| From: | runnerpaul@*****.com runnerpaul@*****.com |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Otaku [was: Starting equiptment] |
| Date: | Sat, 17 Jul 1999 13:36:33 -0400 (EDT) |
At 10:43 AM 7/17/99 -0400, IronRaven wrote:
:>if he's really an Otaku, a Denver "Otaku", or just a
:super-good-extra-special
:
: OK, what are Otaku, for those of us who've never read VR2?
In RL the word Otaku originated in Japan as a slang term for die-hard
fanboys of Manga, Anime, computers, and videogames, those who pursue
those hobbies to the point of social maladjustment. I've heard two
different translations of what the word is supposed to mean, and
they're both probably right. The first I've heard was that it was an
extremely formal word for addressing someone directly, the word "you"
dressed up in it's best formal wear. The second definition I've heard
was that otaku meant "house". I'm guessing that it's "house" in the
sense of "household" meaning one's family, one's company, and the
allies thereof; and that Otaku means "You and your Household", but
since this is all speculation based on secondhand hearsay, don't take
my word for it.
In Shadowrun, the Otaku were first introduced in the Denver box. They
were an urban tribe of children living on the grounds of the Denver
Data Haven. These children, no older than early teens, were
hyper-adept with comptuers and the matrix and were able to run a
tortise connection almost as fast as a jacked decker.
Most all the Otaku had gotten datajacks at a surprisingly young age.
They run the matrix on cyberdecks handed down from the shadow deckers
who act as sysops for the Denver Data Haven. Since the Denver sysops
almost need to stay two hops _ahead_ of the SOTA curve, even their
hand-me-down hardware is tricked out up the wazoo.
Now if the Otaku were just kids who were introduced to decking at
such an early age that it becomes second nature to them, running on
some of the best hardware on the planet, that would have been
impressive in and of itself. However, at the end of the section in
Denver on the Otaku, one of the Otaku posts a shadow comment:
"Some of the Otaku don't need a deck. ... They jack using a simsense
translator modified with a simple digital impulse converter. That's
it -- no headware memory, no active memory, no storage memory, no
progs, no MPCP, no persona, nothing. They just do it. And the matrix
does what they want."
The shadowtalk then goes on for about half a page mentioning terms
like "Deep Resonance", "Channels", and "forms", terms that
the Otaku
use to describe how some of them deck without cyberdeck hardware. No
full explanation is given, however.
When VR2 came out, it focused much more on the decking without
cyberdecks aspect of the Otaku. The concept of little kids being as
skilled as veteran deckers with near unreal decking abilities,
because they "grew up in the matrix" is only touched upon briefly.
This could be because a player character who grew up in an Otaku
tribe but never learned how to deck without a cyberdeck could be
represented by the existing rules for chargen.
The "Deep Resonance" is an experience that certain members growing up
in an Otaku community, "those who show the deepest, most profoundly
imprinted understanding of the Matrix," undergo. Undergoing the "Deep
Resonance" is a life altering event akin to a Moment of Clarity or on
par with a Shaman's first Totemic experience.
I won't go into specifics about the mechanics of creating or playing
an Otaku (you wanna know? buy the book *g*), but generally, the
mechanics can be described by analogy: An Otaku is to a regular
Decker what a PhysAd is to a Street Sam. The potential for their
abilities is bounded only by how much karma they can pump into
advancement.
There are also two flavors of Otaku: the Cyberadept, and the
Technoshaman. Technoshamans view their Deep Resonance experience as
being touched by the living soul of the Matrix itself, while
Cyberadepts take a colder, more technical, viewpoint.
Subsequent products have dealt with how AIs interact with Otaku. AIs
can apparently speak to Otaku in the Language and Voice of the Deep
Resonance, making Otaku somewhat susceptible to an AI's influence.
Certain AIs even exhibit the ability to at least partially induce a
Deep Resonance experience in certain individuals, giving them the
ability to create new Otaku, though often with several limitations.
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