Absolutely no reason to feel stupid, Mumty, so long as you're having fun.

I don't give too much thought to the wider sims universe. One of the Law Enforcement chance cards involves a code for regicide, so clearly SimNation is a monarchy. Since there's a Senator level of the Politics career, there must be a Senate, and some of those chance cards talk about elections, so some sort of democracy, though my sims never bother to vote.
The aliens allow a lot of options to think about. I'm not sure what all they want--my aliens and part-aliens are restricted by law to living in Strangetown, and probably only PT has any idea what the aliens are up to on an overall level. However, good old Glarn Curious was a firm believer in the superiority of aliens and started a cult to that effect. Whether PT's actively taking advantage of that to further some alien scheme, or passively taking advantage of it to live an easy life, I don't know, and he's not telling me.
SimNation feels to me like it's kind of on a Cold War footing--there's no actual battles but there's an enemy. Haven't thought about who that'd be, except that there's a lot of uneasiness with the aliens in general. Why aliens? Well, they're, y'know, visible in broad daylight and all (I have a hack that takes off the witch overlay). No one really believes in the other supernaturals much, except for a few knowledge sims, and everyone knows knowledge sims will believe in anything.

Mumty, don't feel bad, because it took me a long time to figure out where my newest hood was going. It started as a challenge hood until I read one of the novels about the Morganville vampires (by Rachel Cain, in case anyone's wondering). They're supposed to be geared to young adults, but I got very absorbed in it, and the inspiration just came like that! "Why not try that out on the hood?"

Why not indeed. One can take inspiration from anything and you don't have to limit yourself to the shipped game. It's your imagination that gives it the flavor you want. They're your characters to develop and write about.

Hmm.. it's hard to say because I don't really think about it.
At the moment the only neighbourhood I have on this laptop is 1950s/60s themed (almost approaching 1970s - I go up a decade per generation) but usually when I play sims I think of it more as being in the close future, where technology allows for same-sex couples to have biological children, resurrecting the dead is possible (but also quite tricky if you don't want a zombie) and Aliens contacting and abducting humans is one of those things that happens enough that seeing 1 alien hybrid per generation is kinda normal but most sims personally wouldn't want to have one themselves (infact, most romance sims are so terrified of having an alien hybrid growing inside of them that they're terrified of telescopes and avoid them at all costs!). I guess you could also call it a parallel world to our own where werewolves and vampires exist.

During the 1950s, SimNation was at war with the skies. They had found out that aliens exist and were terrified that a place somewhere in SimNation called "Strangetown" was occupied with them! This war died down after a while and after the mid 60s, Military service was no longer manditory for 1 sim per household because it turns out that the aliens were friendly... buuut that war is probably the reason the Aliens are now abducting anyone who stares up at their planet through the telescope too much. They're not interested in taking over Sim Nation... or even the world for that matter... they're just paranoid all this star-searching is spying on them and to avoid getting bombed they impregnate any sim star-searching for too long. Because who would want to bomb the father of their alien child?

None of my Sims are really interested in the mystery of Bella Goth. Most don't believe the Strangetown story and believe she's just a missing girl in Pleasantview. Some believe she's in strangetown, and every once in a while my Sims get into debates about it over dinner-table conversation, but that's about it.

SimNation is like a mix of Britain and America... I guess. Seeing as the game is pretty American at times and I live in Britain. There are no real celebrities in Sim Nation, or atleast not in the quiet little neighbourhoods I play. Joe Carr and Benjamin Long are the closest we have, who are both retired famous footballers in the 60s living in Orion - Sadly although Benjamin Long is well known, he's currently living in a crappy little apartment with his wife who is nothing more than a gold-digger gone wrong and their son Russel. I don't really know what the capitol of SimNation is, because I usually make quiet towns and I'd think of a capitol as more of a big city with lots of sky scrapers - so I guess it has yet to be named. Though I do have a huge neighbourhood of 70 houses (and only 1 community lot because it was on my old computer that didn't let me go on community lots) which I presume is a town close to the capitol. Pleasantview is a wellknown place though, which is where most sims dream of spending their retirement (however I don't have a megahood and I don't plan on corrupting my game).

