I caved and started playing Mooville. The first family I rolled consists of elders Astrid and Yolanda Riddle, their adopted son Luke, daughter-in-law Diana, and teen grandson Robert. CAS gave them 38K and the percentile dice gave them an extra 7K, just enough to buy the cheapest of the middle-priced lots. The elders have the existing master bedroom, a pretty room at the back with a wall of windows looking out on the garden. Luke and Diana have the second bedroom for now, but are renovating the bonus room as the money comes in, and will soon have that as their master suite (the bonus room was designed to look like a garage, back before Maxis introduced cars to TS2).

The Gavigans got 75K from the dice and moved into the Hidden Treasure, an adorable little house built around a central courtyard that contains a small pool. Stray cat Noodle kept getting stuck there - she could get up the steps, but for some reason could not get back down them. She puddled in the dining room and viciously attacked the statuary (even my husband commented that that sounded like one seriously angry cat!), but no amount of shooing or chasing could get her further than the front steps. I removed her with moveobjects several times, but she kept coming right back, so I concluded she must want to live there. I moved her in with the SimBlender and now she has everything she needs without having to get down the pesky steps.

Julien Cooke got an extra 37K, but concluded that he really didn't need an enormous four-bedroom-plus-bonus house and moved into one of the smaller homes. He bought a new bed, upgraded the master bathroom and kitchen, and redecorated throughout. He considered getting a new couch, too, but he wants to get a dog, so has decided to wait until the dog has learned not to chew the furniture.

I've been into Riverview City again and got busy setting up my community service center with the columns at the lot enterance.I also installed some decorative gravestones.

@BlueAlien I am excited to see what you do with MooVille. Just to be aware, some of the upper-tier houses may not be seasons proof. I am playing the Shell Villa, which is a lovely house, but needs an extra ceiling put in to protect it from the elements. I converted quite a few of the middle-tier houses to actual garages and driveways, although I had to get creative with some. But since every Sim wants a car, I figured this would save me some whining. Some of the lots absolutely cannot accommodate a car, however.

In my game, I am still dealing with the flu almost everywhere. I get one Sim healthy and another one catches it. If I get really frustrated, I will send them all to the healing well, but I'm trying to play "realistic" for now.

Not to bring up that thing that we're all trying to escape, but that's rather...true to life, currently.

I have the same issue, except my sims tend to get the cold and the flu simultaneously. I guess I could simply get a mod that gets rid of illness, but I don't really want to , it doesn't bother me in other neighborhoods with longer rotations, but now that I'm going through my first rotation of the "Breeding down the Uber-Megahood"-college campus (which means only three days per household), I pick one sim from each couple to get the "cook grandma's soup" reward. Then they prepare two family servings of the dish and throw a party, making everybody eat it. I've only implemented this strategy a few days ago, so I'll have to wait and see how it works out.

Oh. And, by the way, that's what's happening in my game right now.

Hey TadOlsen, I've been reading your posts for awhile now with curiosity! You have an interesting backstory going on, and I would love to know more about how you play out the weather challenges (ROS??) and what the colonists' storylines are if you'd be open to sharing them!

Thanks, Vllygrl

This session, a whole bunch of students were doing their final year at uni. They are the first generation of Simsby students to go to university, so a milestone for the neighbourhood. Together with their love interests and dormie besties the Simsby student were a bit too many for one Greek house and two dorms, so the younger students stayed in the dorms and the senior students with partners had two Greek houses to choose between, one very basic, one a bit posher and more luxurious. They spent most of their time in and out of eachother's places anyway, and if they were not partying or studying together they were phoning eachother up. Valdemar Gilliam was put on academic probation and is still at university, the other seniors all passed (some just barely, others with honours).

The younger batch of students were Tora Ligne de Temps, Cameron Neville, Rurik Ridderstedt and Louella Delancy. They seem to get on well both in their studies and in their romantic lives: Rurik and Louella Delancy had one shaky bolt between them so they ACR-connected and got their first romantic wants fulfilled, but then Rurik and Cameron found eachother and they got engaged. Tora apparently likes to have options, she sees twobolters everywhere but doesn't really get too involved with any of them. Louella is a popularity sim and needed more best friends, so in desperation she called up her younger sisters babysitter, Amadou Weatherwax. They turned out to have two bolts with a potential for more, and she just rolled a want to get engaged to him. They're a tight knit little bunch, all four of them majoring in politics.

After graduating, Tempest Delancy moved back into the apartment where she was born (because I'm a nostalgic old biddy) together with her Tricou-descended fiancé Maximilien Puck. They went to uni with the ambitions of becoming a general and a criminal mastermind respectively, but now they both think it would be awesome to become Captain Hero. Since the apartments nextdoors were free Cambell Neville and Evita Ligne de Temps took one and Stuart Neville and Runika Ridderstedt took the other, while Isambard Jr Aching and Rustan Ridderstedt moved into apartments downtown, next to eachother so they can keepeachother company while they wait for their fiancées (both secret society girls in their sophomore year) to graduate. Stuart's kitten, Billerina, is still at the dorm where he hasn't lived since forever, but she is coming home as soon as she grows up to an adult cat and can handle stairs. Evita's dog Tiffany is already moved in and exploring the grounds.

