The Townie Project – Part 4: What’s Your Style?

Part 1:First Thoughts

Part 2: Who is Sergio Romero?

Part 3: Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker

Putting my townies to work was a big step forward, but I knew I still had a long way to go. People — and sims, too — are not defined solely by their occupations. A teacher, for example, might be the prim and proper sort like Miss White, my English teacher years ago, or a brash and outspoken man like Mr. Graves, my old history teacher. Teachers come in different shapes and sizes and each has his or her own style. We’ll see this same variation in personality styles in most other occupations, as well.

What’s Your Style?

This was my next question as I approached each of the townies in my household management bin. Of course, they weren’t the ones providing the answer. Instead of them telling me about their personality, I was telling them. Hey, you know what EA says, right? My game, my rules.

Just as I did with my original career list, I drew inspiration from Writer’s Guide to Character Traits and compiled a list of personality styles. These ranged from “adventurer” to “victim” with a lot of interesting types along the way.

At this point, of course, I had entered my previous information on a spreadsheet showing the first name, last name, occupation, and place of employment for each townie sim. Now I inserted a new column and headed it Personality. Beginning with the first townie on the spreadsheet, I added in all the styles, assigning one style to each of those unsuspecting townies.

Oh, how fun it was!

I learned that some of these townies were problem solvers; others had an eccentric streak. Some were conventional folk who believed in playing by all the rules; others were show-offs who wanted attention. I had leaders and followers, and as I looked at each one I could imagine their lives more clearly now. I could sense more of who they really were and what made them tick.

Little Lila might be young, but she’s already showing definite leadership skills.

Even the children in my townie bin, I should point out, received both an occupation and a personality style. Although they were still listed as “in school” on my spreadsheet, I knew now the direction they would take as they grew up…which brings us to the next point.

Like the active sims in my regular rotation, the townies in my game also age. Once each rotation cycle, I age them “one day”, which is equivalent to one year of game time.

I do keep track of the ages of all my active sims and manually age them at appropriate times.

• Babies age up to school age children when they turn 6
• Children become teens at age 13
• Teens turn into young adults at age 19
• Young adults mature to adults at age 40
• Adults become elders at age 65

It was only logical that I should also keep track of the ages — and birth months — of each of my townies. I added two more columns to the spreadsheet. Here’s a look at one entry. Wade Hendrickson was born in September and turned 44 during the rotation I’ve just completed.

Hendrickson

Wade

9

44

Hendrickson’s Mortuary

Funeral Director

Conventional

Send your loved ones to eternal rest with the loving care provided by Hendrickson Mortuary. Wade Hendrickson, Director.

Yes, I now have a funeral director in my game. It’s a family-owned, family-operated business, and whenever one of my beloved simmies passes away, I can rest assured that all arrangements will be handled swiftly and efficiently by Hendrickson Mortuary.

It’s pretense, of course. The Hendrickson family is just another “townie family” in the bin. In my mind, though, they’re very real. I can imagine their lives, shudder at the thought of dealing with dead bodies every day, and feel a bit of sympathy for the two children growing up in what must be a rather gloomy atmosphere.

You’ll notice, of course, that I’ve dressed Wade Hendrickson all in black. It seemed quite fitting. Clothes do make the man, as Shakespeare said, and they make the women and children, too. Part of my Townie Project also involves making-over my characters, dressing them for the roles they’ll be playing.

More to come!

The Townie Project – Part 5: Who Knows What Evil Lurks in the Hearts of Men?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Townie Project – Part 3: Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker

Part 1:First Thoughts

Part 2: Who is Sergio Romero?

Once I realized how useful townies could be, it was time to put them to work — literally. I wanted my townies to have job. Real jobs. I wanted more than the limited in-game choices. It was time to find gainful employment for my townies.

Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker

I’ve never been satisfied with the career choices available in The Sims. Even from the original game, I was looking for something more than what was offered. There have always been too few careers to suit me, especially considering that I play with multiple households. To remedy the problem, I’ve always turned to a bit of imagination, custom content, or both.