Other than Olive, I can't say I have any murderers in the parts of SimNation I play. Though considering I don't have many sims in the criminal career track per neighbourhood and usually have quite a lot in the Law enforcement career, and most things are legal (e.g. prostitution and drugs are frowned upon - but no-one really cares much.) I presume there are murderers and other serious criminals in other parts of SimNation that I have yet to discover (make).

I have five generations of my neighborhood mapped out:

Generation 1: The Years of the Harvest - Simple farming town that needs to decide if it will 'merge' with the port town to increase trade possibilities. Some families have different viewpoints on this, causing very minor conflict.

Generation 2: The Years of Acceptance - War has broken out with a different nation. Once the war is over, the Sims of my neighborhood must learn to accept others from the other side of the War (the other 'nation') as two Sims come to live here. Hence, acceptance. At the end of this generation, a murder will also take place with side effects that may affect later generations. So many things happen in generation 2 in a addition to this. It's very much the soap opera generation.

Generation 3: The Entrepreneurial Year - The town is now a full-fledged city, booming with business. Most Sims will prosper (I hope) and own their own businesses. OFB utilized very much. Very peaceful after Generation 2.

Generation 4: The Years of Establishment - Success continues with the Sims in the neighborhood. Peace has been around for 2 generations. There will be some political struggle between the major families, and feuds may break out. But no outward conflict - from within or from outside the city.

Generation 5: The Years of Redemption - Rebellion may or may not unfold depending on the previous generations. Supernatural elements start to show. The once great city is starting to decline, but depending on different things, it may or may not retain it's glory. Conflict within the neighborhood is high.

That's a very quick summary, but I've got storylines up the wazoo for all sims in Generations 1,2, and 5, with multiple scenarios depending on actual game-play (basically guide them in the right direction, but incorporate whatever happens in-game into the story). I spend more time on the Universe than I do the actual game...

So, overall, there is a Universe, but it only really expands outside the neighborhood in Generation 2, so it's pretty-much a closed-off Universe, but it's there!


I tried this with the Megahood, but yeah, so many more possibilities with those pre-mades. I can't stick to a story and be happy.

iCad, I'm blaming you for the moment of shocked befuddlement I had when I searched "Raelian."

I have very little in the way of back story, but I suppose I better come up with something to explain why the main neighborhood is a low-wealth California beach town and the downtown is Central European.

But I do know it is a more pleasant world, with less in the way of violence or injustice. It's a poyglot world with almost complete integration of races and cultures.

It seems to me at a cursory glance that the more developed your backstory is, the harsher the lives of the poor little sims.

Aren't they fun? You should read the founder's books. No, I'm not Raelian, but another of my hobbies is religions/cults and reading their texts because I think it's all fascinating, so...Well, given that Raelism is the only (relatively) large religion/cult that exalts aliens, it gave me Ideas.



Yes, I noticed this, too. But when I thought about it, it made sense. Stories generally have to have conflict of some kind, and conflict often creates harshness in characters' lives. So, it would make sense that those who have a story that they play to would have conflict and harshness as a component in their game whereas those of us who just sort of mosey along watching what the pixels do would have less conflict and harshness. The game if left to its own devices is pretty cartoony and happy-shiny, so it's hard to create harshness without doing so deliberately, which folks with a story in mind would likely want/need to do at some point.

My head canon for my current neighborhood is that it was a small developing town that was suddenly abandoned before my sims came to settle it. The idea is that it's an area that was starting to grow until something bad happened, possibly a recession, maybe a natural disaster, maybe an evil cult that kidnapped people, or maybe all of the above. I'm trying to keep to that theme when I build. In one part of town some of the lots are still pretty nice, but in some they are largely overgrown and kind of trashed. As far as timeline, it's in the near future in some kind of alternate universe where unusual/supernatural events and beings are more likely to exist.

I've been re-reading a book called "The Planet Construction Kit" by Mark Rosenfelder. It's basically written for anyone who may need/want to create a world, or parts of a world - for example whilst writing a novel, playing an RP game or developing a video game. It divides the stuff that one needs to take into consideration into different sections, ranging from geology, astronomy and biology to culture, daily life and technology. I've been interested for a while in world creation (and language creation, but that's another story!) so I'm planning on working my way through the book (and the questions on this thread) and coming up with an entire background for Strangetown. When I do I'll post it here. I'd definitely recommend the book to anyone who's interested in creating fantasy worlds, whether for TS2 or otherwise!

