[Desiani]

I'm playing a decker and I want him to be a surviving otaku who lost his matrix powers. How old would he be? The limited sources I have available seems to indicate mid 30's to early 40's. I still feel that this range would be wrong.

Any help with more concrete info would be most helpful.

[Sendaz]

Otaku generally lost their powers by age 21, unless they underwent Submersion but even then most lost their powers by age 30.

When Crash 2.0 hit in 2064, some Otaku were reborn as Technomancers while others lost their powers and no new classic style Otaku have manifested since.

So depending on how old you were at the time of Crash 2.0, and what your campaign is set in you could be as young as 27 (16yr old when the Crash hit and your campaign starts in 2075) up to 44 (29 yr old at Crash 2.0 in a campaign going in 2079) unless you want to play someone who lost their powers prior to Crash 2.0 then add it up accordingly.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Sendaz doesn't quite give enough information.  The part I'm about to give may be off by a couple of years, but it's as accurate as my memory is. 

The first known otaku were at the Denver Data Haven; the boxed set's in-game year was 2055, and they'd had otaku there for a while; because of the way they describe it, while the 'tribes' must have been there for at least a decade, actual otaku may have only popped up a year or so prior - been a while since I read it, so I can't say for certain.  In any case, the two otaku tribes generally pulled their new members off the street anywhere between age three and eight.  After a lot of time on turtles, those who would become actual otaku would finally go under the knife to get a datajack when they're (I think) ten or twelve years old.  With all the practice over the past number of years, they become red-hot deckers in short order, and -- this is estimated, but I think it's a good estimate, considering the Michael Bishop story - in a year or so are brought to the Deep Resonance.

So.  Call the oldest likely otaku at date-of-publication 16; that puts birth year at (2055 - 16 = ) 2039.  If you're playing in 2079, that's 40 years old, so 44 is along the outside of possibility - though Sendaz is correct, even with Submersion most otaku had lost their abilities by age 30.