More Awesome Than You!

Not sure where I should post this since posting it in Jordi's thread would be serious necromancy.  It's not working properly for me (I think it's not anyway) -- I can't summon some townies.  I'm under the impression that it does work for the Pets EP, but not sure.  In the description in the catalog, it says to summon townies I need to look under a surname (cannot remember which one) and that all townies have the same surname, but thing is, this surname does not appear as one of the choices in the menus.

Any suggestions?

All households are under one surname. In an unmodded game without expansions, this will be Bendett for townies. Installing any name mod or any expansion pack, changes this last name.
So this is normal :-)

Look for any surname not owned by a playable household. This could be one of the following:
-Townies
-Downtownies
-Service NPCs (cops, waiters, etc.)

I usually use SimPE to change the household name of these groups to what they are.

I actually did check out all the surnames I did not recognise and still couldn't find the one first name I was looking for.  I clicked on "Friends" thinking it was a category (which would have made it easy) but only two guys came up, both of which I didn't recognise.  Does this mean "Friends" is a surname?  I also looked under default to see what that was about.  I'll keep on looking.  I did recently install a "better names for pets" mod. 

Anyway, thanks for your help  :)

Any name appearing in there is a household name, so you must have some lot which at one point held Sims surnamed Friends :-)

It's the name of a household in Academie Le Tour.  In Uni, household names can be independent of surnames. (ETA: the two household members in this case are named Mitch Indie and Max Flexor, if I recall correctly.)

In normal neighbourhoods, household names are also independent of surnames (but you cannot set this up in advance).
If all Sims with a certain surname move out of a lot (or die) and the only resident left has a different surname, the household keeps the old surname.

Never summon anyone from the "Default" family.  This includes dead sims and can cause problems.

In my game, some townies are under "Midlock" and some are under "Wolosenko."  The tricky part here is that I moved in a townie named Wolosenko so I thought that was him.  It took me forever to click on that option and find those townies.  So your best bet is just to click on each name listed to see if it's townies or not.

I've changed the household names in Simpe, so my townies are called "Townies", NPCs are called "NPC" and downtownies are called "Downtownies".

I always find all townies etc. after looking really hard. It can be easy to miss a name. Especially if you have a lot of townies and because without a mod you usually get the same names again and again.

The real reason I´m posting in this thread is to ask, if the shrub is still safe to use in Pets and Seasons. I recently installed both and don´t want to play without the shrub. I didn´t get any errors, but there could be things going wrong without me noticing.

Yes, it works fine.

Doh, why did I never think of renaming my townies using more descriptive names!


What you are experiencing is not abnormal.  It's always a struggle for me also to find a particular sim, unless he's  from one of my families.

Oh and the default category sometimes has NPC's.  Not every name on it is off limit.  But obviously, you have to be careful about choosing a name from that particular list.