Come What May: a short(?) Sims story
Sul sul, everyone. The story I'm about to share with you has been inspired by a series of events that took place in a save my daughter and I thought was simply a "random" game. It all began a fe...
Forum Discussion
Simmers' Notes: Creating Cameron
Z and I have had a lot of fun bringing Cameron Ross to life. If you'd like to read more about this process, click the spoiler link. If you'd rather not know how the sausage is made, you won't miss anything if you skip this post and wait for the next one.
Z and I have had a lot of fun bringing Cameron Ross to life. If you'd like to read more about this process, click the spoiler link. If you'd rather not know how the sausage is made, you won't miss anything if you skip this post and wait for the next one.
Spoiler
What a Sim Can Do
After I'd been playing The Sims 4 for a while, I realized something interesting. Newly created Sims, regardless of their ages, come into the Simiverse with absolutely no skills. I suppose that isn't technically true; a Sim can turn on the stove and carry on a conversation, and thus begin building Cooking and Charisma. Still, these Sims, who in my mind are usually in their late teens or early 20s, have no special ability to do anything.
On the other hand, premade Teens have all acquired some kind of skill. Luna Villareal is very charismatic. Her brother Hugo is well on his way to becoming a master chef. Sofia Bjergsen is equally precocious as a guitarist. Wolfgang Munch, Morgan Fyres, and Malcolm Landgraab are particularly good at wreaking havoc. Even poor Cassandra Goth, who appears to be the least gifted teen in Sim City, can play a bit of violin. Our adult Sims are doofuses by comparison. The phrase "bless your heart" comes to mind.
We came up with a way to give our brand new Sims a bit of a backstory, in which they acquired some talents as teens. I developed a chart that uses several rolls of a d20 to determine what (if any) skills our Sims possess at their creation.
The first roll determines whether they have no skills, one skill, or two skills. One skill is the most common outcome.
If our Sim was fortunate enough to be given a skill, we roll again to determine the field in which they're talented. This is where it got tricky. At first, I put only the base game skills on the chart. There are 20 of these, so it worked out perfectly. Then we discovered that it would be more fun to add some of the more specific, esoteric skills from the expansion packs we own. I think that gave us 36 different choices. To keep it fairly simple, I paired the base game skills with skills from the packs. We roll, and then flip a coin to see which of the two skills the Sim gets.
Then, we roll one more time to see how developed their skill might be. 2 and 3 are the most common outcomes, but the Sims' benevolent creators might bestow as many as 8 points on an especially fortunate Sim. We picked 8 as our limit because we haven't seen a teenage Sim with more than 8 points in any skill.
If the skill has only 5 levels, we divide the outcome in half and round down.
Z is our official die roller. She delights in shaping the fates of our Sims. Our favorite story is the tale of Matty Disco.
He began his Sim life as Matthew O'Rourke, a generic young adult we created to do nothing more exciting than fill out a neighborhood and occasionally turn up around town. When Z rolled to give Mr. O'Rourke his skills, she hit the combination that gave him the ability to Dance. Dancing appears to be one of the few skills Sims can't use to improve their lives in any measurable ways, except by stacking up moodlets that make them better at other, more productive things. Matthew was little better off than a Squib, the term we use for the unfortunates whose first roll results in no skills at all.
Fate then smiled a bit more warmly on Matthew O'Rourke. Z hit one of the two numbers that gave him 4 points for Dancing. He's a one trick pony, but it's one heck of a trick. We renamed him, gave him a makeover, and the character of Matty Disco was born.
My wife heard Z squealing and both of us laughing about Matty Disco, so she came to the sofa to see what her husband and daughter were up to. She'd paid passing attention to The Sims before, but there was something about Matty--and the joy we experienced creating him--that drew her in. Now she joins us for our Sims sessions, too. A new Simmer has been born!
(Matty Disco has been added to our world as an NPC. I'm not sure if Cameron will encounter him; we're hoping that he will, because he'd be fun to work into the story. I'm thinking Matty will feature in a story of his very own one day, too. ;) )
Anyway, back to Cameron Ross. Cam got fairly lucky. He was given two skills: Fitness and Homestyle Cooking. While neither is useful as an occupation or a side hustle--a Painter/Writer combo can live large without ever "going to work"--he could have turned out worse. And, with 3 for Fitness and 4 for Cooking, he's decently skilled at both. His Cooking skill helps him avoid setting fire to his kitchen, and it's already enabled him to meet a friend (whom you'll meet in the next chapter of the story). The Fitness skill helps shape Cam's story, too. We send him jogging most days, and if he meets someone along the way, he might double back and talk to them.
