Glad you got the chance to read it, I laughed my way through writing this one so I was hoping the fun would come across! Attack-Dixie was just the way it had to be, I couldn't help it, but David was right that if push did come to shove Goldie would wipe the floor with her, giving her more reason to distrust 'them quiet ones'. But that would have to be a situation where Goldie has no choice but to defend herself, otherwise she's outta there! None of that means Dixie's giving up the grudge, though! Too bad for her but not really, I'm loving Goldie/David. In a larger hood, dating Mr. Popularity himself could have repercussions as she tried to keep up or defend against other girls after him but so far here he's been really good for her.
Rhett's a lovable jerk, even when he was on Penny's good side that's how she saw him. His fave photo is just that one of himself but kicking and screaming into adulthood he will be dragged! Sandy's got her own issues, though, so we'll see how that goes. She and Proxy were moved in right before I moved on so I haven't seen how he interacts with the baby but I do know that during the photo shoot the second I toddler-ified Goldie both Val and Rhett were in a race to get to her. (Val won. Doesn't he always?)
Daytona and Val are weird. She's having it off with Peter, of all people, and he's, um, up to stuff. But the double-standard where he's quietly manipulating Peter out of her way is actually a function of his fondness for her. Hey, perhaps in his mind he's protecting her in some weird way from interfering with that married man? No deaths! Ever! Okay, I can't play that way here but the slow aging and shorter rotations will go a long way to keeping them around a few more rounds. I didn't get a sneak-peek at Proxy like I did with Una but I wouldn't be surprised at Hart dominance although I wouldn't mind having a girl with Sandy's unique brand of nose.
Yeah, it's a real shame about Sandy's nose. Statistically somebody has to get a kid with it eventually, and sometimes the rest of the face configures around the Hart nose so that it looks like it might grow up into hers during the toddler stage (at least to me. I'm not good at facial recognition, which is why the sims I make look the way they do). But so far in all the iterations I've gotten a look at, by the child stage nobody can kid themselves about it without a powerful motive.
You're the first person I've seen who've had Sandy move in with the Harts, as opposed to making a new household with Rhett or making it as a single mother in her own place, so I'm all agog, myself. This is new territory.
I reckon Valentine/Daytona is complicated because it has always been about more than just them. The very first time, the plot to make Rhett work was hatched in the pillow talk, and now Val has those grandbabies to consider. Plus, you can't keep a power dynamic out of any relationship of Daytona's! She and Valentine are both their gender's alphas, not just for their generations but for the entire neighborhood (but don't tell Rich and Lana that), and Daytona always moves to dominate in the same way she always breathes. Valentine doesn't seem inclined to dominate back, but it's not in his nature to let anybody climb over or control him.
And this is one reason why I wish I'd extended some of the elders' lives, instead of leaving them where the tides of aspiration had washed them up. Six days is barely time to enjoy Skye, while Daytona is such a mover and shaker (I don't know of anybody who's had her retire and stop to smell the grandchildren) and she leaves such a power vacuum in her wake, that her default eight days is likely to come at a bad time in the story. I trust you to deal with it. But the thought of Valentine losing another important person to the Reaper makes me sad.
One disadvantage of seeing what people do with Widespot is, that I have to watch my beloved elders (and oh! I love all of them!) die over and over and over. But I made that bed and will have to lie in it.
Sometimes I'm tempted to take one of my old backup Widespots, with Mary, Penny, Rhett, and Candy as teens and their parents as adults, and play it from there. (Mary makes an adorable teen.) Your toddler Goldie pics make me want to revert them all even further. I wish I could have been looking over your shoulder at that photoshoot!
I think the romance secondary was the clincher for me to let Sandy move in; he may not believe it but while Rhett doesn't want a wife, Sandy doesn't want to be a wife. Not his, anyway. And she's also taking refuge behind Valentine, hoping to fall off Rich's radar. Funnily enough, Rich and Lana and Daytona and Val are already in position for a sort of alpha showdown amongst the elders (their kids, even the middle-aged ones are so not ready to take over). While the conflicts overlap the teams are clear and with Rich/Lana's united front officially dissolved that leaves Lana as the wild card.