I've been testing out new CC installs again as I needed a disposal system for my challenges as towns are starting out since they start with sims living on homesteads and trash pits would make sense for that stage and for farms in more modern times ayways.I also added a coat hook to the corner shop in Dodge.

Donna Lorente is having an existential crisis



After thinking about it, I do realize this is because after her son was born I gave her the family secondary aspiration to give her some sense of responsibility, but the fact that this woman, who's left not one, but TWO men at the altar (Caspian and Nick) now wants to settle down and marry, while still wanting 5 lovers, is the craziest story I've ever had in the sims. I might just try to get her to mend it with Nick and move into their house just for the drama of it

After fixing some problems (flashing pink), the new rotation of my Uberhood has finally begun! We are still in summer.

As usual I started with my three "main lots" in Veronaville (Capp Manor, Casa Monti, Villa Summerdream). Nothing new at the Capps, Romeo was as always the perfect trophy husband for Juliette and their four children did nothing out of the ordinary. Their three teen daughters were mostly tangled up in their after school jobs and the youngest, Lorenzo, brought home his first homework.
Over at the Montis, Mercutio started his new career in cuisine and his wife Victoria didn't got the promotion she skilled for like crazy. We'll see how this goes next rotation. Their teen son, Benvolio, rolled the wish to go steady with Porsche Krafft, so he invited her over to ask her out officially, and they spend the rest of the evening stargazing... Knowledge Sims... <3 The younger son, Victorio, had also like his cousin Lorenzo his first day at school.
There was reason to party over at the Summerdreams, because Bottom's second child and first daughter with husband Benedict, Hero, grow up to a teenager. Surrounded not only by her two sisters and her grandparents she lives with, but also all aunts, uncles and cousins, she became a popularity sim with the LTW becoming a cult leader. She is the first of my sims ever rolling this want and I'm excited. It also fits her OTH science.

Next stop: Pleasantville. I decided to skip Veronaville for a bit and look how their neighbours are doing.

Juan Smith went on a highly satisfactory date with Gabriella Newson and they got engaged - whereupon Gabriella immediately rolled a want to talk to her high school boyfriend Isaiah Gavigan. Who is a douchebag who cheated on her with his best friend's girl but hey, Juan is very easygoing. I sent him home and the game crashed. Great. I restarted immediately, and started crashing while the game loaded, but I figured I should at least check to see if the date crashed before I turned in for the night. By the time I got ready for bed the game was loaded, and Strangetown was nowhere to be seen.

All righty then. This is the broken-out-of-the-box Strangetown, so I have been mentally prepared for this sort of thing from the get-go. And as it happens I had just backed up last night, so it's not as if this is necessarily the end of the world. But I'm not going to mess with it anymore tonight.

I'm currently playing an alternate reality Veronaville. The neighbourhood consists of two neighbourhoods either side of the river - 'Fishtown' (Capp side) and 'El Pescade' (Monty side). I am playing an entirely new set of custom Sims.

Unfortunately, the neighbourhood river has some kind of space-time glitch which means that the towns are running out of sync. In 1950, after years of the communities living among eachother and intermingling, the Fishtown side was caught in a time freeze. Nobody was able to cross the river or know what was happening on the other side.

The time freeze lifted years later, with interesting results. Families had been separated and moved on without eachother. Children from El Pescade are almost the same age as Fishtown fathers who didn't know they were conceived. Teens in Fishtown are realising that their sweetheart is now 35 and married with kids. Parents have been meeting children they never knew, people mourning grandparents who seemingly passed in an instant. Best friends and cousins are now at completely different lifestages, and old romantic rivalries are either meaningless or hugely significant (Abigail Weever to Amber Crane: 'you married my boyfriend?!?!!')

There are still glitches happening, time freezes for short periods of time, and people are scared to cross the river for extended periods. Young adults are having to make tough decisions about how they settle and who they settle with, for fear of being separated from loved ones. At the present moment, Fishtown is in 1955 while El Pescado exists in 1970. (I haven't quite worked out yet how they will eventually decide what the correct date is!)
Fishtown still exists in a time of conservative properness, with young unmarried mothers shamed and married Theodora Dewitt sneaking out to see her true love, Kathleen Harris, when her husband is at work. Meanwhile, El Pescade has just been through the Swinging Sixties and while still having some conservative norms regarding marriage, is a little more progressive when it comes to these things.

I use a dice roll to determine which side may be frozen and when they are unfrozen - (d20 for temporary freeze/unfreeze, 2 d20 in a row would trigger another long term one).

