Scenario A has the advantage of arising from the agency of members of the Goth family.

Thanks for the help @Phantomknight @Peni Griffin.

I went with a and I think it worked out very well. I created three zombies. Emanuelle and Magnus are dead. I protioned the kids off as I said and as a bonus I accidentally botched the zombification of one of the mooks (Bill Hatfield) and he returned as a normal Sim but with reversed personality, so he now has 9 nice points instead of one So I moved him out (in the storyline he escaped) and now I'm going to have him start a new life, reconnecting with his family, starting a career doign honest work and all that.

Helena is now living with Santino in a hovel in Downtown by the river, they're gonna be adults next rotation and it will be interesting to see where they go from here. I've removed Phileas from the Neighbourhood until he is supposed to grow into an adult (the rotation after next one) by moving him to the college bin. I'll have him flunk and move back to the hood, the additional fear slot symbolizing the trauma he went through. And Morgana is living with Aunt Cassandra.
Sadly this means Phileas' girlfriend, Tabitha Oldie has now pretty much lost her boyfriend (since for the purposes of the story he's missing) and as a Family/Popularity Sim she's pretty distressed that she won't be the next matriarch of the Goth Family, but I think I'm gonna have her hook up with Joshua Ruben in College so that will work out fine and then I'm going to look for somebody else to pair Phileas with once he returns.

it will be interesting to play Phileas and Helena as normal (i.e. not independently rich) Sims. The Goth started rich and prestigious in this neighbourhood (they founded it and used portions of their wealth early on to help other families take root), but I think their further journey will be an interesting story.
And the three zombies live in the (now very shabby/broken) looking manor, I'll use my Apocalypse rules and make it so if a Sim meets them (walkbyes or visitors) then they have to fight them off or be eaten. This will be interesting considering they still have their old rivalries/hatreds...

In my beggining of Pleasantview neighborhood, I decided to include the university Sims in the rotation. Allegra Gorey and Martin Ruben were married, had a child (a girl named Valentina - my game is in portuguese) and were living happily, until Allegra got a cold from work. She woke up during the night to die, and no one from the family cared! They didn't cry, got sad or anything. Martin has a want of ressurecting her but that's all. I don't know how to interpret this situation! It's like she never existed. Her kid didn't even cry once.

Weird - although I had a Sim die of old age the other day and no one seemed to care either - although he wasn't married or in an official relationship - so I thought that was why. Maybe it's a glitch caused by a mod that allows diseases to kill faster?

My suggestion for storyline as to why they didn't react - they are in shock/denial. Both Dad and daughter refuse to believe she is gone. Dad never marries again, daughter has trouble making any friends or social connections cause she can't face growing up either.

Hmm, check if you have a mod that reduces or eliminates crying/whining/grieving, etc. But other than that, yeah, that can happen sometimes--or it could just be shock. A few times my sims seemed to not be affected by death but a bit later I find them sobbing. So it might not have hit them yet.

I would play it a bit like Coriel_Muroz suggests and have it signify that the pair will be secretly torn up about it and have trouble opening up about their emotions. Perhaps Martin throws himself into his work or the occult, looking for a way to bring Allegra back. Perhaps the daughter gets a bit of romance sims' commitment issues and has a fear of getting close to someone. Perhaps the pair does everything together for a while and Martin becomes overprotective, not letting his daughter out of his sight, even going so far as homeschool. Or maybe they become hypochondriacs with sinks in every room and they go overboard with cleaning and taking care of sick sims.

I've noticed that if a sim can't reach the dying one, the grieving action drops from their queue and they might not react properly later. Sometimes I've had sims who are off the lot at the time fail to get the proper death memory, as well. This, in addition to the sort of mod that Phantomknight mentioned, might cause your sims to seem like they don't care. In cases like that, I use a custom memory object to give them the death memory (if it's missing) and have them mourn at the urn/tombstone.

I have no idea what to do with my Burbs.