The evolution of Val and Daytona's relationship has been fun to play. Neither one of them are willing to let something like love get in the way of what they're about. While Daytona dominates, Val...finesses. He's not going to insist on much of anything but he surely will sweet talk someone into position. (Peter may be the wrong gender but he was as suggestible as any groupie.) Even when Daytona rolled an active want to get married (I let it roll away, she was just a little giddy during their date), Val intuitively rolled a corresponding negative on that. He doesn't need to say things to keep a handle on the situation...he just needs to mean them.
Your last statement may be the most perfect evocation of Valentine in his best versions. (He does have less attractive iterations, depending on playstyle and random chance affecting his autonomous actions.)
I am awfully fond of Val, as you can tell. While he's definitely made some dubious decisions, I wouldn't know what to do with him being predatory; not just the way I see him but the way I hear him would have to change. Even playing him as he is here but in the prime of his life would be so different! I did laugh and shake my head at a pic of him and Penny in bed reblogged on your tumblr but there would be much raging and cursing at my game if I ever caught him tossing all that character development aside for a quickie with his son's first love!
Wordy stuff aside, what I actually wanted to ask about was whether Dixie was meant to be low on niceness? I checked again and she's got 8 like the rest of her sibs, that was what had inspired the 'hey, I'm nice' line because it doesn't necessarily manifest in sweetness of demeanour with her. (Pretty sure Mary's actually got 10 but I didn't check her.)
The only ones I determined personality points on were the oldest generation (including some, like Hamilton's father, deleted in CAS after making their genetic contribution) and the adults whose character concept required them to have an extreme, or whose role required a particular star sign. I've cannibalized most of the synapses that other people devote to math in order to understand narrative better, so it's hard for me to remember numbers; but I could have sworn Dixie had like 0 to 1 nice points. I never look at personalities in play so apparently I remembered wrong. Got them mixed up with her active points. That does explain why she gets along so well with practically everybody and is the life of every party!
The only time I ever saw Val behave badly in person, where I can't subconsciously shove the blame onto the player, was when I was playtesting the subhood version, and it disturbed me profoundly. I'd attached Widespot RFD to Strangetown, and took a Beech to the Swimming Hole, where I saw a bewildered Mary attract a flock of admirers - notably Pascal and Loki, who were actively competing for her attention. Valentine appeared, swaggered over, and made out with her, scattering the lot of them; but then after the crowd dispersed, she tried to hold hands with him and he rejected the flirt! That recast the whole incident so much it made me sick to my stomach and I was glad to delete the hood. The Valentine I'm used to seeing would as soon cut his hands off as get all possessive and controlling like that.
It did, however, perfectly set Mary up to be rescued by a Curious; which, since one of my motivations for making a subhood version was to make matches between Mary, Penny, and the Curious Boys possible (Penny and Lazlo! But I can't decide whether I like Mary better with Pascal or with Vidcund), was theoretically all to the good. I hope anybody who turns up to show me their Curious matches, though, gets there by some other road than that.
Penny and Lazlo! That just trumped whatever else I was going to say because it triggered a new connection to what I've done, or rather have set up to do--gah, can't tell you! It won't be this round anyway. And possibly not the next, depending on how I decide to reconcile the fact that I've been mentally phasing in some folks completely oblivious to the fact that this challenge has rules and stuff and I don't have the CAS points to afford them. I don't want them as townies and see no need for an elaborate work-around so I'll probably just add them and offset my goof by instituting a ban until I can buy the points back.
I seldom look at personalities either once the game's in motion so I was surprised to see Dixie had so many nice points or that Rhett had none. Didn't notice until I happened to see Proxy was so lacking. I've got SimPe open so taking a gander at the rest of her spread...she's going to be an interesting kid. Guess I shouldn't be surprised you were able to get such extremes like Dixie and Woody with a random roll of the genetics.
It's guaranteed that at some point I (and other players) will have these characters doing things that make you go "What? No!", if I haven't already. Hell, I do that myself with some maxis reinterpretations. But hopefully it won't be Val taking the wtf road. Can't have that. :-)
It being an axiom of game mastery that no plan survives first contact with the players, during development I actively tried to imagine horrible things people would do to these sims and if I could imagine something that I would not be able to bear to see done I wouldn't go live with it. The point of a shared neighborhood is to spark other people's fun, not to tell a particular story or impose my vision on anybody else. So go ahead and shock me. If I can stand the version in which Rhett is a rapist and Mary commits suicide (real thing real player did!), I can stand anything you'll throw at me.
