Cross-Forum Fervor! Let's Play The Sims 3!

I'll throw in my dumb hat.

Well be careful! That thing looks pretty darn heavy!

(B-but Gahitsu didn't pick traits or anything...)

The wife and I sat down to hash out gameplay mechanics and narrative, and it took a while, but we got our competitors picked. So congrats to:

Madhair60 as M'dair Sixty
ViolentVixen as Annui Vixen
Trar Robiesperriere-du-Marcoux, a name I will either type out in its entirety every time it is mentioned or ignore completely,
Beat Skeleton and
new poster Wildkin.

Good applications all around, everybody.

I'll be sending a PM to each of you to hash out some gameplay and story details. The first LP update should come later this week.

Furthermore, victory for either community in the Let's Play is now based on a two-out-of-three condition set. The conditions are:

The household that accrues the highest mean Lifetime Achievement Points, as before
The household with the higher Property Value (having the most and best stuff)
and the household that completes the most Skill Challenges

I haven't mentioned skill challenges yet, so here you go.

I am excite.

I'm guessing we get to Choose our Own Paths in this LP?

Each LP update will cover a few days of ingame time. Between updates, feel free to post in thread or send a PM with what you want your character to do, who to seduce, which career path to take, what furnishings to buy or redecorate, and so on. Without such guidance I'll just play all the characters in pursuit of LAPs, money, and skill challenges, then write the narrative around the in-game events as they unfold.

I'll get started on chargen once skeleman Beat checks in with a response to the PM I sent him.

Sorry about the delay dude! PM sent!

So after spending too damn long straining through the very limited character appearance options, I decided it's not likely I can build anyone an accurate simulacrum. Everyone gets a random appearance. Meet Madhair, who is perhaps mad because he doesn't have any hair.


Trar wanted to be fat and French. He's one for two, in a game where there aren't a whole lot of pencil mustaches and berets and striped shirts and... filtered cigarettes and baguettes and whatever else screams "French stereotype".


Likewise, there aren't a whole lot of domino masks to be found.


Funny, she doesn't look like a mad scientist.


The exception to the randomized appearance is Beat, who is as skinny and pale and bald as the ingame editor can make a character.

Man, The Sims 2 totally had domino masks, pencil mustaches, AND skeleton people. 3 really IS the low point of the series!

I buy one of the bigger lots in the city, so there's plenty of space to expand the house into.


Since the amount of starting cash depends on the number of characters in the starting household, I went ahead and genned a couple of extras for a cash boost. Then I kicked them out to wander around the town of Sunset Valley as NPCs. Bye, guys!


Left to right: Madhair60, BEAT, Wildkin, Violentvixen, and Trar.


It takes several long moments before the three new NPCs vacate the lot and let me into house-building mode, during which time all hell breaks loose.


You guys are not nice to one another.


Though to be fair, one of the first things Trar does is root around in the garbage like a damned filthy raccoon or something. Beat rightfully mocks him for it.


Eventually I get into build mode and make you guys a rudimentary house. Two bathrooms, a tiny kitchen, a place to sit, and five beds. And unlike the Brontoversion, it's not shaped like a giant dong.


This house is tiny and sucky, but it's that way on purpose. I made the house as small and cheap as possible to allow for input from the players on how they want it to grow; there's plenty of funds left to expand. Does everyone want a private bedroom, or will some of you room together? Bigger kitchen? Nicer bathroom? Back patio? A bicycle or a car? What are you guys looking for in a house?

("Nothing, I want to blow all my money on books and recipes and skill classes and concerts and groceries and stuff" is a valid answer too. Remember that the group's funds are pooled, though, so there's no individual fund to keep track of.)

Meanwhile, in an alternate dimension...

Hey, man, that was tactical resource gathering. Like in Civilization.

Anyway, we must construct a sacrificial altar.

What's with the jaggies? The overlay looks fine.

My PC's pretty old, and it was a stock budget model when I bought it in 2006. Games like this just don't run unless everything is cranked down to the absolute minimum, and even then things are still weird sometimes. I'll probably have screenshots before too long with background objects that aren't colored and Sims standing in that default-3D-model-pose with their arms outstretched.

Ah, got it. I'd never seen the game running at minimum specs before.

What do you expect from a house with 2 evil character ?

I want a bike and a nicer kitchen! Also what the hell am I wearing, yeesh.

I dunno, I think the red tank top over black and white stripes with cargo pants and sandals is super-cute, you fashion disaster.

Is that a smoking jacket and suit pants I'm wearing?

That will suffice.

Arrange the furniture in the living room in the shape of a giant skull.

Okay, there's no 72-hour time limit to anything. And this isn't strictly dawn, since it's the same day that I built the most of Tyranthouse. Is there some better name I should use when referring to your collective domicile?


As Vixen requested, I upgraded the stove and refrigerator and bought a dishwasher. So that's the kitchen upgrade.


