That reminds me of the incredulous rumor that a woman was holding a cell phone or similar device to her ear during a Charlie Chaplin scene. People sure can spread crazy gossip over the internet.

Then on the other hand, for a game like GTA: San Andreas, people have created newer car models that wouldn't have existed during the game's current setting.

I rarely use fireplaces, so rare in fact that I forgot to put in either a sprinkler or a fire alarm in the room with it. My poor Sims went from cuddling by the fire on a snowy night to near-death experiences. I now remember why I don't use fireplaces all that much. :D

So I've now been playing several of the supernaturals for a while and I had some random thoughts to share about them.

No surprise that aliens remain my favorites, because of course they are the most like Sims. And they pass on their genetics. I also find them extremely versatile, and I'm able to put them in atypical living situations and call it "alien culture," so they allow for experimentation. It may just be bias or the aspirations I tend to choose for them, but aliens seem to have more diverse wants than the typical get married and have a baby progression. I think of my alien hybrids as being similar to Mr. Spock. They feel Sim emotions but don't quite know what to do with them, which is why they are sometimes socially awkward or detached. In my game, those who have alien DNA cannot be changed into other supernaturals, no matter how much they may want it (aliens are often knowledge Sims), but they also don't judge those who are different.

Second favorite are werewolves. They are fun to play. They have a lot of emotions, they love to fight and play (they do have dog/wolf-like qualities), they seem to have very little impulse control, and they want to build their werewolf "families" by turning other people into werewolves. Also, they stay up all night and run around doing things, and that seems right because they are werewolves. It may help that I put in just about every werewolf mod I could find before I played them.

Zombies: I like having them in my game--I find them hilarious to watch--but I don't like playing them because they don't ever change or have goals. I don't think zombies would actually have wants or needs, so I don't feel bad about dumping them on an empty desert lot and letting them wander around community lots or walk by houses in perpetuity. I gave my one zombie the mysterious disease because zombies do seem like they would be diseased, and I'm curious to see whether it gets passed around. He is also wearing his work uniform, the llama mascot outfit, and it just tickles me whenever I see him around. My werewolves just made a second zombie, so she will probably get dumped in the desert too.

Vampires: I don't like playing them at all. They just seem cold and boring to me, not fun like werewolves. Once they get their hunger satisfied and their needs are all green, all they want to do all night is play chess or the piano. And like zombies, they don't change or have goals, so I don't quite know what to do with them. Biting necks gets tedious. I banished my vampire for now but would probably bring her back if there was a more interesting way to play her.

Plantsims: I haven't played them yet, because it doesn't seem like there would be a plantsim in the desert, but I'm toying with the idea of the military creating one as part of their dubious scientific experiments. Any tips to make them interesting to play?

The "cell phone" was actually a hearing aid.

@sturlington I don't really consider aliens in the supernatural category either as I love having that DNA floating around my hood. Probably has to do with finding good defaults for the Tech and cool skins and eyes.

I don't play with any of the others at all except for the odd plant sim. They are not terribly exciting to play in general because it's really easy to keep their needs filled and they don't really age as adults as far as I can tell. I use my guy for a very specific purpose though and that is running a produce stand. A regular sim can't keep up with demand and have any kind of life while running this type of business. A plant sim can be played just like any other regular sim, they can have jobs, get married have kids the traditional way, and so on. Their wants are based on their aspiration as well. They simply don't need sleep and only have 3 needs to fill, sun, water, and love. Super easy, which is why they are kind of boring but endlessly useful for any type of work situation.

I have lots of aliens in my game along with cyborgs and "liquid metal" sims in my sci-fi neighborhood. The cyborgs are fun to play with because I gave them sims heads on robot bodies, hence the cyborgs. I have 2 robot bodies that I make cyborgs out of and a third I can't work with at all because I can't get rid of the headpiece.

Sturlington,
I don't like the personality changes with the supernaturals that have those.

Plantsims I feel got very shortchanged on life. They never get to be children or teens, if they're spawned from a parent. I generally cure them as toddlers as a result. However, they can be played as your forest elves, not quite mature even though they're in adult bodies, and of course with elixir of life or aging off you can have them live forever like elves ought to. I like the skins from Almighty Hat's multi-Ideal Plantsim mod, which came originally from Parsimonious as regular skins. If you don't have a sun light they will spend half the day in desperation because their light level got too low overnight.

Vampires I think only really work if you play them as predators, not sitting around on the home lot, they need to be out at night, if not feeding on sims, at least feeding on the energy at the community lots. While pleasure sims don't like being vamps, I think that the Grand Vampires are pleasure sims is kind of a clue as to how vampires play well.

I play very few supernaturals. One or two households in a megahood is more than enough.

I like to think it's not just what I make of it; it's what my Sims make of it too. Without their help I feel I could do nothing.

By nature I'm a bit of a micro-manager. I like to feel in control. But I also like to think that my Sims are free spirits. I like to claim that there are no rules in my game, and my Sims will never be bound by them.

Can I reconcile these contradictions?