As for the challenge rules - the challenge rules are there to give structure to gameplay to improve your enjoyment. Since this is a solo game, it seems to me that changing the rules as you need to in order to extract maximum enjoyment is not only not wrong, it is desirable! Think of it as tweaking the format. The sonnet is a rigid format - but at some point, somebody needed to tweak it, and now we have Petrarchan and Shakespearean sonnets, and it's all good. As long as you don't lose track of the key disciplines that attracted you to the challenge, you'll be fine. I am so eager to see who you bring in!
Oh, I meant that in a "what? no! say it ain't so!" sense. The reason I'm playing it at all is because it was on MTS, which steered me toward "ooh, now let's see what I can do with this" rather than "oh, that's cute" and keeping it moving as I would've done had it been on a personal blog or something. That said, I'm drawn more to the little daily frictions so it's doubtful I'll do much that really shocks you, though I can't imagine you wouldn't be a little surprised if I did something like introduce a long-lost mother for Penny & Woody:-) But all I've seen is the sheer delight you seem to take in what other people come up with, didn't mean to imply otherwise.
The challenge is one of those things I'd read in many incarnations but never felt tempted to play until I saw Widespot. It provides the parameters for telling a certain kind of story and to that end I think it's working. When Soliamore suggested Sandy needed to get out of dodge, well, with my typical gameplay she would have that option but here she doesn't, setting the stage for more conflict. I tend to be very "rules? what rules?" and the challenge is meant to constrain their choices not mine (though that's a fine line), but I'd like to not forget what I'm playing here. At least, not so soon as Round 2! (Or try to offset the rule-breaking within the story, like Daytona's corner-cutting, but ultimately that's the real rule as it'll come down to how I work out the age-syncing whether I introduce the others sooner or later.)
Rhett's a lovable jerk, even when he was on Penny's good side that's how she saw him. His fave photo is just that one of himself but kicking and screaming into adulthood he will be dragged! Sandy's got her own issues, though, so we'll see how that goes. She and Proxy were moved in right before I moved on so I haven't seen how he interacts with the baby but I do know that during the photo shoot the second I toddler-ified Goldie both Val and Rhett were in a race to get to her. (Val won. Doesn't he always?)
Daytona and Val are weird. She's having it off with Peter, of all people, and he's, um, up to stuff. But the double-standard where he's quietly manipulating Peter out of her way is actually a function of his fondness for her. Hey, perhaps in his mind he's protecting her in some weird way from interfering with that married man? No deaths! Ever! Okay, I can't play that way here but the slow aging and shorter rotations will go a long way to keeping them around a few more rounds. I didn't get a sneak-peek at Proxy like I did with Una but I wouldn't be surprised at Hart dominance although I wouldn't mind having a girl with Sandy's unique brand of nose.
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You're the first person I've seen who've had Sandy move in with the Harts, as opposed to making a new household with Rhett or making it as a single mother in her own place, so I'm all agog, myself. This is new territory.
I reckon Valentine/Daytona is complicated because it has always been about more than just them. The very first time, the plot to make Rhett work was hatched in the pillow talk, and now Val has those grandbabies to consider. Plus, you can't keep a power dynamic out of any relationship of Daytona's! She and Valentine are both their gender's alphas, not just for their generations but for the entire neighborhood (but don't tell Rich and Lana that), and Daytona always moves to dominate in the same way she always breathes. Valentine doesn't seem inclined to dominate back, but it's not in his nature to let anybody climb over or control him.
And this is one reason why I wish I'd extended some of the elders' lives, instead of leaving them where the tides of aspiration had washed them up. Six days is barely time to enjoy Skye, while Daytona is such a mover and shaker (I don't know of anybody who's had her retire and stop to smell the grandchildren) and she leaves such a power vacuum in her wake, that her default eight days is likely to come at a bad time in the story. I trust you to deal with it. But the thought of Valentine losing another important person to the Reaper makes me sad.
