More Awesome Than You!

I hate to admit it, but I rather enjoy all the unexpectedly bad things that happen to my Sims. As I mentioned in another post, the other day an entire family was wiped out by fate (and not total neglect, but a wee bit of miscalculation on my part). And then another Sim who was THIS close to achieving his LTW (Top of Slacker career)  - had all friends, all skills,  was at level 9 - got fired when the wrong chance card was picked. As he is an Elder, and I don't have the hack that allows Elders access to adult careers, that's it - this Sim will never reach Permaplat Heaven.

Maybe I'm a hard, cruel Goddess but the game still throws me surprises now and then and I like that fact.   

I kinda like it when bad things happen too.  Makes life interesting.

It's a bit like real life innit?, you never know what's gonna happen. :)

Well, no, I don't like it when bad things happen in real life, at least not to me.  ;)  But that's the great thing about the Sims:  They are just pixels and you can always exit without saving.

Who's to say that we aren't the pixels, and they are playing US! ;D

Well funny you should say that ZZ, I quite often find myself doing something I didn't reallly want to do.  Saying stuff I didn't really want to say.  Wish I could exit without saving. ;)

I wish I could find the SimPE editor for real life!

Well, THEY have it!  so how can you find it.....unless you somehow become one of them?

I make the bad things happen!  ;D

I don't have the heart to make anything bad happen to any of my sims (except the Nannys when they tick my kids off) but I love it when chance happens and spices things up.  Too many perfect families is just boring.

I think the best one was a legacy challenge I was working on - first generation, just married, new baby, almost empty house but a well-equipped kitchen.  She and hubby were at work, baby sleeping in crib in the dining room and Nanny catches the kitchen on fire the first hour.  I had just rebuilt and apparently removed the wall that held the fire alarm (oops).  I freaked out waiting for the social worker to come because Nanny is too incompetent to call the fire dept herself (I know I COULD have made her selectable but I did get some perverse enjoyment out of watching her burn  :o).  The entire kitchen burned to the ground and the Nanny ran around in flames for 6 HOURS.  Daddy got home and since I wasn't worried about the social worker anymore I wanted to see that woman die for burning up my brand new kitchen but she just left AND charged me.  I was peeved until I found her tombstone at the portal the next day.  Apparently she couldn't die while she was on duty.  I felt much better after that  ;D

I love that story..The nannies in my opinion get away with too much, one left my baby in his dirty nappy for hours and only changed it just before mum and dad got home, but you can't do anything to them.  They walk out as if they are the epitomy of good parenting.  And get paid. :o

And a heck of a lot more than the poor maids - who normally do their job conscientiously and only take time out to eat if they are invited to!  And then, when they finish eating they clear away the dishes and straight back to work!

When they do that, I makie them selectable and make them pee themselves!!

*see how you like having to wear wet undies all day*

Do you also remove the bathroom doors until they go? ;D

LOL

No I actually try and keep an eye on them and if they look like they're heading anywhere near a bathroom I just select them again and 'create' another puddle for them to stand in!!

Much less bother to move the doors!  then you can sit back and watch them scream in frustration!

There are no good sims. Only bad sims who you haven't turned your back to long enough.

They get what they deserve!!!

Nah, we're played and controlled by the rats...

In Soviet Russia, you do not play game, game plays YOU!

Maybe the pixel people live there?

I only exit without saving if there's a glitch so I've had all kinds of terrible things happen and it really does add some interest to the game as I'm too nice to inflict disasters myself.

My 5th generation Legacy heir was about an hour from popping out generation 6 and just sitting down to her first bite when when Pao the mailman (founder's hubby) decided to pop out of her TV dinner and say 'boo'. The only Sim near enough was her uncle who barely gave her the time of day, but he was able to plead her back. Though it would have sucked to end it there, I was prepared to get her (very gay) uncle to bite the bullet and stray on his loving husband to continue if necessary.

What really bothers me is repairmen. I only use them for electronic repairs and wait until I have a couple before calling one, so it really gets my goat to get those who set the house on fire then leave with my Simoleans though they haven't repaired a thing. It's easier to just throw broken things to the curb and replace them.

i'm too nice to my sims ::)
but it's real treat if i nod off without pausing or exiting and wake to find them in total disarray. i let them get on with it usually, then and then exit without saving so no real damage is done

Even though I stopped exiting without saving, I think I still micromanage too much because bad things very rarely happen to my sims. It definitely does add to the spice of the game though - like when one of my favourites nearly burnt herself to death cooking dinner, and when I caught sight of her dancing around on fire I suddenly realized I forgot to put a fire alarm in...! I set her husband and son to work with extinguishers and her daughter rushing over to the phone. The fireman just barely managed to arrive and put her out on time - her son kept spraying away with the extinguisher but her poor husband was too freaked out to do more than stand there and scream. After she was put out she took a few steps and passed out. With her needs so low it was very touch-and-go, but I managed to keep her alive (and accident-free to boot). I gave her a few wrinkles after that experience, though!

I always save, unless theres a glitch that forces me to exit without saving (e.g. stuck Sim). Or unless my son distracted me, then ran back to the computer to wreak his havoc (which usually only consists of placing many many chairs, or plaid tiles on the lot).

I think a lot depends on your purpose for the sim(s) in question.  If you write stories and have a storyline already planned, and your sims go and get themselves fried en masse, it rather spoils your plot!

