That's another good point. It is fun to see how they turn out, though I've gotten some interesting kids from adopting, too. I like a mix. In the family with ten children, all of the kids turned out good looking, adopted or not. The one boy they adopted was the cutest toddler yet and now that he's in college ... wow. On the other hand, another family with perfectly nice looking parents ended up with a son who looks like the Penguin from Batman ... wah wah wah ... Not that good looking is the only trait you want in a person, but let's face it, they're Sims ... what else do they have going for them? Also, two sisters who aren't twins turned out identical. I didn't even realize it until I had them in the same dorm in college, with the same haircut, and realized I couldn't tell them apart! One of them got funky, fast ... amazing what cool glasses and a hat will do. Their other non-adopted sister looks nothing like them, and there's a toddler whose traits remain to be seen ... but it makes me wonder how much "variation" there is ...
I always love having teens in the family, and I also enjoy controlling female sims more than males. Sue me. Anyway, I like teens because I love the scenario when there's a pair of proper, good citizens as the parents and a rebel or Goth teen daughter. I also like to make a billionaire family with a snobby, popular, preppy teen girl, and have her have a million best friends and boyfriends. I have a question. Is it possible to have grandparents living with their grandchildren, and there are no parents? Can you do that in CAS?
Yeah make an elder male and female and then choose make a child and make and adult male (that makes 3 sims in total) Then make another trio (3 more only this make an adult female child) Then make 2 kids using the two adults. That will bring you up to 8 sims so you'd have to stop there! Finally set the relationships and move them in to a house and then move the mom and dad out. If you don't do that last step the children will have no memory of their parents at all. (You can of course arrange for them to die in which case the kids will have nice traumatic memories )
When I play I normally start out with a bachelorette. After purchasing the needed skill-building tools I then set to work improving my sim's skills (especially cooking ) before she finds the "perfect sim-husband". The main reason as to why I pick a bachelorette instead of a bachelor is so she can have a kid if I feel the need arises (and so I don't feel bad killing off the guy ).
imperfection I kept people single or in tiny families until I got the hang of things and now I'm working with two big families, intermarrying (same and opposite sex relationships as well as multi-racial) between them. Since I'm a bisexual adoptive parent/grandmother, it only makes sense for me to have all kinds of groups. One family has lesbian grandparents, a son and daughter-in-law with baby, one young adult and two teens. The other has two hall-of-famers about to be elders, a gay teen and a new baby, soon to adopt a child. The trick for me was to let them be unhappy sometimes, not always A students, sometimes bored, occasionally messy. I had to admit how much I was trying to have everyone be happy, fulfilled and productive all the time. Well, that's not life. I've gotten into a lot of pimply teens sneaking out (and getting caught), bored spouses, dirty dishes sometimes, broken toilets, that sort of thing. They're still mostly prosperous, neat, happy people with good grades and the occasional woohoo, but I had to be willing to let a little imperfection slip in to have my big messy families.
Good points, Jiko! I always advocate starting off with small families. But I also like to let my sims go through a bad patch from time to time. Never ending success is pretty meaningless. I have just returned to a slightly dysfunctional family after a week or three of playing some easy to manage households. The Lassons are only 4 in number but they have free will and although one is a family sim she never seems to roll up a aspiration want related to anyone she has a hope of interacting with. I like that! It's good to have to struggle against the odds to get stuff to happen (and I do play with a lot of Pescado's hacks and mods). The Lasson teen is now in a race against time to get a few scholarships for uni ... due to general financial mismanagement she ended up missing a lot of school to raise her kid brother. However she'll likely get the logic, charisma, body and creativity scholarships and she's best friends with two members of a greek house (as is her boyfriend) so they should be able to go to college together and live quite comfortably after they've successfully "rushed" ... (it's a sor-frat wot I made myself ... strictly couples only )
Personally, I like to start with either a couple or a family of four. As dumb as it may sound, I have only made two families since I got the game. I play with each regularly.
That doesn't sound dumb at all. It's actually a good idea, scattering a few families all about isn't really the best idea. I like your approach better.
I have had same sex couples, tryed to do woohoo with them but it hasn't worked for some strange reason does anyone know why or is it because they are the same sex ? I havn't adpoted any kids yet but thats on the menu. I can say i'm working on a family that has had 8 kids of their own and 2 grandkids. The lady all she wants is babies thats it.
Not dumb at all. I have made around 8 families for my new hood, but I only play 3 of them. The rest are there to soak up the missing townies who are dotted about the Shelton place pushing up daisies. Any time a sim get a hankering to see a ghost he can go visit Ms Shelton ...
You know what? Nice traumatic memories would really make a good story. But do I have to have both sets of grandparents? Can't I only have, say, the parents of the father or something? Or maybe even just a grandmother.