Well, I always play with Free Will on. I once turned it off to pose two Sims for as picture, but they looked so wooden that I quickly turned it on again, and it''s been on ever since. So, the way I see it, seeing Free Will is always on, when I'm giving my Sims things to do, I'm not directing them or telling them what to do. I'm asking them to do it. Or I'm suggesting a course of action. This is important to me, as my Sims live under the protection of a constitution that guarantees their "inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". (Thank you Thomas Jefferson, or whoever it was who first wrote that!) So as I see it, my Sims have the right to refuse my advice and do their own thing. But I like to think that my Sims generally follow my advice, because they trust me to try to give them good advice. I think they know that I have their best interest at heart. (Well, usually I have.)

Am I fooling myself? (I know I'm not fooling my Sims -- they're far too bright to be fooled. )

Random thought:
For so many people, Alexander Goth and Lucy Burb are an inevitable couple. In my game, Alexander is gay. He is best friends with Lucy, who is bi and a family sim who actually does not prioritize family over herself.
Alex is also best friends with Beau, who is aquainted with Lucy, but not close at all.
Alexander is married to townie Jerry (he's the Latino in the low cut blue top, white pants outfit)
Lucy first married Jay Zaide, a dormie generated in my game. Her second marriage is to Beth Lowe, the downtownie with the double buns and the blue part dress. Her second baby Daddy was a tech townie with blonde hair and brown eye brows and stubble.
Beau married Elysse, the adopted daughter of Mary-Sue and her wife Gretchen.

It's interesting how different story lines can end up.

I was wondering why I couldn't give my current neighbourhood up and just start a new hood.
I wanted to play the game so badly that I decided to play without CC outfits.
My sims currently wear Eaxis' and it's difficult to to find something acceptable.
I encountered way less crashing issues than before.
I don't know yet if I have too many CC (around 5 GB atm while I have 16 GB RAM) or it's because of a faulty CC. I did several 50/50 and I got no satisfactory result.

As nice as it is to see my college friends again and get into the swing of things with online classes, I'm missing my Sims like crazy. They're a great escape from real life and make me feel like the middle schooler who once played this game.

Do you ever feel like you have that one household that is cursed? I've got one that is constantly chaotic. They were a CAS family I built with one child to start with. I gave them a financial boost and started them off in a big house with room to grow but very little in savings. They are only a single income family and she has been pregnant since the time they moved in. It's been a struggle to make friends and for the husband to gain skill points for advancement. It's the only time I've come close to having anything repossessed. I had to install a sprinkler system in the kitchen because she burns almost everything she cooks. The plumbing issues seem to be constant as well. They now have one teen, 2 children, and an infant. I thought perhaps things would calm down now but low and behold they just had a risky pregnancy on top of it all. They barely have 3000 simoleons in the bank so their oldest son had better hope for some scholarships or his dreams of Uni are going right down the tubes.

I didn't have the game plan in mind of trying to make this a "challenge" family when I made them but they certainly turned out that way.

It is amazing how The Sims 2 makes challenges for you. I think it is written in game code somewhere, so for certain sims every choice turns to be a bad choice.
I had one sim who broke every computer he used. Every single time. If I wasn't paying attention on him, he managed to broke every computer in dorm. Despite having tinkering as hobby and 10 mechanical skill. I did joke at him that he is intendently broking computers to have something to do with tinkering.

It's so great to be able to play the game with little to no crash several hours straight.
It makes me realize how much I just love TS2 and my current hood.

I wish I understood bone assignments. Outfits that I've worked on and then fail because I can't get the bones right are very annoying.

I used to hate when unexpected things like this happened as it always seemed to be a household that I had real *plans* for. Now, I'm just like 'oh, alright, so this is how this is going to go' when there is that one household where it's just constant chaos.





Essa, I'm so happy to see you've been able to find a way to play your game for a bit with minimal issues. Happy Simming!

@PenelopeT
Thank you . My eyes still sore while I browse the EAxis outfits but I'd rather play than encounter numerous crashes.

I'm feeling controversial today, what's the sims 2 community's take on the new sims 4 star wars pack?

That it's no business of mine!

We had droids first!

I don't know why but I just remembered a story. So my mom also plays and she asked me where I got my camera mod. I sent it to her in an email with instructions on how to properly install it. She then came to me asking, "Are you sure you gave me the right file?" I said yes, and she said, "Okay, then why does it say GUN mod?" I had to explain to her that Gunmod was the creator.

Looking at my download statistics for the last 6 months, there's definitely a noticeable uptick in my overall downloads starting in early March that matches up with many countries going into lockdown because of COVID, and then gradually tapering off mid-summer as most countries (at least countries more responsible than the US) started being able to return to a more 'normal' situation...

Almost like people were escaping into a Sim-world where no one had ever heard of COVID while they were stuck at home, or something...

Closed out my game to download a few more hairs for AF and AM. Ended up spending a couple of hours downloading non-hair related goodies instead. Now, 597 new content files later (which includes game enhancing mods) I'm finally getting set to go and download more hairs.





This is the first year in ages where I've spent some real time just playing my game, and having lots of fun with it. The sims has definitely been a good escape during the world bleakness of 2020.

Why does it take so freakin' long for sims to eat Chinese food? I decided to order some up for a party instead of pizza for a change of pace and it became the ONLY thing that they had time to do. Just another "oh yeah, now I remember why I don't use this function" moment for me in my game.

There must be a mod somewhere to make Chinese food quicker to eat. I only wish my Chinese food in real life lasted as long!