Perhaps I am rather twisted, but I get strangely excited when an unexpected disaster occurs for my sims. Switches things up a bit.  Most of my sim families live way too happy lives.

It was quite the highlight for me when Alex Goth and his entire family of 4 perished in a kitchen blaze regardless of my efforts to stop it.

Heh heh, maybe there's something about Alex Goth - his family of 3 was the one of mine that perished a few days ago: Mom w/wish to be vampire died after unsuccessful attempt to get to the Energizer (located outside); Son taken away by Social worker after Mom died and Dad (Alex) was at work; then that evening, Alex died after repeated frights from an angry ghost.

Ity's odd, when I just had sims2, if the stove caught fire I just used to send my sims outside to look at clouds - and they used to do it!  Now you can't even get them to have a shower!  I don't object to disasters happening, but I do object when it happens because the programmers have made it impossible to queue actions which sims aren't capable of simply "losing", and since NL it happens all the time!

If I want to have a story where everything happens just as I plan it, I write it, I don't use the game to act it out.   :D

Don't you even have a plan of sorts in your head when you play?  And then your annoying sims go and screw it all up by getting wasted!

Lucky you..cause mine always refused to do anything else when disasters were happening.  :P

If I'm desperate to save a family for my own reasons during a fire or something I'll use the teleport feature of Insim to get them away. 

Thats why with the release of Uni I just started putting auto-sprinklers in all my houses. Still get the panic and bad memory without the moth drawn to burning death idiocy.

accidentally sending your green aspiration sims to use the energizer is my most common disaster. Sigh. Almost killed the father of a toddler and twin infants this morning accidentally. Miraculously, he lived. With lots of effort from me.

For me it depends on what kind of impact I want a fire to have on a particular household -- if I'd rather ignore them, they get sprinklers; if I'm likely to snap a couple of pictures and snicker, I'll use the alarm.

I have a loose idea of what I will make them do next, but it is second to rolling with whatever happens. If someone gets themself offed and I want them to live, I'll make a sim that knew them go into the Paranormal career and get the Ressurect-o-Nomitron, with preferences on someone who wants to ressurect them or see them as a zombie. I have to really want them back, though - if no one really cares they get to stay dead. Most of my first gen seed families were either elders or children, and since all of the elders have since died and Uni was mandatory for the kids, I now only have three adult sims who can't get into the Paranormal career.

You could, of course, just buy it!

But that's so cheaty. I have to justify all the time I spend pushing the kids through Uni somehow.

If you didn't cheat at some aspect of your game, I doubt you'd be here!  Some people would even argue that using JM's Critical Fixes  is a form of cheating, and we should accept the game with all its Maxian flaws and limitations!

but we all have a different comfort level for different "cheats" :)

Well, of course!  There are quite a few things I wouldn't dream of using!  But I played the base game for a long time without any cheats at all, and now I think I've earned the right to use a few!

I could just buy it but it would be a lot harder for me to justify it in story context.  :D It's a pretty extreme thing to be able to ressurect someone and just dropping it in out of the sky would bug me... I'm tempted to get one of them going all mad scientist, though, maybe be a vampire or have a zombie servant that lives forever, and has one of those. So anyone who needed to resurrect a loved one could pay in some manner (a dramatic one, of course) to use it in the first place, and then pony up the cash for Grim as well. That could lend itself to some tragic stories - say, a pair of young lovers, one dies in an accident, but the other is so poor that they're elderly by the time they earn enough to ressurect their sweetheart...

Sounds a good story!  (And buying the resurrect-o-mitron doesn't mean you have the cash, you still have to acquire that!

Yeah, but how would have the sim gotten it?  :D It's all right though, I don't mind one earning it... haven't had anyone die before their time anyway, although I am just barely on gen 2 (3 babies!). It remains to be seen if there will be any need for a mad scientist, all the drama is sims with three bolts for their spouses deciding they need to plant a kiss on some girl who flirted with them once. Oi.

The parting shot to your story could be that she resurrects him on the day before she is due to die, and then falls down dead with the shock!

Oooh, that would be sad! I can't bear to engineer accidents but I could, ah, forget to put in fire alarms...

Or you could make it on her very final day - but no time for the wedding to take place!  So then, he has to resurrect her.................

You could move in the mad scientist (with the resurrect thingy in her pockets), call grim & have the person resurrected.  The family is so greatful they give the mad scientist a pool table, a car etc (hey maxis reckons they've fixed the bug), then move the mad scientist out and back into her own home...

Except the Mad Scientist doesn't earn the resurrect-o-mitron - it's the reward for the Paranormal Career!

I know, I'm just calling the hypothetical weird immortal with the resurrect-o-nomitron a mad scientist on principle. It could just as easily be a charismatic and immortal vampire cult leader (to keep with the actual job title), who exacts a high price from those who want to join his cult. A deal with the devil sort of thing, or sommat.

Now that would be some story!

I understand the Aspiration and Career reward objects can't be sold in the new businesses, but it sure would make for good stories if they could be...

Oh, I for one wouldn't put it past some enterprising modder......

Methinks I need to spend more time playing than at MATY, all these story ideas are too good not to use :D

I had a real-life daycare provider do the same thing.  I always wondered why my daughter's diapers weighed 100 lbs. when I'd pick her up.  I started counting the diapers I provided when I dropped her off, and the number was the same when I picked her up.

Yuck...I'm assuming she doesn't go there anymore?!

A nanny like that should be prosecuted for child abuse!