matrix. What's described above is... well, I guess
decking naked (no deck). I guess the Otaku just get bonuses for doing what
comes naturally.

Valeu (pronounced similar to Baloo. Yes, like the bear.)
I guess I guess a lot, I guess.

Further Reading

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