I've got a pretty far a long Pleasantview where every house is chugging a long with some drama and a good story but the Burbs are SO BORING.

There has been some past dramas, John briefly left Jennifer for Brandi Broke who he had a short passionate affair with. He moved out to her trailer when Jennifer found out and kicked him out- this was shortly after the birth of their second daughter Ella. But it soon become apparant that trailer park living was not for him. It was dirty, messy and noisy with Brandis 4 dogs and her two teens that where still at home. He eventually went grovelling back to Jennifer before the divorce was finalised. Leaving Brandi heartbroken.
Lucy was very close with her parents and so in love with her baby sister, she was hurt by her dads affair and upon his return to the family home she moved out to university. She threw herself in to uni life, studying and partying. Untill she accidently fell pregnant. She was devestated but determined to make it work her and the father (Brady) moved in together and tried to raise their son. It was terrible, and Lucy was too ashamed to tell her parents. Lucy didn't take well to being a mother and eventually ran away in the middle of the night, leaving baby Mason with his slightly clueless dad. She's hiding out at cousin Lilliths for now, unbeknowest to her parents or sister Ella, they are all heartbroken not to have heard from her and that Lucy never showed up at Ellas birthday party. Lucy doesn't know that Brady and Mason are trying to find her and are rent the spare room at Mary Sues. . .

So now at the Burbs I have John and Jenn doing well in both their careers. Ella is a nice normal little girl but pretty boring. And a distant Lucy. And I have no idea where to take them!? Any suggestions welcome, what did you do with your Burbs?

And about those deaths no one cared about...I've noticed that when you move the graves from the house to a cemetery everyone (pets, toddlers,etc) does the grieving walling - even if they didn't at the actual death! I would interpret this as "she wasn't really GONE, I could still see her being silly". Or being helpful ---yesterday a ghost actually picked up dirty dishes and either washed them or just took them away!

@shoo_flee, the first suggestion I always make when simmers are stuck is to look at your sims and figure out A) what kind of people they are and B) what do they want out of life. So are your John and Jennifer straight forward family and fortune sims, respectively, or did you add secondary aspirations to them? What are their hobbies? What are their LTWs? What's the imaginary backstory you have for the two of them, if any? Things like that help you figure out what they might focus on next. So like, does John want more kids or does he seemed more worried about doing well in his career? Is Jennifer happy in her career or could she use a hobby? Is she content with her life or does she want more and roll wants for more new, expensive things? John left Brandi because of finances--he seems finicky and worried about appearances and status. How would that affect other aspects of his life? And is he really in love with Jennifer and committed to making things work? Or will he bolt as soon as he finds his one true love? Is their marriage doing okay? Or, now that she's lived through a separation, does Jennifer realize that she doesn't need John in her life to be happy and get what she wants? Etc., etc.

I'll also share what I've done in my own game, as sometimes that can give others ideas, too. So similarly to your John, my John had an affair and left Jennifer, but he fell for Kaylynn Langerak. He and Kaylynn aren't still together, but that is a long/complicated story. The short version is that I see the two of them, John and Jennifer, as having different wants about family. He and Jennifer did have more kids--twins, Jenny and John Jr. But John Sr. always wanted more kids and a really big family. He thought starting a new life with Kaylynn could give him that, at the time. He was in love with the idea of what he and Kaylynn could have as much as he was actually in love with her. The thought of moving to the country, starting a farm and having a big family really resonated with John. I see him as someone who didn't really like the corporate sim world, someone who only got a traditional job to support his family and to give Jennifer the life she wanted/expected. Kaylynn, being a fellow family sim, understood more about the importance of spending time at home with your family and was more supportive of the idea of him being a stay-at-home dad and starting over careerwise to try farming. And so when Kaylynn stalled marrying him, refusing to roll a want to get married after he left Jennifer and the kids for her, and then eventually cheated on him, John didn't go back to Jennifer. He strongly considered it, but that just wasn't the life he wanted to live. He stayed out in Riverblossom and tried to find a way to make the farm thing work. Things aren't perfect and he's had some more ups and downs in the love department, but he definitely got more kids and the big family he wanted.

