User:KevinSchram

There and back again - Schram's Tale

Hello, welcome to my user page. Here is my history.

I joined the game in 2004 at the age of 14. About six months after I joined, they changed the minimum age to 16, thank goodness for the grandfather clause. I was assigned to Starbase Geneva with my slightly insane counselor, Brian Rogers. In the summer of 2005, I was given my first taste of command, as my character served as Acting Third Officer of Geneva. I thought I was talented, but it turned out that the guy in charge just wanted me to do the compiles and watch the place while he went on a month long holiday to Australia!

Geneva's crew was sent to the Boudicca, and I was stripped from my acting 3O position, which was barely a command position (if at all). The Boudicca and Geneva crews didn't merge well, and my old buds from Geneva were dropping from the game like flies. Going back to just writing a counselor seemed boring after being the A3O, and I fell into a slump and didn't feel like playing the game.

Thankfully, a sign came from Alan Reading, who asked me to be his First Officer on the USS Spectre. This was in April of 2006, and at age 15, only 20 months of playing the game I had advanced to First Officer, a rather exciting proposition. I had a SPC on most other ships in the fleet, and I was writing like crazy.

Notable though, is that during this time, I came across the Wiki here on STF. This was before the current Web 2.0 Wiki craze we have now, and this wiki was wildly under used. I decided to start editing things and making all sorts of new things. I've had my hand in a lot of important projects here on the Wiki, and I'm proud of that.

However, this is where my Alex Rodriguez-like career took a sharp derailment.

Thanks to my raging teenage hormones, however, my posts and interest in the Spectre started to drop. In the summer of 2007, Alan had to play 'bad cop' and told me he strongly suggested that I start posting more often. I agreed, but then, in the late fall of '07, I decided that I didn't want to drag Alan and the Spectre down with my low posting numbers, so I resigned from the game. Alan told me that I would lose all my characters, my rank, everything. I was worried, but, at the time, I had no intention to return the game. I deleted my extravagant wiki user page and replaced it with "All Good Things..."

Fast forward to March 2008. Something is digging at me, and I can't explain it. I'm sitting, watching Babylon 5 on DVD, thinking about science-fiction command, rank, orders, all sort of Starfleet type issues. So, I drop a line to Alan Reading. I ask a BIG favor. Even though he had told me I was surrendering my previous characters, rank and experience, and would have to start over at the ground level, I asked if I could come back with Rogers, at my previous rank. Alan being Alan, he agreed.

So now, I'm a jaded ex-Command veteran player. I write two characters on the Spectre, one of whom is controversial, with whom I'm perpetually pushing my limits as a rank-and-file player on the Spectre. I find being out of the command staff sort of refreshing. My responsibilities are just to write and have fun, and I don't feel burdened by worrying about trying to advance my STF 'career'. As I told Alan the other day, "I've got nothing left to prove." I still like chatting with Alan about NRPG issues, though he's a lot more tight-lipped since I'm not his FO anymore... ;-)

That, as they say is that.