After I'd been playing The Sims 4 for a while, I realized something interesting. Newly created Sims, regardless of their ages, come into the Simiverse with absolutely no skills. I suppose that isn't technically true; a Sim can turn on the stove and carry on a conversation, and thus begin building Cooking and Charisma. Still, these Sims, who in my mind are usually in their late teens or early 20s, have no special ability to do anything.
On the other hand, premade Teens have all acquired some kind of skill. Luna Villareal is very charismatic. Her brother Hugo is well on his way to becoming a master chef. Sofia Bjergsen is equally precocious as a guitarist. Wolfgang Munch, Morgan Fyres, and Malcolm Landgraab are particularly good at wreaking havoc. Even poor Cassandra Goth, who appears to be the least gifted teen in Sim City, can play a bit of violin. Our adult Sims are doofuses by comparison. The phrase "bless your heart" comes to mind.
We came up with a way to give our brand new Sims a bit of a backstory, in which they acquired some talents as teens. I developed a chart that uses several rolls of a d20 to determine what (if any) skills our Sims possess at their creation.
The first roll determines whether they have no skills, one skill, or two skills. One skill is the most common outcome.
If our Sim was fortunate enough to be given a skill, we roll again to determine the field in which they're talented. This is where it got tricky. At first, I put only the base game skills on the chart. There are 20 of these, so it worked out perfectly. Then we discovered that it would be more fun to add some of the more specific, esoteric skills from the expansion packs we own. I think that gave us 36 different choices. To keep it fairly simple, I paired the base game skills with skills from the packs. We roll, and then flip a coin to see which of the two skills the Sim gets.
Then, we roll one more time to see how developed their skill might be. 2 and 3 are the most common outcomes, but the Sims' benevolent creators might bestow as many as 8 points on an especially fortunate Sim. We picked 8 as our limit because we haven't seen a teenage Sim with more than 8 points in any skill.
If the skill has only 5 levels, we divide the outcome in half and round down.
Z is our official die roller. She delights in shaping the fates of our Sims. Our favorite story is the tale of Matty Disco.
He began his Sim life as Matthew O'Rourke, a generic young adult we created to do nothing more exciting than fill out a neighborhood and occasionally turn up around town. When Z rolled to give Mr. O'Rourke his skills, she hit the combination that gave him the ability to Dance. Dancing appears to be one of the few skills Sims can't use to improve their lives in any measurable ways, except by stacking up moodlets that make them better at other, more productive things. Matthew was little better off than a Squib, the term we use for the unfortunates whose first roll results in no skills at all.
Fate then smiled a bit more warmly on Matthew O'Rourke. Z hit one of the two numbers that gave him 4 points for Dancing. He's a one trick pony, but it's one heck of a trick. We renamed him, gave him a makeover, and the character of Matty Disco was born.
My wife heard Z squealing and both of us laughing about Matty Disco, so she came to the sofa to see what her husband and daughter were up to. She'd paid passing attention to The Sims before, but there was something about Matty--and the joy we experienced creating him--that drew her in. Now she joins us for our Sims sessions, too. A new Simmer has been born!
(Matty Disco has been added to our world as an NPC. I'm not sure if Cameron will encounter him; we're hoping that he will, because he'd be fun to work into the story. I'm thinking Matty will feature in a story of his very own one day, too. ;) )
Anyway, back to Cameron Ross. Cam got fairly lucky. He was given two skills: Fitness and Homestyle Cooking. While neither is useful as an occupation or a side hustle--a Painter/Writer combo can live large without ever "going to work"--he could have turned out worse. And, with 3 for Fitness and 4 for Cooking, he's decently skilled at both. His Cooking skill helps him avoid setting fire to his kitchen, and it's already enabled him to meet a friend (whom you'll meet in the next chapter of the story). The Fitness skill helps shape Cam's story, too. We send him jogging most days, and if he meets someone along the way, he might double back and talk to them.
