@Sketching
I hear you.
I'd like to try to play medieval but I don't want to setting things up so I'll stick to my current hood. I keep hoods long-term too.

@Essa and @grammapat, I got antsy so I decided to plop the inmates down to test out the edited asylum building and placed them in a temporary hood. The asylum challenge ended up being much harder than the apocalypse, and I didn't even finish this one. I thought I'd play them for a while but they didn't make it far and my playable and Grilled Cheese Girl are the only ones left alive - one death by fire, two by hunger, two by lightning strike, and one by illness. By then, my playable was fired from her job and the asylum was in shambles.

To be fair, the odds were heavily stacked against them. Not a day went by without a storm or the power dying on them (via Lamare's electrical box), and because the more dangerous fires constantly decimated the kitchen (phone lines were also usually dead), all of the money was spent on refurnishing it, leading to stacked-up bills. Grilled Cheese was constantly in platinum and surprisingly self-sufficient, but everyone else was constantly in red aspiration while my playable was just barely green.

After the fire and hunger deaths, I took it upon myself to leave out lunch meat sandwiches to prevent more casualties, but one went to peddle for money by the street and was struck by lightning and another died while mopping up a puddle during the storm. I had my playable do a few chores around the house to ensure the remainders' survival, yet another died from food poisoning (one missed plate to kill them all...) after I sent my playable to bed to avoid over-fatigue. Then my playable lost her job the next day.

Now only Grilled Cheese and Playable are left in debt in a rundown, haunted asylum without electricity.

Anthony Monif of Urele-Oresha-Cham inexplicably started rolling romantic wants for Guadalupe Newson, with whom he has no bolts at all, but I let him ask her out. They fell in love over dinner and he immediately rolled a want to Get Engaged to her. He did the same thing when Alta Mira took him out, but this time he's the active sim so I let him do it. Guadalupe is already permaplat from making 20 best friends, so I figure whatever happens, it won't wreck her life. It might wreck his, since he's also still in love with Alta Mira who is engaged to Guadalupe's cousin Eugene, and the Newsons are a huge family; but we'll see what happens. They haven't woohooed yet partly because once they got back to the frat they lost all their romantic wants and partly because I figured Guadalupe wouldn't want their first time to be in a tent.

Guadalupe's housemate/cousin Alma Newson was inspired by her example and had a full grade bar, so she asked out her high school sweetheart Lazlo Neugierig. They're only one bolt, but they always autonomously canoodle as soon as they get onto the same lot, and Alma had a want for her first woohoo. Everything went beautifully and they went home to Guadalupe's bed while Guadalupe floated tactfully on the bubble blower. As soon as she was sure her dad would be home from work, she threw a party to introduce Anthony to her family - her parents Lourdes and Garret, her brothers Carmel and Laus, her little sister Fatima, her favorite uncle Gavin, and her cousins Random and Mary Ann. Plus her friend Cinnamon Beare, partly as moral support for Anthony, since Cinnamon is already best friends with all two of the frat boys. Guadalupe figures if that inundation of people doesn't scare him off he must be serious.

One thing that has influenced Guadalupe's behavior is that she and Lance Point have quarreled over one of the other women he's dating in an attempt to get over his forbidden fixation on his distant cousin Madeleine. Lance came by during the party, and Alma ran out to greet him and distract him. She has practice, having spent a lot of the parties of her teen years running interference among her cousins and friends. Lance wound up slapdancing in Alma's room with Lazlo and Cinnamon, long after the party was over.

That wrapped up the college rotation, so off I went to Newtown, where newlyweds John and Gordon Stacks are living in a tent and have been adopted by the Critturs. With no indoors on the lot, and very little furniture, and both men home most of the day, training is going well.

