[retired_destiny1124]

Will take a moment to re-introduce myself as well.

PM7 is correct- until BobBev came around pretty sure I was the oldest CMSer (43). Despite the tagline on when I started, have been around longer than that- in CMS at least 3 years- maybe close to 4 and in LLM before that (email change screwed everything up for me last year).

Educated is not the token Yank here- I am from Northern portion of lower peninsula of Michigan (man, I hope winter ends soon). My job is benefits (i.e. insurance, etc...) coordinator for a Manufacturing company.

I have been playing CM since CM2. I started out as a typical Yank- knowing very little about English Football- and about the only clubs I really had heard of were Tottenham and ManU (England) and Kaiserslautern and Muenchengladbach. When I started out, I knew I wanted to start at the bottom and work my way up- so in casting around for clubs to manage, I wound up at Leyton Orient (mostly because I liked the name I admit). Of course, now I have been a fan of Orient for 8 years since discovering them and they are the first club I play whenever each new version of CM issued.

I am a part-time (at this point) game reviewer and also handle portions of the PR for The Wargamer website- a hobby, not a job

My stories? I tend to go pretty long in years managing clubs and my stories likewise reflect that. I don't have one set writing style- experiment as I feel the approach to telling the story needs it. My most notable stories are likely "Wind on the Canal" (part of the Sir Alex challenge) and "French Voodoo" (Trellisac- one that I really enjoyed from start to finish). My current "The Bet" is a lot of fun- managing Orient up the ladder again. I will be honest here- I love to manage in the game and I hope that fact shines through in every story I tell. I am not worried about my stories being the most popular because I enjoy offering them and am more concerned about those that do read enjoying them- rather than having everyone read them.

I really enjoy the community here in CMS- I was dedicated LLaMa for a long time (because I love playing small clubs and bringing them up- ManU in the Sir Alex Challenge was the only time I have played a 'big' club I believe), but I found I wanted to tell stories with names and wound up in here.

SOTW is a great feature- it truly is a pleasure to see some of the varied storytelling and approaches people take. RL doesn't afford me the time to follow more than a few stories regularly and the feature helps me catch some of the other writers I don't know as well.

[retired_karamelkel]

Whoops, I stand corrected. Didn't know you were a Yank Faramir. So that makes what, four Yanks so far, me, Faramir, Mao and Eddie? Think the rest have fled the forum although SirFozzie will no doubt show up with a story one of these days.

[Raptor]

And of course the CMS site has profiles on many members, and I've got a fair few stored on my PC for upload in the future. If anyone else wants theirs on, please download the form via cmstories.net

[retired_xs2khizar]

Everyone else seems to be having a go, so I might as well join in and tell you a bit about myself. In a couple of months I will reach the ripe old age of 23, which makes me less than half as experienced as Granny BobBev. I'm a software designer in Birmingham, England, and I have been involved in CMS for just shy of a year now.

I think the first CMS story that really got me hooked was an Accrington Stanley tale by Gino (I apologise for forgetting the title), which played a big part in inspiring me to make an attempt at my own. Despite playing CM consistently for a decade I had never before taken the plunge into Italian football, but I decided that this would be a good time and so Ragusa to Riches was born. The story, which has gone on far longer than I ever anticipated, is still running and remains my one and only contribution to CMS. It was fortunate enough to be voted the best CMS Southern European Story for 2003, which was a very generous and welcome surprise.

The thing I am most grateful to CMS for is the resurrection of my enjoyment and interest in creative writing. It is something that I loved to do in my younger school days, but until twelve months ago I had not written anything for a significant number of years. Doing Ragusa has reminded me just how much fun and satisfaction can be gained from writing, and I feel that it has improved my technique no end - I went back to read through the first few pages fairly recently, and my humble opinion is that there has been a marked improvement after the earlier seasons. Not to mention the discovery that writing adds a whole extra dimension of enjoyment and fulfilment to a simple game of CM.

[Shermanez]

Hello, for those of you who don't know me (and judging by the names on the front page I'd say that was quite a few of you!) I'm Gino.

I've been around here far too long and wasted far too much time playing and writing about Champ Manager but it's fun so I'm not complaining. CMS is a decent place and I've met a lot of great people, but it needs a community or it's just dull and boring. The stories are excellent but let's be honest no one sits down and reads them all post by post. This place turned a bit "samey" for a bit and I got a bit fed up.

I have about 40 pages of my Glentoran story still to post which I'll get around to someday but I haven't played the game itself since Christmas. I think CM itself has lost its edge that appealed to me so much for so long. I'll always be in and around this place, whilst I have an internet connection anyway. So erm... yeah. That's about it.

Have a nice day

[shannon2007]

Gino, dyou think you know why CMS has lost its edge? Is it just personal, or is something missing.

One thing that struck me last night was that I feel the fact the 'old' stories are no longer on the forum has removed something. I know Raptor's put a lot of hard work into the archives, but somehow its not the same. Perhaps its just that things change, and lets face it, there is only so much that can be done with a story board where everyone follows the same basic theme

[retired_amyslack]

As I understand it the reason that Raptor had to do so much work to create the archive was that SI screwed up and deleted everything before a certain date - correct me if I'm wrong. I agree with PM that losing those stories from the board has had a negative effect but at least they still exist on the CMS site. I don't know what CMS was like 2 or 3 years ago but in the time I've been involved I'm not aware of a general deterioration. You can still find original ideas and different slants and it seems pretty vibrant, to me at least.

[Shermanez]

The stories are all so good these days thats its an effort to read them. I know you take great pleasure in saying how overrated they were but benny was the one writer who did didn't feel like you were reading an essay. He just wrote and made things funny and he had 'readers' like no one has readers since. I don't care about views, they mean nothing. So people click on your story and skim over a few posts. That's different all together.

Me saying CMS has lost its edge is a personal thing explaining why I don't like the place as much as I did. I just think a lot of things have been done. Stories are a hell of a lot better but there is a natural progression because when the stories perhaps weren't as good they at least had a bit of character, something that made them different from the rest. I'm as guilty as anyone. If you took away the name of the clubs in my stories I don't think they'd actualy be that much difference between them.

[shannon2007]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR> If you took away the name of the clubs in my stories I don't think they'd actualy be that much difference between them. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

If you change a few names in the books of most famous writers, there wouldn't really be any difference between all the books. It doesnt make them less enjoyable to read.

The problem is for people who have been here a long time, no-one can live up to their 'heroes', and no-one ever gets the chance to, because we've done and seen it all already, and there is nothing new at all in whats being written, because tbh there simply can't be. But at least before rhe board 'clean up' we could enjoy the old stuff in its proper place, instead of having to read them somewhere else, where tbh they just dont read the same. But then, mibbe having old stories around is a bad thing anyway.

[Raptor]

I'm glad we as a forum managed to get control over what happens to our stories, rather than risk losing them at any given time due to purges or hacks. Ok, the price is that they're not available in board format, but they are just a mouse-click away (or will be when the index is updated), and I really wish people would start seeing cmstories.net as an extension of CMS itself. It's just an instrument to give us more control over our own community IMO.