If you want. You can do whatever you want. I was just outlining a wy to make a full set of 4 grandparents. Once you've made the GPs and their respective son and/or daughter (who are obviously needed if you're gonna create some grandchildren you can kill off by deleting the ones you don't need before leaving CAS. But like I said if you do that the grandchildren will have no memories of the missing GP's, or of their own missing parents. Worse (from my perfectionist) point of view everyone's family trees will have gaps and if you delete Mom and Pop in CAS the kids would probably not even recognized the GPs as relatives. In CAS you can only select relationships as spouse, roomie, sibling, or child. If you delete an intervening generation the grand-generation is instantly and permanently "orphaned". So with respect my method is the only one that will work without broken family tree branches. If you want more grandchildren then by all means remove one set of GPs before starting creating. But you must save a CAS family with an intact family tree going from GP thru a child to grandchild if you want a GP/GC relationship.
Wow, I so totally agree. Some families I let try for perfection and others are just a zoo, just like my own life ... depends completely on my mood. I always, always play with free will, and some of my sims have goals that are just not attainable, period, like my mom who wants to marry off 6 kids. Just ain't gonna happen, sis. So she'll never reach full platinum, and that's OK. Like you, I have friends and family members of different races and sexual preferences, so why should my Sims be any different? I'm heading for a lot of girl-girl couples, anyway, since I have way more girls than boys in my next generation, and that's OK with me, though I may have some of them cheat just for the interesting gene combinations ... Sims have no morals, have you noticed?
Mirelly the whole multi-generational family is an awsome idea!! I'm going to try that when I get home (no sims for 7 days now, I'm starting to twitch). I have made one homosexual family, a male-male family. One of them was Remington the maid. He had married a female sim and had several children. Then he fell in love with the new maid, I think his name was Don. Oops, here it is, I uploaded the story to the official site: http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/story_detail.php?asset_id=9451&asset_type=story&user_id=124521
I play like a nut. I've hardly touched the original neighborhoods--Pleasantview, Strangetown and Veronaville--just long enough to move the families in the bin to available housing. Then I kept setting up new neighborhoods--six at last count . They're full of people, everything from singles living alone to a household of eight bachelors all working as policemen. One neighborhood is strickly snobby upper middle class suburbia. Another is a barren looking valley called Ghost Town, inhabited by farmer families with names like Svensson and Lorenzo. A third is a city with row houses, a downtown area, a hotel, a factory next to the harbor. My legacy family lives in that city but I've only got as far as three generations. Neighborhoods four, five and six ? Less crowded but stranger people. A family named Watt and Weakon Dimbulb, for example. I jump around a lot, playing in one neighborhood or the other, but mostly in the city neighborhood. The infants and toddlers are cute but I get a little bored with them--potty training and bottles (been there, done that.) I'm much happier with the family when the children start school. Free will, by the way, is always on because I get a kick out of the spontaneous interactions. So I end up spending more time in the big crowded households--they're so out of control--people hugging--people fighting--missing carpools--eating spoiled food--maybe everybody's got the flu. Today I bought the University expansion pack, so I'm visiting each of my families to get them ready before loading the expansion. Oh, boy, here comes chaos. I had a lot more time available to play during the winter when my husband was watching football. Now both of us can't wait for the football season to start again .
I don't play the original neighborhoods, either. I just prefer my own. I also don't marry or breed with townies, though of course they make acceptable dating material ... I'm such a snob. Love your names. Watt Dimbulb. Heh. In my old neighborhood, Sticky Wicket, I have Joie DeVere, Ceramic Tuna and Holy Mackerel Fish (brother and sister) and of course the ghosts Abby and Para Normal ... I find I'm really enjoying my new, scaled-down neighborhood. I get more involved in my characters' lives when there are fewer of them ...
Holy Mackerel Fish! Roflmao! You're right, SBW, about a scaled-down neighborhood. The complications are probably why I keep setting up new neighborhoods. Hate all the phone calls from all the friends who think you ought to keep in touch. Sometimes I remove the telephone because I get tired of hearing it ringing .
Holy Mackerel is supposed to be punk but I made her pre-Uni and then never played her much. She has the twisty hairdo and blue lipstick ... Yep, gonna see how it goes with just five playable characters ... though I really wish I could make Ischade an actual witch. Guess she'll just have to act like one ... Poor, poor Wolf. He has no idea what he's getting himself into ...
The University expansion seems to be working fine and I just love the way the students walk . Although my Shadows Over Simtown movie is in desparate need of Chapters 5 and 6 , I'm too curious about college life right now. I went back to my Legacy family, the Sparrows, to pick up where I left them in the third generation. Kiara Sparrow, first born of the third generation was a teenager so I sent her to college. I moved her into a dorm. All she wanted to do for the first couple of days was to call her father and sisters to talk or to invite them over. Dad came to visit uninvited. Just showed up. But Kiara is making friends now and no longer gives much thought to her father, mother and sisters. Her two sisters are due to become teenagers in a couple of days and I think I'll have them join her. Now that Kiara's out of the house, leaving seven family members, her Aunt Dagmar (former mail delivery person) is pregnant again (I'm pretty sure I heard the music.) Her husband Wynter apologized for slapping her when he caught her smooching Remington. (I was downstairs and missed most of the action or I would have tried to stop it--the smooching, that is.) Four girls, no boys born to this generation. I'm hoping number five is a boy.