One disadvantage of seeing what people do with Widespot is, that I have to watch my beloved elders (and oh! I love all of them!) die over and over and over. But I made that bed and will have to lie in it.
Sometimes I'm tempted to take one of my old backup Widespots, with Mary, Penny, Rhett, and Candy as teens and their parents as adults, and play it from there. (Mary makes an adorable teen.) Your toddler Goldie pics make me want to revert them all even further. I wish I could have been looking over your shoulder at that photoshoot!
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The evolution of Val and Daytona's relationship has been fun to play. Neither one of them are willing to let something like love get in the way of what they're about. While Daytona dominates, Val...finesses. He's not going to insist on much of anything but he surely will sweet talk someone into position. (Peter may be the wrong gender but he was as suggestible as any groupie.) Even when Daytona rolled an active want to get married (I let it roll away, she was just a little giddy during their date), Val intuitively rolled a corresponding negative on that. He doesn't need to say things to keep a handle on the situation...he just needs to mean them.
(Edited for typos.)
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Wordy stuff aside, what I actually wanted to ask about was whether Dixie was meant to be low on niceness? I checked again and she's got 8 like the rest of her sibs, that was what had inspired the 'hey, I'm nice' line because it doesn't necessarily manifest in sweetness of demeanour with her. (Pretty sure Mary's actually got 10 but I didn't check her.)
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The only time I ever saw Val behave badly in person, where I can't subconsciously shove the blame onto the player, was when I was playtesting the subhood version, and it disturbed me profoundly. I'd attached Widespot RFD to Strangetown, and took a Beech to the Swimming Hole, where I saw a bewildered Mary attract a flock of admirers - notably Pascal and Loki, who were actively competing for her attention. Valentine appeared, swaggered over, and made out with her, scattering the lot of them; but then after the crowd dispersed, she tried to hold hands with him and he rejected the flirt! That recast the whole incident so much it made me sick to my stomach and I was glad to delete the hood. The Valentine I'm used to seeing would as soon cut his hands off as get all possessive and controlling like that.
It did, however, perfectly set Mary up to be rescued by a Curious; which, since one of my motivations for making a subhood version was to make matches between Mary, Penny, and the Curious Boys possible (Penny and Lazlo! But I can't decide whether I like Mary better with Pascal or with Vidcund), was theoretically all to the good. I hope anybody who turns up to show me their Curious matches, though, gets there by some other road than that.
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I seldom look at personalities either once the game's in motion so I was surprised to see Dixie had so many nice points or that Rhett had none. Didn't notice until I happened to see Proxy was so lacking. I've got SimPe open so taking a gander at the rest of her spread...she's going to be an interesting kid. Guess I shouldn't be surprised you were able to get such extremes like Dixie and Woody with a random roll of the genetics.
It's guaranteed that at some point I (and other players) will have these characters doing things that make you go "What? No!", if I haven't already. Hell, I do that myself with some maxis reinterpretations. But hopefully it won't be Val taking the wtf road. Can't have that. :-)
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As for the challenge rules - the challenge rules are there to give structure to gameplay to improve your enjoyment. Since this is a solo game, it seems to me that changing the rules as you need to in order to extract maximum enjoyment is not only not wrong, it is desirable! Think of it as tweaking the format. The sonnet is a rigid format - but at some point, somebody needed to tweak it, and now we have Petrarchan and Shakespearean sonnets, and it's all good. As long as you don't lose track of the key disciplines that attracted you to the challenge, you'll be fine. I am so eager to see who you bring in!
Reply
The challenge is one of those things I'd read in many incarnations but never felt tempted to play until I saw Widespot. It provides the parameters for telling a certain kind of story and to that end I think it's working. When Soliamore suggested Sandy needed to get out of dodge, well, with my typical gameplay she would have that option but here she doesn't, setting the stage for more conflict. I tend to be very "rules? what rules?" and the challenge is meant to constrain their choices not mine (though that's a fine line), but I'd like to not forget what I'm playing here. At least, not so soon as Round 2! (Or try to offset the rule-breaking within the story, like Daytona's corner-cutting, but ultimately that's the real rule as it'll come down to how I work out the age-syncing whether I introduce the others sooner or later.)
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