I have tons of aliens, so I'm thinking of creating a neighbourhood in outer space. Not original and I haven't done it yet. I've no reason to have tons of aliens, I just like Knowledge Sims and they seem to be abducted a lot quicker than other aspiration Sims. I would like to have a brilliant idea for a story sooner or later, though - so you all gave me some ideas And I don't, of course, believe that @iCad;s boring.

This is the kind of thread I like best, but I don't know that I've much to add. I tend to be a bit vague about where my Sims live. I'm not even quite sure whether they live in our world, or in some sort of parallel one. (I rather like to think that they're somewhere in our world so I might meet one of them one day! ) I don't think I'd ever really thought about an overarching theme above the individual neighbourhoods. At first I only played Veronaville, but it's very much my own Veronaville with lots of CAS Sims sharing the place with the pre-mades. Then, when I thought Veronaville was corrupted, I started to play a custom Island 'hood and (Tarlia's) Pleasantview. Very recently I have started to play (Tarlia's) Strangetown too. The time period is fairly consistent throughout my game: it's the recent past. To me The Sims 2 has a slightly retro feel, especially since I don't have Uni, so my Sims have no mobile phones. Landlines reign supreme and teens still run to the phone in the hope that it's a girlfriend or boyfriend. That, along with the style of the cars and the grey chunky computers with CRT displays gives it a 1990's feel. One thing that definitely connects Pleasantview to Strangetown is the presence of Bella in both of them. As I see it, she was in Strangetown after her abduction, but before her return to Pleasantview. The aliens presumably took her there, as a place with a substantial alien presence. So the time period in Strangetown is a few years earlier. As I am playing Strangetown and Pleasantview mainly to meet for myself the characters I had been reading about here, and as my usual playstyle is aging off, I doubt if I'll play Strangetown long enough for Bella's presence there to become a problem. I prefer thinking of Strangetown Bella as being the real Bella in an earlier stage of her life to the alternative of thinking of her as some sort of clone made by the aliens.

The military has a significant presence in the Maxis base game 'hoods, but I don't think that means they are necessarily at war. Think of Switzerland, at peace for centuries, but with a strong military tradition. The military has no place at all in my escapist island 'hood with its utopian pacifist traditions.

I haven't developed politics further than the town council in Veronaville, though I'm sure there must be some sort of national government. Maybe the three Maxis 'hoods are in the same country. I'm really not sure. In my island hood, the teenage founders act as very benevolent dictators. The place is really only for "nice" Romance Sims who accept open relationships. The founders enforce the only rule in the place: "Make love not war." If any Sims act violently towards each other, the offenders are summoned to the founder's house (Abode de l'Amour). There they have to lie together in an Easy Bed and kiss and cuddle until they are on much better terms. What they do after that is up to them, but they usually fall in love!

I've never played The Sims 3, so I know very little about the neighbourhoods there.

I'm British, and The Sims was developed in America, so I think my Sims universe is a bit of a mixture of the two. In some "external" things it is of course rather American, like yellow school buses and the traffic driving on the "wrong" side of the road! (I've lived I Germany so I should be used to that!)

There aren't any celebrities yet, although Gloria and I both hope she succeeds in becoming a "Hall of Famer". Desmond, the founder of the island 'hood, with his long blond hair, is maybe a bit of a celebrity there.

I tried to keep my game supernatural-free for the sake of realism. (Frankly that's the way I prefer it.) Of course I can't play Strangetown without the aliens, so I'll have to allow them there. I might as well let Vidcund Curious get abducted and pregnant if that's what he really wants, but I don't intend to let supernaturals into my other 'hoods. Andrew once went to Gothier Green Lawns to see a ghost (and got his wish), and once recently, due to the failure of the Visitor Controller, a Grand Vampire turned up and danced naked at a downtown gay club in Veronaville, but he was absolutely repulsive and I hope he doesn't come back!

No Sims have died in my game yet, so there's been no murder, but, even though I like to give my Sims the benefit of the doubt, it's hard to think of an innocent explanation for all those Sims buried in Olive Specter's garden!

I play to escape from the harsher realities of life, so I try to resolve conflicts rather than create them, and I don't encourage crime. Generally I don't let playables go into the criminal career.