And as Trar requested, behind the house, shrouded by a grove of oak trees...


Surrounded by a henge of standing stones and torches...


...is a picnic table. It may not surprise you to learn that my options for "sacrificial altar" are pretty limited. But if you want, you can get an outdoor grill for some burnt offerings.


And that's... kinda it as far as requests went. But Vixen did complain about her outfit, so I bought a dresser.


...better?

With that out of the way, the day begins in earnest. The Outstanding Citizens Warehouse Corporation does some shady dealings up in the hills, so Wildkin steals Vixen's bicycle to get his criminal career off to a roaring start.


Beat just takes a cab. They're free in this game, to keep you from spending even more time commuting from place to place than you would walking.


Meanwhile, Trar is out doing something else that I'm sure won't lead to any in-house strife at all.


Vixen has her own dreams of starting work.


She wrests her bike back from Wildkin's grip and is off to sign up for an exciting career scrubbing beaker bottles and fetching coffee. Gotta start somewhere!


The first day of any game is generally spent joining careers, building the initial levels of skills the Sims are going to develop, and filling in some simple wishes. M'dair is not exactly dreaming big, here.


As a Renaissance Sim, M'dair's life goal is to master three skills. And the skills he told me he wants to work on are Cooking, Charisma, and Painting. So instead of shopping for produce I let him practice on an easel.

After signing up for his career as a professional snitch, Trar went to the Landgraab Science Institute to take a class in the Logic skill. So as Vixen leaves from her job interview, she finds Trar out front... uh, talking to himself.


Which is really interesting and all but Vixen kinda needs to be... uh... somewhere else... not... near... that.

Fishing, along with Handiness and Gardening, are the skills required to excel at the Science career. Thorough knowledge of biology and engineering, right? So Vixen goes to get some practice in and maybe catch some experiment subjects.
(The best fishing locations have fish visibly thrashing around in the water. Since Vixen doesn't have the Angler trait, she needs that kind of edge to get started.)


With his first footholds in the art world in place, M'dair goes to the library to read up on the fundamentals of cooking and awkwardly clipping through doors. Some skills (like Fishing or Painting, as above) can be practiced without taking a class or reading a skill training book, no problem. But if you screw up Cooking, you might set the house on fire and lose a bunch of your stuff. So it's safer to get a couple levels of that out of a book, rather than failure-prone initial practice.


Beat has spent most of his day working out (the Criminal career track demands Athletics). There's not much to think about during those long hours on the treadmill, so Beat seeks a bit of excitement. I've honestly never seen this Wish before.


"If you're hungry, M'dair is inside making macaroni and cheese. You don't have to dig through the garbage like that."


The Bronto team doesn't have anyone who can cook, so they don't get charming dinnertable conversations like this. Eating together slightly increases everyone's relationship with everyone else, which is needed on this team of antagonistic jerks who insult each other at every turn.


And thus wraps the first day of the Tyrant Team Let's Play. The four of you who wanted to pursue a career are getting started in those jobs. The first levels of some of your skills have been picked up. As a breakdown:

Beat: LAPs 935
Wishes: Become Friends with Wild +500, See a Ghost +675

Wild: LAPs 2,325
Wishes: See a Ghost +600, Become Friends with Beat +450, Work Out for Four Hours Straight +525

Trar: LAPs 2883
Wishes: Buy a Telescope +300, Buy a Chess Table +300

M'dair: LAPs 633
Wishes: Flirt With Someone +250

M'dair got a bit shafted by the RNG, since he got very few wishes over the course of the day.

Vixen: LAPs 2274
Wishes: Catch 10 Anchovies +400, Learn Bait for Anchovy +400, Read a Book About Handiness +750, Go Fishing Before 6:00 AM +400

Vixen spent a big chunk of her day fishing, so she got a bunch of wishes related to that. She already got the wish for catching five tiny fish, so the cumulative ten isn't a big deal.

Lot Value $18,820, but you have plenty of cash on hand for extra stuff.

What's next, Tyrants?

Meanwhile, in an alternate dimension...

This is the greatest thing and I am loving it.

Hooray! Washing dishes is the worst damn thing so I am excited for this.

Ha, awesome. Thanks!

Pure joy.

It makes the most sense that, robbed of my true skeletal nature, i would wish to spend as much time with the dead as possible.

I really wish Trar turned into a ghost.

It's strategic resource gathering. You ever play Age of Empires?

Someone doesn't appreciate my pro meta strats.

With our collective brainpower and lack of morality, we'll probably manage to build a ghost machine eventually anyway. That is, if I don't put that altar to good use first or Beat doesn't construct a Skeletonalizer.

As for stuff, we should construct a maze. Preferably inside the house. I will also buy a cow steak to sacrifice on the altar.

It never occurred to me that multiple sims could have the same job but different bosses.

But, these kind of machine need something like human soul to work.