In the emergency compound next door, Erik Swain still had some downtime from his service as Captain Hero, and he suddenly wanted another baby! Natalie wanted to woohoo in bed before work. You'd think this would be compatible, but Natalie's a doctor, and even in these circumstances nothing's upsetting her access to birth control. They're living in an emergency shelter, they both have high-stress demanding jobs with long hours, and with one kid a teen and the other in college and engaged, it would've been wholly out of character for her to let herself get pregnant. Besides, they've both got face templates that haven't been tweaked much, if at all, so a new kid would be genetically dull. I decided that if Erik continued to roll baby wants they could adopt a kid orphaned by the Night the Satellites Fell, but Natalie quickly distracted him from the idea, and went off to work in a platinum mood. Erik spent the day making Comfort Soup for Natalie's inventory, and in the evening she got a promotion, went permaplat, and they went in to the Health and Welfare Center and got it up to Level 2 in celebration. A good day all around, for Natalie! Their son Nate, meanwhile, was getting to know other kids from the compounds and looking after the dogs, Bark and Spark. He's in love with Maria Casilda Centowski from the unit at the other end of the compound, but can't help thinking about Ursula Beare, too.

Sketching: I found Lamare but could not find an "electrical box"..help? I've tried to play with 2 mods that are extreme - fire and sickness - and even in a house where I'm controlling everyone, they are pretty deadly. So I will start another asylum and see if I get a prize for fastest total deaths. PS: what's the difference between asylum and ISBI challenge?

@grammapat Her lot traits are over here; there's quite a lot on offer and it works great in my game so far (speaking of which, I need to send her my feedback soon). I especially like how unpaid bills now have other dire consquences - it rendered my phone unusable during a fire and the results were catastrophic. No wonder they only lasted 4 days.

Here's the ISBI challenge thread - it's a combination of the asylum and legacy challenges. I think it's harder than the Asylum because you have to go through several generations and there isn't exactly an end in sight, so you just play it as much as you can stomach (though I think the end is supposed to be Gen 10). Handling one batch of inmates is already hectic with the increased challenge mods; I never got too far with the ISBI because I had a feeling I was about to join them. To be stuck as the one sim doing everything including childcare... The farthest I got was 5 generations, but they're still in storage, so I can just plop them back in whenever I like, which I don't think is anytime soon!

Thanks so much for these!
Also, regarding pre-made hoods: since I have mods stopping generation of townies, when I use a pre-made I make sure they ONLY have the pre-set up playables, and won't generate anyone else. They range in size from Shady Shores, with 4 elders (by Hood Building Group) to Peni Griffin's WIDESPOT with lots of families.

[QUOTE=Orphalesion]So I took quite a liking to my version of Bob and Betty Newbie in my Beginning Neighbourhood. They are both Family Sims... QUOTE]
For me, Bob always shows up as Romance...I always let them cause trouble. In the same new hood I add the occupied Hick family - Momma, her son (name?) and their awful dogs. I had Betty kick bob out when their first child was a boy; then she married the Hick man and they had a long, complicated life.

When I've fixed my game from the weird crashes due to CC, I'm hoping to start my Pleasantview with its unique storyline that in some cases doesn't follow some of the usual things and aging that everyone does but I've always thought of this story and wanted to follow it through. It's quite a complex story but hasn't every dedicated sim neighbourhood got one? Might be more active in this thread if all goes well with fixing and people are interested

My breeding project is well underway. Yesterday twenty toddlers were aged up and when they reached adults they were married off by their parents. Today I only had 4 babies born (who should have been born with the twenty), aged up, married off together and are now expecting their own babies.
Buffy Snooty had twins (boy & girl) and they married the son of Sylvia Marie & Frankie Mashuga and the daughter of Julia & Rudy Valentino. The 2 expected kids will probably be born tomorrow with app. 20 others) and will most likely be marrying into the Goth and Crumplebottom families. Frida Goth may not be married but her bun-in-the-oven is still a Goth and rumor is it will be a boy. Frida hasn't told anyone that Jeff Pleasant is the father of her bun. Agnes Crumplebottom married Erik Darling (both kept their own last names) and that bun is rumored to be a girl. Erik is having an affair though (with Chris (Roomies) Smith) and can't be bothered to use protection (seriously the guy is a dog and numerous pregnancies have been ended). Mama Hick is sporting a belly and rumor is Tango Caliente has been hanging around her but so has Andrew Crumplebottom (twin brother to Agnes) and Erik Darling. There is more going on but I'm out of time. The Jones, Hatfield and Charming households will be joining in on the crazyness soon enough (wanted to add to this PV breeding project).