With the original game, I found a “career creation” program that allowed me to “edit” existing careers, deciding on what text would be included at each stage, and setting a few requirements for friends or skills. I couldn’t add more careers. I could only replace ones already in the game. It was a start, and I happily created a librarian career, and dabbled with a few others. Ultimately, it became easier to simply imagine my sims in a particular career than to go through the tedious process of editing every level of a career. Besides, replacing one career with another still didn’t solve the real problem. There just weren’t enough different types of jobs available.

With Sims 2, I resolved the issue by “expanding” various career paths that were open to my sims. Not every sim who entered the Sports career, for example, went through the standard career levels. In fact, I doubt that any of them did. The various levels weren’t realistic, in my opinion, and hey, it was my game, so I felt free to mentally change whatever didn’t work for me. So, among my athletes, I had baseball players, professional bowlers, tennis professionals, and even a gal who did roller-derby.

I approached the medical profession with the same expansive attitude. Some of my Medical career sims became doctors; others became dentists. I had nurses, surgeons, and optometrists. For each of these “home-made careers”, I simply made a list of ten achievement levels, so as my sims gained promotions, I knew where they were in the career I’d chosen for them.

Skipping over Sims 3 — which was incompatible with my playing style — I found myself again “making up” careers for my sims in Sims 4. I’ve used the athletic career as the basis for a “modeling” career, and for a young woman who’s playing the circuit of the SLGA — Simerian Ladies’ Golf Association.

So, from the start, I knew I wanted my townies to have a variety of jobs from numerous fields. Doing this, of course, requires a great deal of pretense. I can’t go into the game and make any sim an actual lawyer or accountant, for example. What I can do, if I choose to, is to use an existing career as a substitute, and allow myself to go on pretending. It’s fairly simple. The business career can include a lot of ground — accounting, banking, the legal profession, and many more. As pointed out above, the athletic career can substitute for a lot of imaginary jobs, as can the medical career.

But, I wasn’t going to put each townie into the game to give him or her an actual career. I wish we could assign careers while in CAS, but that’s not a feature of the game. So, giving a townie a career really means simply assigning a job to that sim. Later, if that sim should become important to a story and join one of my active families, then I can finish the process by putting that sim to work in an appropriate field.

This idea of expanding career choices through imagination and pretense opens the job world up and allows unlimited possibilities. I had only to make a reference list of careers I wanted to include, and I was on my way. To help create my initial list, I turned to Writer’s Guide to Character Traits, by Linda N. Edelstein, Ph. D. The book includes an entire chapter of “Career Traits” and lists forty-two specific careers. That was my starting point.

Truck driver Kevin Pease discusses his job with Edmund.

I listed the forty-two careers, put them in alphabetical order, then made a list of all the townies from my “household management” screen. Yes, it required a little time, but I consider it time well spent. Now, when townie Kevin Pease comes around, a quick glance at my Townie Project list fills me in on who he is. He’s a truck driver with a local delivery route. I can even tell you the name of the company he’s working for. It’s Warren & Sons Delivery.

Sure, I just made it up. That’s the fun of it. I made up accounting firms, business corporations, hospitals, and martial arts academies. I made up banks and technology firms and restaurants.

In doing so, I could feel my towns — and the townies — coming to life. Suddenly, I couldn’t wait to get back to my game to see these townies strolling down the streets.

I wanted to point to them and say, “Oh, there goes Arthur Jimenez, you know, the retired lawyer. And over there, it’s Dr. London, the psychiatrist.” And the next time I caught one of my “goofballs” wandering around town in her hot-dog costume, I knew just what to do. I called Dr. London, arranged for Olanda to join his “Therapy Group”, and saw my game taking on whole new dimensions.

But that was only the beginning.

Oh, remember Sergio Romero, that awful townie that Stefanie Caldwell’s parents threw such a fit about? They were sure he was only after the Caldwell money. They’d marked him as a loser without even getting to know a thing about him. Well, I know about him now. Looks like Stefanie might have missed out on a very good thing. Sergio Romero, it turns out, just signed a major league contract with the Oasis Blues baseball team. He’ll be playing first base.

More to come!

The Townie Project – Part 4: What’s Your Style?