Jennifer, on the other hand, was quite content to stop at 3 kids and start focusing on stabilizing their wealth & status. In fact, she was very upset at John because he upended their lives just when the family was starting to become stable and more affluent, and able to pay off their loans. After John left, she stayed in the business career and took out loans so that Lucy could go to college. Providing that opportunity for Lucy was more important than switching careers and trying to realize her dream of becoming a sports star. And then, when it looked like she wouldn't be able to send both John Jr. and Jenny to college, she decided to sell the house and downsize to an apartment, and find a townie with money to marry. She got the twins into private school, too, where they could have classes with the Goths and Roths. It was important to her that her kids have at least the opportunity to move up in class. As a fortune sim, I see her as someone who wants her kids to do better than she did, if they can, and as someone who is willing to do almost anything to help her kids get ahead.

So yeah, in my game the pair stayed apart because they fundamentally want different things. What does your John and Jennifer want? Do they care about status? Are they the types to sacrifice their own personal dreams & LTWs for their kids? Or do they have a midlife crisis and decided it's now or never--they must become a criminal mastermind/captain hero?

I've found that the "Traits Mod" is giving me a bit of inspiration here and there. https://hexagonal-bipyramid.tumblr....-traits-for-ts2
For instance-if a pixel is hydrophobic, but needs body points, you have to adjust their lifestyle to that-and so on. Because the traits are personality driven, it can make for a more complex personality when combined with LTW's, aspirations and inbred personal traits.
Also, you can use the social group personality to develop more complex personalities as well as interests & hobbies.
Develop the back ground of the personality to drive the story.

Shoo flee, for me, John Burb is always Family/Pleasure and always in the Law Enforcement career. Jennifer is Fortune/Popularity in Journalism, and Lucy is Pleasure.

Given your whole situation, if he's in the LE career like mine is, I'd consider either a) he dies on the job, b) he has to go undercover for a long period of time and Jennifer, not knowing where he is or if he's even alive, and getting the run-around from the SimCity police, meets someone new and interesting to her. Do you have any single dad fortune sims around? Single dad because then you have the chance that the kids hate each other, and neither probably wants another kid, just to join forces to provide a two-income life for the ones they already have.

If John would have had a kid with Brandi back when--that would've given you ample opportunity for a drama vector coming in sideways, but does Brandi have a child who's timed right to plausibly claim paternity? Jennifer might be really upset if John starts paying child support to that woman. Could Ella become best friends or romantically involved with one of Brandi's kids?

What if Brady and Mason show up at the Burbs' doorstep looking for her? Or if Jennifer/John are guests at Mary-Sue's for a party and meet them . . . presumably Brady knows Lucy's last name, after all!

Arrr thank you everyone for the replies! I have some ideas now!! I think Brady and Mason might just run into them. . .

John is also desperate for one more child, but Jennifer wasn't even happy having a second, hard no from her, she's all about earning that money now and getting up in her career, i'm thinking maybe a revenge affair now that John is slowly reaching old age!

Thanks again!

@shoo_flee
When I read that "John is also desperate for one more child..." I immediately thought how about John tries to get himself Abducted by Aliens?

This is what I would do, as I love Aliens and part Aliens.

I'm re-creating the Lionheart family for my neighbourhood, mostly because I think my neighbourhood could use a crazy cat lady (and Tara Kat is too nice to really be considered one). I can't quite decide where to put them, though.

I'm debating between putting them in Oakbrook (my main neighbourhood), Riverblossom Hills, or the converted Sunset Valley.

Opinions?

I vote Riverblossom Hills!

I moved her into Riverblossom Hills.

Warning, crazy lady ranting ahead:

The idea for my 30s hood is to transpose the characters from Stardew Valley into a place where I can play the whole town. The town is a little run down, there aren't many men and there was a recent war. The threat of an incoming Joja Mart makes sense as the mega retailers were beginning to infiltrate the rural areas spelling the end of the general store and the rural way of life. Stardew Valley is set in kind of a fantastical 90s world which doesn't make sense when you consider the characters and what they do. Robin is a carpenter that harvests her own lumber? Doesn't make sense in a world with price scanners. It barely makes sense in a fantastical 1930s, but it's less out of place. More problematic are the love interests that are just out of high school and eager to jump into marriage.

There's a few background events that I'm quite interested in namely,

- Who are Haley and Emily's parents, why are they on this around the world journey, and are they ever coming back?

- Who are Jas' parents? What is their relationship to Shane? How did Jas end up living with Shane and Marnie? What about Marnie's past?

- Who is Alex's mother? Why did she commit suicide?

- Who's Penny's Father? Where is he? Did he leave them?

-What happened to Sebastian's father? How did Robin and Demetrius meet?

- What is up with the dwarves, goblins, witches, and wizards?

- What is going on with this war across the sea?

So I was thinking about this and how am I going to set the relationships up when there's so many slight relationships... Then it occurred to me, why don't I set it in/around 1910 when Alex's grandparents and Marnie's parents/Shane's grandparents were young like Skellington did with Fortune and Romance? I'd have to mess with Kent's timeline a bit, but his problems could be due to shellshock from the first world war. The next problem is figuring out how gameplay would work and finding a good age mod. I guess I would be seeking out the answers to these questions through playing and also setting up the farm scenario.

Of course now I'm mulling over US vs. UK for setting. The presence of ore-rich hills/mountains near fertile farmland and the seashore suggests Wales. Its cold, snowy winters suggest Maine, Washington, or Oregon. Alternatively, I could move things a bit north to New Brunswick and solve the whole "America doesn't enter the war until 1917" thing because Canada was in it from the beginning. Of course I can just head canon it and let the Ferngill Republic continue to be the Ferngill Republic, but with the details that make one consider Wales or whatever. More pressing is that in the 1910s a mixed race couple would've had a hard time in most places and Demetrius and his daughter are the only people of color in the whole game.

Is that an actual problem, or just a glitch that doesn't matter? I've got Sharla Ottomas wanting Isaiah Gavigan to go to college - but Isaiah died several rotations ago!

That's not a glitch, @Blue Alien, it's an oversight. Whatever process scans the University students teen relationships for people they want to join them in college ignores the teen's life state, so dead ones are eligible.

I'd read it as Sharla thinking wistfully about Isaiah missing all this and what they could be doing together if he were still alive. Which is realistic.

Thanks, Peni! Sharla graduated a few days ago and had this thought on the eve of her marriage, while Isaiah and his wife, Ginger, died a couple of days after their wedding, so I can totally read it as the wedding triggering thoughts of her old friend - maybe thinking that if he'd been on campus instead of in a cheap apartment building he wouldn't have got sick, or maybe even as a case of wedding nerves.

The more I think and plan the looser the adaptation/interpretation gets... I'm going to place the game in British Columbia because the names Clint, Kent, and Shane feel western to me. Other characters names I've changed to make them feel more like they were born in the Nineteenth Century.

Marnie is going to be Myrtle which feels similar to me but Marnie wasn't used. I'm planning on her having been born around 1885. Shane is her older sister Beulah's son. He moved in with her to help run the farm after her father died. She could do it by herself, but she likes the company. Shane persuaded her to take in Jasmine after she was orphaned out of charity and so that she could have some help around the house.

Jodi will be Joanna. She and Kent were childhood sweethearts; he was in love with her since her first day at school. She thought he was a pest until they were teenagers. As soon as he had a steady income and a nice house, they were married and pretty much immediately had Sam. After that were miscarriages and the Great War. Kent came back a changed man, but they still loved each other and had Vincent.