My legacy founder is cursed, apparently.

The first few days of spring went by without much of a hitch. Robin mourned her lack of a shower after inheriting a mysterious plot of land from a twice removed aunt. But Robin had been bamboozled, because it wasn't a comfortable little house in the country she'd given up life in the city for, but a tiny shack held together with elbow grease and exposed nails. She's working on it, but the country life doesn't seem to suit an artist like herself, and she doesn't exactly have any money left. Fishing isn't her forte, and after a lot of bad luck she managed only a skinny, single perch. She ate bad mushrooms and got food poisoning, and attempted to harvest wild honey from bees, which resulted in a very painful experience. It could be worse, she thought, at least Blustery Bluffs was full of very attractive sims! Except, it seems all of the townies meant to be her love interests have pretty faithfully coupled up with one another. So Robin decided it was time for the matchmaker. The matchmaker all too gleefully arrived, but it all went downhill when Robin handed her a measly 40 dollars.

After a lightning quick date that ended as soon as it began, and another 40 simoleons, Robin finally held down a date for dinner! Except, she burned their dinner, and she was so tired by this point she fell asleep in her plate. Her date, Wilhelmina, was not impressed. Robin's stove started to smoke and stink, much to Wilhelmina's horror. Outside, lightning struck the tree in the backyard and before long, the tree and the outhouse were engulfed in flames! Wilhelmina ran for her life while the matchmaker smiled and polished her mystical all-seeing orb in front of Robin's burning property.

The fire spread very quickly, and Robin caught fire trying to extinguish the flames.

So I started the day over.

Wilhelmina fell from the sky for 40 simoleons. Robin made her perch. Wilhelmina was yet again unimpressed, laughing when Robin dared to ask her if she liked what she saw. The matchmaker polished her orb. Once again, it started to rain. This time, Robin said goodbye to Wilhelmina a little early. Wilhelmina suggested they NOT do this again. By the time she was out the door, the tree in the backyard caught fire! This time, Robin ran to the phone and called the fire department.

The fire spread quickly once again!

It took a couple sim-hours before it was all out. Exhausted, and stinky, Robin went to bed. In the morning she woke up to make oatmeal....

and the stove caught on fire. Then the counter. Then the next counter, and finally, Robin, who was too panicked to do much else I guess. For the second time, she died by fire.

Third time's a charm....right?


edit: Robin survived the third try, but her house still caught fire. This time from making dinner for her date. To shake things up a little she'd asked the mailman out. Needless to say it was a horrible date. Once the firefighter put out the flames, Robin went to sleep. In the middle of the night, the tree, predictably, caught fire. Robin phoned the fire department, but THIS TIME, the rain actually succeeded in putting out the flames. By the time trusty ol' Weston had arrived on the scene, the fire was out. Weston was not happy about this. He lectured Robin and fined her $500.

She promptly rolled a want to see Weston turned into a zombie.

Lamare's "Young Adults can enjoy maternity" mod is getting a workout in Acorn Bend. Most of my college students who have kids send their kids to live with family while they finish school, but the accidental ACR pregnancies just keep coming.

I had a houseful of college roomies graduate and go their separate ways, getting set up for adult life. Michelle Billings had a son, Paul, while she was in high school and he's been living with her parents while she studied at college. She found a nice little two bedroom house for them in Crowborough and got him enrolled in school, and took a job at the local hospital.

Bertha Harvey was reunited with her toddler twins Trevon and Zayla that had been staying with her sister -- and she has a newborn, Sherri Lynn. She moved into the house that her sister had just vacated after getting married. The kids' father Trevor will move in with the family as soon as he finishes up his last semester.

Karla Simonik has twins that have been cared for by her parents, and she moved back in, bringing her youngest daughter Sarah Jane with her. Her father Lester is ill and won't be with them much longer, so he did the paperwork to pass on his bookstore to Karla. After consulting with her brother Jameson they used some of the family funds to add on to the house. When Karla's fiance Jason finishes up with college, he'll be able to move in, and there'll be room enough for all the kids (and more to come) and for Jameson to stay as well. He's taking an online course in cosmetology so he can open a beauty parlor, but in the meantime, he doesn't have much income coming in, and the kids adore their uncle -- so this will work for everyone.