The residents are keen to find out what is causing this problem, and need a keen young Scientist Sim to begin investigating. Although two such bright young minds have recently sadly passed away from mysterious illness, I have hope for Ada Trout from Fishtown. She is deeply interested in science and in the problems the town is seeing, but is growing up in a house of poverty where all money and resources are going to feed the family and care for her sick sister. It doesn't help that at any time another freeze could kick in and prevent her investigations.

I usually have one big 'THING' in a neighbourhood which requires a Sim's career progression to solve. This is usually fertility or medically related, but I'm excited to try and get somebody into the science career to work out what is going on here, as well as having fun with the fashions as they progress through the decades!

I've been playing around with building a swimmable lake on a larger lot which might work in my Pleasantview Epic Challenge set in the 17th century as they won't be building proper pools anytime soon.

Mary Gavigan of Maryville gave birth to a daughter, Rita.

Mary Gavigan of Mooville gave birth to a son, James.

The United Sims Postal Service has requested that at least one of these communities change its name to avoid misdirection of the mail. Nathan of Maryville has therefore applied to change his community's name to "Maritaville", and is waiting to hear whether this is acceptable.

The youngest Neville, McGillivray, made friends with her much older brothers who were already off at uni when she was born and annoyed them with her pranks just because she could. She also had a dream date with the guy Aramis something from the check out at Luca's cornershop, who was hot when she scoped the room but turned out to have negative chemistry withher on their date. Still, some hard work on her side and she got the first kiss she wanted, and a karaoke machine to top it all off. Glenda and Moist Neville spent a day at Powerplants swooning over eachother and dazzling customers until the very last cowplant was sold and they had the business at level eight. They kept wanting to invite their sons who were newly returned from uni and I thought it would be a good idea to invite the future daughters in law as well, but the young couples just took turns in the hot tub, ate all the fish, shot hoops or played catch with McGillivray and woke their parents up by playing the guitar in their bedroom. McGillivray left for uni on the last day I played the Nevilles so maybe Moist and Glenda will actually get to spend some time with their sons now.

A family sim went to college and got cheated on by her boyfriend because he discovered that his three-bolt true love was an older woman in the neighborhood. Honestly, it was probably expected since he was a Romance sim and I was planning to break them up anyway. But then it turns out that the only good match for her in the entire neighborhood that isn't related to her is another Romance sim, who has the twenty woohoos LTW. I guess it's going to be another one of those marriages... I actually like him, though, I might not punish him with an early death this time, but maybe she'll find someone else she likes when they're older.

Warwicksire Renaissance Challenge update below.
I've gotten a sims crossing sign,lightening rod and roof on the service center lot so far.

Stirling Hamilton, my Minister of Education, who learned to teleport while on vacation in the Far East. had just paid his bills on his off day and was standing at the post box. Since he loves cleaning, I instructed him to clean the bath which his fun wife left dirty.

He teleported to the bath

In Poverty Point, John Henry and Tosha were hoping their last baby would be a boy, to give them two of each. Instead they got twin girls, Joan and Melanie. Now they're trying to figure out how best to shuffle all the kids around to fit in the extra crib.

David Ottomas was promoted to Bit Player, and is starting to get his parents' mortgage paid down. He helped baby Dora grow up to toddler, though Dora took her own sweet time about it; poor David was famished and about ready to fall over with exhaustion when Dora herself finally fell asleep, giving him a couple of hours to eat and nap before he was interrupted by the "Help with Birthday" imperative again.

Gavin and Ginger headed off to university, leaving their younger siblings with no full-time salary coming in. Gallagher hates Georgia and Gabriella hates Garrett, so that's going to be a fun household for the next few rotations, until the middle pair leave for college.

Today I reached Belladonna Cove and decided spontaneously that the DeBateau household had to move. Not because they had space problems after Tara returned from university with her fiancée Tiffany Sampson, but because I was suddenly so tired on playing the house their live in.
So Armand, Kim, their daughter Morgaine and both lovebirds moved into a more old fashioned, but huge mansion down the road. During the housewarming party I accidently invited Antonio Monty, who is sick with the flu, and made him leave right away. Sorry Antonio, but that is too much realism for my happy place.

I got the service center closer to being ready with a lot visitor controller,two outhouses and a teleptorter bush before flattening the residence out.

Good news for the Tapanis: Little daughter TuvaLisa was born. She's the third child and Aisu is now too close to elderhood to give birth again. Torsten became a game designer which fulfilled a lifetime want for him. Oldest daughter Vilja is now at uni.

A milestone for the town was reached when the first wedding in the second generation took place. Stuart and Runika Neville are officially married and after going on a short but intense honeymoon on their own community lot they came home two thousand simoleons and some body skill points richer after selling some of Stuart's pottery items and doing some log rolling. There were distinct lullaby sounds from their tent, so Simsby's third generation is now on its way!