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Hi! Let's play some Sims 3!
What's this then?
Everyone knows the Sims. Create little virtual people, clothe them, build their house, then either obsessively micromanage every aspect of their lives or let them do their own thing, inevitably ending in misery and disaster. I'm going to be leaning towards the latter. Sims are actually pretty good at taking care of themselves, and with the mods I have installed their interactions may end up being more interesting than in the vanilla game.
The Sims 3 was released in 2009, a followup to the massively popular Sims 2, and in many ways it's an improvement. The biggest change is seamless neighbourhoods. In Sims 1 and 2, your sims were trapped in their houses. Going anywhere involved long-ass loading times and generally wasn't worth the effort. Now, there's none of that. The whole neighbourhood is open to you.
I'm playing with just one expansion pack: World Adventures, the very first. This means we can go on holiday, hooray! I've also got a shedload of custom content - a bunch of hairs and clothes, but also some mods that change gameplay.
What mods are you using?
I've stocked up on a bunch of Twallan's mods. This will make the game significantly different to vanilla; most, if not all, other Sims LPs have played a fairly vanilla game. I'll be showing off the effects of these mods as we go. My mods include:
The Story Progression. EA's default story progression sucks. With this mod, sims that I am not currently controlling will be able to live happy little lives under their own steam. They'll get jobs, get married, have kids, make friends and enemies. Little pop-ups will keep us informed about what they're all doing, if we so desire. This is by far the most important mod in my arsenal. I could go without the others, but not this one.
The Woohooer. Sims generally are very shy. They don't like autonomously flirting, kissing, or sexing. With this mod, they're a little more open to it. It also lowers the friendship requirements needed to start a romantic relationship. One-night stands are now possible! I'm not sure how much this will come into play here, but it'll be interesting to see.
The Master Controller. This gives me complete control over the town and its inhabitants. I can add sims to families and households, make sims pregnant, hand out money, rename sims, re-clothe sims, re-create sims. I can also get demographic lists if I want. It's useful. The handiest thing is the ability to retain dreams and wishes. All sims develop wants - things that they want to happen, from "go swimming" to "get a job" to "have a baby". Usually when you switch families, you lose all their wants. This mod allows me to flick between households and keep all their wants intact.
The Careers Mod. Simple enough: allows custom careers. At the moment I'm using a Lawyer career and an Education career (the latter was added for real in the second expansion, Ambitions).
The Written Word. I like this one. Lets you buy the books your sims write in shops. 
If you have any suggestions for mods I should be using, throw them on the table!
Who are you anyway?
I'm Apples. I'm a pretty big Sims fan with way too much time on my hands. I whiled away my youth on the original game more than a decade ago, and somehow I'm still playing these games today. It's getting a little stale for me lately though. I figure this will spice things up a bit.
Let's get on with it then. How's this going to work?
I am going to make six sims and place them in a house together. The house is all ready and waiting for them. All I need... is you.
Signups are open! Please provide me with the following information:
- A photograph. Or two. Or three. This is important! No photo means no sim. Sorry.
- A quick description of your personality. What are you like? How would your friends describe you? What are your likes and dislikes? The more, the better! The Sims 3 allows for five traits for each sim, doing away with the simpler Neat/Slob, Nice/Mean, Shy/Outgoing bars of the previous games. If you know the game and want to list the traits you want, go right ahead, but I think it's more fun if I work it out myself.
- What's your favourite colour? Favourite food? Favourite music? What's your dream career? I also need to pick your lifetime aspiration, which ranges from reaching the top level of a job, to making 20 friends, to having 10 romantic partners at a time (don't pick this one). Again, if you know the game, suggest one. If not, I'll work it out.
- What kind of clothes would you like to wear?
That's it. Post as little or as much as you like, I can work with it.
Participants will be randomly selected if there's more than six signups! I'm hoping to have at least two ladies in the house so it may be slightly less than random if we don't get many signing up. The rest of you, never fear. I will try and throw you into the neighbourhood anyway, and maybe we can go and visit you sometimes. I'm sure you'll be more interesting than the default inhabitants. You'll live out your lives merrily thanks to the Story Progression mod; I'll keep you updated with how you're doing. There's also a bunch of my own creations running around... let's see how many of them we can find.
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We are playing in Sunset Valley! This is the original neighbourhood. I usually play in Riverview, which was very early DLC, so this'll be fun for me too. As you can see there's some kind of drama going on with the pre-established families. We probably won't see a whole lot of that though.
Looks pretty nice huh? It's got everything from a town hall and a school to a gym, shops, a science facility and a police station. The bench icon signifies a community lot. That's where sims go to hang out, and includes parks and pools and miscellaneous buildings like juice bars. The house icon, of course, signifies a house. The solid house icon indicates that the house is occupied; the empty one means an empty house. There's also a few special icons like the gym, the grocery store, and the book shop.
Hey look, I can see my house!
Looks pretty nice, I guess. Kind of small, but plenty of room for expansion. Cheerful sunflowers greet us.
Here's Goon Manor, first floor, with the walls half-down so we can see everything. It's a bit... sparse. The couch is authentic Grandma. As is the carpet. And the wallpaper. I think we bought this house on the cheap because twenty old ladies died in it. The game is paused, but no one is here right now.
Only five bedrooms, uh oh. Someone's sleeping on the couch for a while. All the beds are the crappiest. In fact, everything is the crappiest. Hey, we're poor. Can't go splashing our simoleons around just yet. Someone's gonna have to get a job.
We'll get a closer look at the house once everyone's moved in, but I think we can all agree, it probably should be burned to the ground. Scorch the earth.
It even has a pond
So that's that. Get to posting, volunteers!
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Couple of example screenshots:
