I finally took a picture of the Shanley family tree (thanks to chattykathy for the suggestion). As you can see, the Legacy founders Nia and Sheldon still appear on the tree even though they have passed on.
You may also notice that little Fiona has grown into a child, and Kaylynn had her second baby, another girl! Her name is Taryn.
I’ll be too busy this weekend to play my Legacy Challenge family, so I had to get several hours worth of play in tonight. Yes, I have no life. ;-) I also read the interview with Pinstar, the creator of the Legacy Challenge, over on the official site (thanks to Heidi for pointing us to it!) and am excited that he has a “secret additional challenge” in store for us once more players have completed the initial challenge. And he’ll be creating a challenge for the University expansion pack when it comes out, too. So I’ll be pretty much glued to my computer for the next several months…
So what happened with the Shanleys tonight? Quite a bit, actually. First off, Liam grew into an adult and ended up in his dad’s old gardener garb.
While Devin and Leo were at work, I took the rest of them shopping (although Kaylynn stayed behind because she was pregnant — I didn’t know they would do that!). Bree bought some new clothes for Kaylynn and Liam bought some new threads for himself. The Shanleys are amassing quite a wardrobe — for example, the females have about 7 different pajamas to choose from in the family dresser. Oy!
I finally got a chance to play my Legacy Challenge family for a bit. I went kinda crazy with the pictures again, so this will be a longish update!
I took the above picture because I saw Liam doing something on the swings I had never seen — he was “chilling”. And he was looking at Kaylynn, which I thought was cute. If I were writing stories about the Shanleys I would totally make the two brothers rivals for Kaylynn’s love. Mwahaha.
Speaking of the two brothers-who-aren’t-twins-but-look-like-twins, I gave Liam a pair of glasses to further distinguish him from Devin. I figured this suited Liam since he is the “nerdy” Knowledge Sim and Devin is Mr. Popularity. Besides, I thought it made him look cuter. (That’s twice now that I’ve called him cute — could it be that the little dude is growing on me?)
Good evening, dear readers! Maude here, Mt. Geneva’s hidden historian, with another little family update for you. My, how those tiny tots do grow! They’re blossoming into adults all over the place. Today we’ll see Ferris Blakemore cross the momentous bridge into the perils and pleasures of adulthood…
I could tell that Ferris was a bit apprehensive on the eve of her birthday. She spent most of the night on the telephone calling all of her dearest friends and telling them how much she’d miss them. Since they were all a bit younger than Ferris, they wouldn’t be going off to college with her. She would be embarking on this new journey alone. Good thing her destination was only a mile or so from home! She had an inkling, though, of how different it would be, and just how much she was leaving behind.
The next night, Tess invited all of Ferris’s friends over, including her steady beau George McCarthy, and picked up a cake from the new bakery downtown. She had wanted to bake one from scratch, but between working overtime and making wedding plans, she just didn’t have the time.
Ferris didn’t mind about the cake at all. She loved parties and was simply overjoyed to see all of her friends in attendance.
I’m posting this here mainly so I won’t forget about it, but it may also benefit those of you who are still doing the Legacy Challenge — the creator of the challenge, Pinstar, posted the following note to the TS2Legacy Yahoo! Group mailing list:
Just as token of goodwill and happy holidays, I am giving everybody a “Holiday Veto” What is a holiday veto you might ask? Well, those who are in the Legacy Challenge know that when your children age to teenagers, you must roll to pick their asperation. Sometimes you get what you want, sometimes you don’t. This is where the veto comes in. For one time only, if the roll of the dice does not come out the way you want it to, you can veto the result, and pick your own instead. Did your 2 niceness sim roll up a popularity aspiration? Does your 8 person house keep comming up with MORE family sims? Did you just roll your 5th romance sim in a row? Veto it! Pick what you want, just this once. It doesn’t have to be your next roll of the dice…however this veto is only good until New Years day, so you can’t save it forever! Happy Holidays!
This might come in handy if I can get the fourth generation to their teenage years before New Years’ Day. At the rate I’m going, however, I’ll be surprised if Devin has kids by then. :-P
Things are progressing rather slowly in my Legacy Challenge house lately — the teenage years seem interminable! For some reason I’m just itching to get to fourth generation. Perhaps it’s because I still haven’t gotten attached to Devin and Liam. I don’t know what it is, but they bore me to pieces. They just go to school, bring friends home, play videogames, and go to bed. I should probably be letting Devin sneak out at night so he can get arrested or something. At least THAT would be interesting. :-)
Last night, however, they cracked me up. As you might recall from my last post, I am hoping to get Devin and the maid Kaylynn to be friends so that when Devin grows up, they can get married and produce the fourth generation of the Shanley Legacy. I had Bree become friends with Kaylynn while the boys were at school, so now when Kaylynn is done with her work, she asks Bree if she wants to hang out. Bree says yes, and then Kaylynn is around when the boys come home.
Well, poor Devin — when he gets home from school, he has an hour before the carpool picks him up for work. So last night I had him talk to Kaylynn during that brief time, and they seemed to hit it off pretty well. No bad conversations as far as I could tell. When he left for work, their daily relationship score was at 17. I figured that was a good start.
Good afternoon, dears! Maude here. I thought I’d take a little break from the Kilman Family saga and fill you in on what the Dobbins family has been up to all this time. As you may recall, Joely and Nick became elders, and Will was campaigning for a position in the Senate.
Nick and Joely were quite proud of Will, and so am I, as a matter of fact. It could have gone badly for him when his father had that affair with Tess Blakemore, but that’s all water under the bridge now, and Will turned out wonderfully. While he was out and about persuading people to vote for him, his parents often discussed the upcoming election and his chances of winning. The race was almost too close to call!
On election night, the family gathered in the living room to watch the votes roll in. Will couldn’t bear to watch — he paced on the porch instead, poking his head through the front door for occasional updates. His daughter Olivia, now a sharp young teenager, was keeping a notebook full of articles and statistics about the Senate race and would yell at the TV as if watching a football game.
When the final votes were counted, they announced that Will Dobbins had won the election. He was going to be SimCity’s next Senator! Olivia jumped up on the coffee table and did a little victory dance until her mom told her to get down. Will heard all of the commotion and came running in.
“You did it, Dad! You did it!” Olivia cried, leaping towards him.
Will was bombarded by hugs from everyone in the family. His father clapped him on the back and said, “I’m proud of you, kid. Let’s celebrate!”
It’s interesting to read accounts of other Sim players’ Legacy Challenge families and realize that even within the scope of this challenge, people can take very different approaches to the game. Some go for the wealth points, others are determined to collect a ghost of each color, and yet others just want to get to 10th generation without something catastrophic happening. I’d put myself in that last bunch. I’ve never been a wily strategist — if I analyze my game too much, I stop having fun with it. And purposely killing off Sims just isn’t my cup of tea. I’m more fascinated by the various stages of Sim life, the ins and outs of their daily existence, and the passing on of family traits. I like the challenge of trying to keep all of my Sims happy, satisfying as many of their wants as possible and watching their aspiration meters zing into platinum.
I also enjoy silly things like taking my Sims shopping for new clothes and making them pose for family portraits in the backyard, neither of which has anything to do with the Legacy Challenge. In fact, they could be detrimental, considering my Sims could have been raising their skills while I was dressing them like models from a Lands’ End catalog and making them stand still for hours on end.
Of course Leo had to be difficult and refuse to stand up straight — darn those Lazy Sims. He’d either slump forward in the usual Neanderthal pose or gaze listlessly at the sky, neither of which was particularly photogenic. I also noticed just before I posed everyone that Devin had a bout of acne. Woops. I considered “rescheduling” for another day, but it was too much work to get everyone all happy and clean and awake, so I just went with it. As it was, I had to use the Mood Energizers on all three adults. Liam and Devin seemed fine until they both started doing the “I need a toilet NOW” dance. Next time I’m energizing everyone and putting ALL of the lazy Sims in chairs. Sheesh.