Well, that was rather a long answer for someone who doesn't really have a Sims universe.

The two neighborhoods I'm currently playing are likely set in different parts of the same world. The world itself is rather modern, maybe a little steampunk-ish and seems peaceful and wealthy at first glance. However, a great catastrophe is just waiting to happen to general simkind. Might be a war against robots, or an invasion from space; I haven't decided on the details yet. (Maybe an invasion by friend-zoned bro robots armed with rockets from their backyards, if I continue reading TS4 threads.)

While the world is still unsuspecting, in my Test of Times challenge hood a group of sims has crashed on an uninhabited island. Nobody from the outside is ever going to locate or rescue them, since the war will be breaking out for the rest of the world soon, resulting in a destruction of civilization. The group on the island stays unaware of that, but they have to fight for their own survivance by pretty much living like neanderthals. According to the ToT challenge rules their descendants are going to live through different stages of civilization building.

A little bit earlier than that crash there is a rich, deluded young man in another neighborhood. He is trying to escape from his life by purchasing an idyllic area near the big city where he used to live. One by one he convinces other sims to give up their old lives and join him in his sort-of medieval styled new-built village. He chooses to not tell them of the massacre he is responsible for: When he first arrived in "Snewording", he found another group of adventurers already present. They claimed to be from Pleasantview and by now, most of their grown-ups and teenagers are buried beside the church. The last few are now hiding their identities. (I'm not fond of murdering sims for no reason. I just have a slight issue with my so-called clean neighborhood templates which for some reason don't prevent Pleasantview townies from spawning.)
For now, everything is going quite pleasantly. Even if the harvests fail, sims can still buy food or other supplies in the modern city. However, The war is going to reach this area as well. At some point in the future, the city and all of modern life will be gone and the once weird escapists will be the only community left in this part of the world...

"Clean" is different from "empty." You want "empty" neighborhoods if you don't want the Pleasantview townies spawning.

Well, my simnation is a megahood based in the present day, mostly similar structure to the European Union I suppose. Their story is a simple one: All of the states within the simnation realized they were too small and struggling on their own, but realized that with shared resources and free trade between themselves, they could be prosperous. Each subhood is a separate state with its own laws and economy, but there are some shared features such as Education (for practicality purposes. I didnt want a unique college for each subhood) and their army. Travel/residency is free and easy if you already live in the simnation, but townies can't move in unless they parent a child in the simnation or marry a sim in the simnation.

Every subhood has its own political system consisting of a mayor and senators. For practicality purposes, laws can only be passed by the mayor (basically, new laws can only be implemented when I'm playing the mayor's lot), and have to be approved by a majority of senators. It's a bit different for each subhood, but overall the system is not exactly democratic... Most of the leadership is basically the sim(s) with the most money/power and the position is passed down generation through generation. Veronaville's leadership currently requires a Summerdream mayor to keep the peace and then one Capp and Monty senator. Decisions that affect a shared service (such as rules regarding university), require a majority vote between all of the mayors.

Each subhood has its own economy/specializations and the types of businesses reflect the economy. Basically, you wont find much in the way of farms outside of Riverblossom Hills. If you want entertainment, Bluewater Village is basically your hollywood of SimNation. Sim City (formerly Downtown) deals in shadier underground dealings.

General Buzz was willing to turn Strangetown into an army base, as long as he was in charge, so there is an army. My simnation is not at war, though with the political system being based on who has the money, there's a bit of friction between and within subhoods. We may see some political changes/takeovers as alliances/enemies are made. The army basically monitors for threats at this time. Because of General Buzz's and the Goth family's animosity towards aliens, aliens are considered a potential threat and highly monitored by the army right now. Alienphobia is not equally held within each subhood though. The only other supernaturals I play are witches and werewolves and I have mods to make them appear more normal, so they exist unnoticed for the most part. Most of the witches live comfortably in Belladonna Cove, and aliens will typically find themselves more welcome in that subhood. If the witches of Belladonna Cove had their way, they'd drive out any non-supernatural sims and establish it as a little safe haven of their own, but they don't have the political power to do so yet.

No natural disasters lately, but I won't outrule it for population controls in the future...

Peni, I suppose I got that mixed up while downloading. I haven't noticed any premades from the expansion packs, just the Pleasantview townies.