I'm writing a game for some friends at a store who asked me to run an "unofficial game". I decided to run something based on the old Virtual Realities 1.0 story about Renny. (Copyright 1991) & Threats 1 Thinking about the old story and what Renny went through I think there are two possibilities:
A. Renny is "angry" and seeks revenge at any cost trying to hunt down Dr. Hab. and possibly leads an Otaku Tribe?
B. Renny's memory was recovered and he had a previous childhood that was erased so he's not as "vengeful" and seeks to just live a normal life.

For those interested what do you think Renny would do? I'm curious to know if anyone is interested or has a opinnion?

There's a third more likely possibility.

3) Renny is dead or has no desire for revenge or shaodwbusiness.

I think that's more likely than the first 2. Vicims of abuse usually want to withdraw. He probably would want a normal life. It's not good for a strory, but it is far more likely.

For the uninformed... who is Renny and Dr. Haberstam?

Wait, is that the guy that was taking child brains, putting them in a jar and connecting them to the matrix to make 'super'-Otaku?

Dr Halberstam...

Not exactly, from what I recall... it was more that the kids' bodies (at least in VR) were perpetually plugged into the Matrix. There was no scooping out of brains and putting them in jars.

Renny was a child who was raised entirely inside the Matrix. He learned to code and run the Matrix in the way most children learn to walk. His body was kept on life support, since it was badly atrophied. The legendary decker Lucifer's last act was to free Renny and one other similar child from Dr. Halberstam's experiment.

Thanks Joe!

My brother picked up VR way back when (c. 1992), and I tried to read through the book. The only part that made an impression on me (other that "stay the frag outta the Matrix") was the story. I still have a touch of Matrix-phobia, although that has gotten better since I ran a short SR3 campaign with 2 deckers. At least SR3 Matrix rules make more sense to me than the SR2 ones did back then. ^_^

I wonder what sort of personality he would have. The one reason why I think he might have "revenge" in mind is the fact that there was an icon of an "angel" type of character with sort of grayed and darkened and somewhat unshaved face. I always thought he would make it his life's work to get revenge on the loss of his child hood. Supposedly he was only brought up in the Matrix but he could have had a normal child hood or had his memory wiped after being bought on the black market. (Something that happens too often today.) He wasn't really "abused" other than having his whole life view and understanding shattered. But he did learn how to hack and what not. I think overall though there would be lots of anger and rage similar to an adult confronting his or her ambivalent parents about abuse. I think Renny would be out there somewhere searching and looking, waiting to make a move from afar. Besides if he didn’t do anything to get revenge or kill the guy then that would be boring. What’s the point of being a super hacker born in the matrix if you “get over it” and become a 9 to 5 average joe code monkey working for some software company. I think Renny is still out there somewhere…..

I could clarify a bit.

Where does the 2063 reference come from?

Oh and ancient history your rock......Dude where do you put all this info? Do you have a photographic memory? Where do you put all this stuff?

The info is in his site, linked to from his sig. This information appears to be out of the "Echoes of the Crash" page mostly.

where'd the info on Renny come from? this is the first i've heard of him.

Renny appears in a story at the end of Virtual Realities (the first one). He is a test subject born connected to the Matrix and Simsense.

ah. have to pick that up.

Yeah, that's a good story to read. The thread of it is picked up later through Halberstam, the references for which have already been mentioned (Threats, Corporate Download). Where they come together again, albeit briefly, is in the novel Psychotrope.

The Renny story is one of my favorite stories. I enjoyed it alot. Since VR 1 is out of print I might see about scanning it into PDF format. It's a decent story. I think Tom Dowd wrote it but I can't remember. It's kind of along the lines of "At what point does Flesh become human?". At MIT in the CompSci departments they refer to humans as "biomechanical machines". We're just a super complex chemical machine. In that stark and positivistic view(the form of empiricism that bases all knowledge on perceptual experience) at what point does a human stop being a human? Is consciousness the defining factor? If you dig a little deeper there lots of ethical issues we're facing today. Everything from abortion rights, stem cell research, genetic engineering...If we're all just walking machines at what point does the human dignity and science clash. (This sort of flys in the face of a positivist utilitarian/relativism).

Actually, the author was Christopher Kubasik (who also wrote Changeling.) It stands as one of my favorite SR stories of all time, and a requirement for all new deckers to absorb.

Wasn't Renny one of the NPCs in Brainscan working with Dodger and co?

I think you might have Renny mistaken with Ronin, because I don't think Renny was in Brainscan at all.

Was he not? Not even mentioned? Or was it in Threats 2 in reference to one of the Brainscan fallout threats? I feel pretty sure that there was a recent mention of Renny (maybe it was even a comment in regards to Halberstam in Threats 2)

I'm trying to recall a mention of Renny in relation to Deus, and I can't think of one, but it's also been awhile.

There's nothing in Threats 2 or Brainscan regarding Renny or Dr. Halberstam. You may be thinking of his appearance in the shadowtalk at the end of the novel Psychotrope, which deals with the AI of the same name.

Some people who've run through Brainscan are confused because of the character named Remy they have to track down.