Robin will be Roberta and her daughter Maru will be Mary. Penny and Pam will be Penelope and Pamela. Lastly, Haley will get an extra L and be named for Halley's Comet which lit the night sky as her mother gave birth to her in Spring 1910.

I think I've got my timeline pretty well figured out. Now I've just got to figure out surnames and what I want to do with the dwarves, goblins, shadow people, witch, and wizard. Mr. Qi is going to be a wealthy Chinese immigrant running a casino and opium den, but the opium will be the bubble blower and you'll pay a cover charge to enter his club.

Whenever I have them buy something from build/buy it's from the Sears Robuck catalog. I think I'll need to make a market town with specialty shops like the butcher, the baker, the furniture store, and the dress shop. Pelican Town will have Gus' Saloon, Clint's blacksmith shop, Pierre's general store, the temple of Yoba, Gunther's library, and Willy's fish shop.

As a British Colombian, those names sound to me more like they belong in Alberta; we don't really have a lot of cowboys on this side of the Rockies.

If the game's setting didn't require ocean access, I would be totally down with setting it in Alberta! I have a soft spot for it having spent time there. It always amused me to cross the border from the wildest, most desolate part of the US, to such a populated part of Canada. Where we were in MT, there was no sushi or pizza for a 2 hour drive in the states, but if you went to Canada there was a town with 30,000 people that had decent pizza and Chinese food and if we were willing to keep driving, there was a small city with sushi, falafel, and the Canadian Super Center.

I'm kind of hoping that people can do some hand-waving for the names in light of the various gold rushes and other immigrant influxes. Does it stretch your disbelief?

Dirk Dreamer and Lilith Pleasant have been dating since they were teenagers. Dirk has been engaged to Dina Caliente and had a child with her while Lilith also dated other people and had a child with Dustin Broke. Through all of this, they still hung out. I coupled them off with other people because they never managed to roll a commitment want for each other.

Things have changed now. Dirk rolled a want to marry Lilith and Darren wants to see his son engaged. Darren is almost dying. His age bar is almost completely full. Lilith has never rolled a want to get commited to Dirk in any way, but during dates they do roll all the romantic wants for each other.

My rule has always been that both sims have to want to get engaged/married. I'm doubting that rule now. If Dirk wanted to pop the question, he wasn't going to endlessly discuss it with Lilith, he would just pop the question, wouldn't he? The only reason why I feel hesitant about this, is that sims almost never say no. A sim wouldn't really roll the want to get engaged to someone if the relationship bar wasn't high enough. I don't see how Lilith could say no. This makes me incredibly hesitant, because she didn't roll the want in the first place. I'm lost at how to go about this. Do I stick to my rule? Do I play it differently? Anyone any ideas?

Getting engaged doesn't necessarily mean they would ever want to get married. If you have break up mods where the sims can stay friends and break up, Dirk might ask Lilith to marry him, and while game relationship points would make her say yes, it might make sense after Darren has died for her to break off the relationship again.

In my game, General Grunt totally has a turn-on he doesn't have, for Aliens. His actual turn-on's are black hair and something ubiquitous, makeup or cooking or the like. He knows Lola, but she's serious with Ajay Loner. He's dated Chloe, but she's not interested in committing. He has two bolts with each of those two. He hasn't met Dina, Nina, Stella, or Penny Weiss (who is engaged to Rhett Hart, but all of us who play Widespot know how engagements to Rhett Hart can go sour like milk left out overnight). I've paired him happily with Nina before, she being a romancer who, if she commits, stays committed. Chloe, Nina, Dina, and Penny are all either pregnant or have infants by someone who is not General Grunt, but given he's got three kids, this is not likely to be a hangup of his.

Who would you introduce him to, to see if he hits it off? I feel like, while Stella matches his black hair turn-on, she's awfully young for him, and he'd probably have an issue with someone who's only a year or two older than he's oldest son.