Rosa Josephs is the most interesting of the lot. While at college she had a friend-with-benefits thing going on with Felix Harris -- she REALLY liked him, and booty called him more times than I can count. Now Felix is half-alien, and he's also had contact with his alien father. The rest of Acorn Bend doesn't realize it yet, but there's a reason for all this abducting and impregnating -- the aliens are trying to take over! After his visit with the aliens on their spaceship, Felix has agreed to help. And so he's spreading his love as widely as possible -- and he picked up a few impregnation techniques, which he's refined as he goes along. The first time he got Rosa pregnant, she had twins -- the second time, quadruplets! All the children except one had either alien skin or alien eyes or both, and her family flatly refused to raise those weirdos for her. So she's moving into her new home with just one of her sons, Taj, who has her eyes and dark skin -- nothing alien-looking about him at all. The rest of the children are being cared for at the children's home. She's thought about going to collect them but she doesn't have the money or the houseroom, and anyway she always intended to marry her high school sweetheart Alejandro Trujillo. He would not be on board with raising six alien children. So she can't just blow up her life like that -- can she? Surely they'll find loving homes eventually.

Elgin - Round 7- Nevin

The Nevin's surprisingly had a peaceful and quiet round. Well, except when the burglar came and set their Living Room on fire (for the umpth time). Other than that, it was fine. Thursday morning, The Matchmaker dropped off a genie lamp. Mayor Brid wished for beauty. Which caused nearly all the men in the hood to annoyingly come by the house to check her out. Brid's husband, Steaphan, wished to resurrect his granddaughter who died from a cold, last round. Antonia was so happy to be alive again. And I was too. I decided that Antonia's resurrection wasn't a mistake and that she should make the best of her second chance of life. I gave her a must needed makeover. I changed her hair into something mature. Pigtails are cute to wear, until you're old enough to have children. I also brought her a new green and white dress that has three leaf clovers printed on it. I brought it to match the nickname her grandfather gave her, Lucky Charm. Next round, I'm going to see if I can find Antonia a mate. She's too pretty and nice, to die (again) alone.

Making up my own challenge in a new hood, actually a populated hood by the Hood Building Group, I created Miss Manners, a homely House Mother/guardian/parole officer, moved her to a vacant lot, and used Tombstone to summon 3 teen girls, then made the last 2 townies. Then did the same thing with teen boys, till I had 4 of each sex in the house. My prime directive - to keep them all alive. . Miss Manners DOES have her own room (these children have never been taught boundaries), with a comfortable bed and the only tub - she keeps her door locked. Miss Manners cooks, cleans, encourages, and helps anyone with homework who WANTS it. But she must be permissive; she can set an alarm in their dorm bedroom, but can't tell them to go to school, or go to bed. So this is no ISBI - she DOES look at their needs/wants.But in this social experiment, these unfortunate orphans are to be given freedom to do whatever they want (and with ACR they seem to have a LOT of wants). Then I looked at their Aspirations: ALL OF THEM had been created Knowledge! Sorry dears, your grades and social skills are too lacking to go to college or even get a job. Then 3 of them died (disease and starvation); 2 other Sims wanted to resurrect 2 of them (the 3rd one was a fighter), so (my rules) they brought back. DISCOVERY: when resurrected a Sim starts that AGE over. With that, their money was zero, so Miss Manners had to go to work. She was SUPPOSED to get them anything they needed, but they remained painfully poor.
So I guess if this WAS a challenge, I lost.

The Omnivore Cafe, a venture by renowned restaruanteur Ty Bubbler, has opened in Newtown and served its first customers. It lost money on its first day, but Ty is not discouraged.

Baby Elphaba Orphan, daughter of the late John Thomas Orphan, finally became a toddler! And I don't know why people think the standard Maxis PT makes ugly children. Like so many of her predecessors in Drama Acres, Elphaba is adorable!

Someone should wash that cat's bed!

In a brand new hood that doesn't have a proper name yet, the Newson toddlers are running poor Ginger ragged. There's been an almighty thunderstorm crashing around outside for hours, but the toddlers will NOT stay inside! No sooner does she get one of them safely indoors than she finds the other has done an Olympic sprint-crawl back out into the mud. And Gavin is being no help whatsoever - while Ginger's running after the toddlers, he's busy tossing a football with the young man Ginger had been hoping to spend some time with.

That's...a little too realistic for comfort. Ginger needs to tear him a new one about shirking.

Don't worry, ihate - John Thomas there is a Virgo. He'll be cleaning that cat bed shortly after Elphaba's first pottytraining.

Dora Ottomas and the butler, Ethan Wade, have autonomously fallen in love. It was quite something. I saw her swooning over him, so I made him selectable for a moment to interrupt his duties, just long enough for her to start flirting with him, then I un-selectabled him, and they did the rest themselves.

Well...Benazir Al Mahmoud just got demoted from Investigatory Journalist (level 8) aaaaaaaaaaaaaaall the way down to Obituary Writer (level 5) That's 711 simoleons difference in income! Thankfully her son is still living with her, otherwise she might not have been able to keep her current house.

I was working on upgrading my service center in Fargo earlier today.

I haven't updated in a while.

Beaker household: Vidcund and his twin daughters moved in with Circe. Their cow plant ate 2 townies and the nanny. It ate the nanny while both Circe and Vidcund were at work. I was glad the social worker didn't come. I promptly put a fence around it with a gate not allowing guests.

Curious household: Due to some new research (aka Tombstone of Life and Death), Pascal became pregnant with his and Nervous's. He gave birth to a girl named Leia. Lazlo is now in a relationship with Crystal Vu, who moved in. Lazlo also adopted a Siamese cat named Kim.

Smith: All the children are either teens or children now. Jill moved to college. Pol Tech has a part time job in Education now, knowing he shouldn't just expect his wife to work now that they had so many children to support.

Johnny/Ophelia: Johnny cheated on Ophelia with a dormie during their 2nd to last semester of college, but she never found out about it. He vowed it would only be a one time thing. So far that is true.

Ripp Grunt: Ripp was actually being a good student during his first two semesters of college. He had been trying to prove his dad and Tank wrong. But he soon fell back into his old ways. He started slacking off, only wanting to play the guitar he managed to save enough money to purchase. He was put on Academic Probation. Despite living in the same dorm as his girlfriend, that didn't keep him from flirting and sleeping with multiple dormies. Tiffany found out about it after class and they broke up. The following day Ripp was expelled from college. Poor guy. (I also don't want to continue playing Tiffany so she'll be in the Sim bin for the time being)

EDIT: Johnny and Ophelia also graduated.

@rollingstarr: Unfortunately locked gates/doors won't stop an NPCs on a job (like the nanny). So if you don't want the next nanny to be eaten by the cowplant, too, you'll need to put it into a room/fenced-in area without any doors or gates.

I wasn't aware of that a gate wouldn't stop them. Thanks for letting me know!

It's winter. We've had a couple good blizzards. Never mind it was spring in January, it's winter in March. So of course, what to do but play an Apocalypse challenge?

I've lifted Law Enforcement, Adventurer, Athletic, Business, Culinary, Artist, and Politics. The oldest of Generation 3 just hit teen (thank you, random triplets and quads, for my founder having quads just before she hit elder: I would not have chosen four kids pre-culinary and medical lifts, though Adventurer sure as heck helped). Artist because he took the job, then I-several human days later-realized I hadn't pulled the more realistic jobs requiring degrees mod. Oops. Well, having him quit made no sense either. Had it been college start instead of adult start, Artist could've been an early lift--and it actually hurts because Education and Medical won't show up with the hack in for sims without degrees, so I couldn't get sims to go to college.

After dumping my old MegaHood due to suspected corruption, I thereupon made a new hood full of pixels with even more severe problems. Knowing that this was an absolutely pristine game, I decided to dump about 3 or 4 new mods that I'd installed.
Voila-the new hood is good. Now I'm tempted to put the original Megahood back in and see if that works any better.
Such a shame that sometimes new stuff will not work properly in my game. That and I have too many downloads.
But it's better not to have a sense of dread every time one opens up the game to wonder if it's going to work or not with new stuff.