Is this a mental conflict that ever hits any of you guys?

I really wanna get back into one of my hoods for the "Next Chapter" so to speak, but it hits me that all the events would be purely imaginative and I hit a mental block thinking about how I'd have to impose tragedy on my sims in any way. As well as obviously there's story elements that can't occur naturally in gameplay. Like, do you prefer to stick to things that can only happen naturally with or without mods?

Mr. Johnson died in a tragic car accident, but in reality I just shoved him in a box in the backyard, that kinda thing.

The joy of writing is to break creative boundaries. Sure, TS2 might not have car crashes, but there is nothing to stop you from telling that story if you want. TS2 doesn't have the "mafia", but I wrote that into one of my 'hoods.

If you really need Mr. Johnson to die in a tragic car accident, Rodney's Death Creator is right there. Choose Fire for the most dramatic ghost. Write around it.

When I was doing my Genderswapped Uberhood Challenge and writing it up for Tumblr, I felt compelled to explain the complete bonkers impregnation schedule (you're supposed to have your sim breed at least one kid with someone in each Maxis Hood) with worldbuilding bout the rise to power of the Idealistic Conservatives, whose draconian laws set up my protagonist. I played at two levels, my normal enjoyable gameplay, and the challenge/story. I used cheats and game mechanics and story excuses to justify each improbability and generate drama and prompt moves to new hoods. I rolled with the chance cards and the caught cheating events and the accidents and the coincidences and I also manipulated events. At one point, late in the challenge, my protagonist fell in love with Vidcund and wanted to marry her bad enough that I let them get married; but I still had Pleasantview and Bluewater Village to get through. Vidcund was great with the kids and the father, everybody was happy, I was enjoying myself - so I had to look myself in the face and asked, Did I want to just quit the challenge and play happy families, or did I want to keep going? I discovered I was creatively engaged with the challenge, so - I killed her. Well, Oliver Nigmos did. And it was excruciating but I am glad I did that challenge - it was a wild ride and overall I enjoyed it and some of my tumblr followers did too.

But in my normal play - even when, as I usually am, I'm writing things up in the story albums and interpreting behavior - I come to points at which it would make sense to, for instance, let the canonically evil Rich Mann murder someone. And I think about it. And I say: Nope. Not gonna. I don't want to. And then those things don't happen.

The question is, Do you want to tell this story? Or do you want to play the game and let the story happen? Both answers are legit, even in the same neighorhood - there's no reason you can't rotate between story-heavy households where you manipulate events, and households where you're playing happy families and tragedy only strikes if the rain doesn't put the yard fire out.

There's no reason why you can't make two different iterations of a hood that diverge at a key point either. Here is Strangetown if Olive murders General Buzz; here is Strangetown in which he lives. All you have to do is make a backup and set it aside in a new The Sims 2 folder, and swap out which one you're playing. Why not?

I have this problem with Strangetown, except I went and gave myself a different problem... I discovered how to make mods. And now I want mods that let me do the story in-game, but then I have to make the mod and it takes time.

The next chapter in Strangetown is supposed to be Hecate Beaker murdering Mortimer Thanasia (aka Nervous Subject) after magically summoning him to her house in the middle of the night. But he's a fairly senior police officer, so no-one can actually know that he's been murdered, or there would be a whole public investigation. Instead he has to just disappear in the middle of the night and not turn up again. I could be sensible and just kill him off and say that all the grieving for his death is actually grieving for his disappearance, and hope that his husband doesn't roll any wants for anyone else too soon. But no, I have to make this huge great mod with custom memories and a new object and cloning sims and stuff... and it's big and complicated and only half done and I rarely have the energy to keep going with it.

So I know the problem. And "work out how to make a mod that kills sims in a car crash" is probably not the solution (or at any rate not a quick solution!). But I think I am inclined to go with the story sometimes - it keeps things interesting.

I, too, am considering what to do with certain characters in Arundel.

Do I let Daniel Klein and his long time lover live happily in sin for the rest of their lives, or do I let his wife (when she becomes Queen-which she will, probably) take steps to punish them for their betrayals?

I've got a community lot where I can imprison both of them, so it's not a matter of whether or not it's believable but whether they have transgressed society's mores and morals by shaming their would be monarch so publicly.

I do have a guillotine (which is, technically out of date for the period, having been invented many hundreds of years later and in an entirely different country altogether) but also other means to dispose of errant spouses.

My question would be is if it would make the story arc work or would the demise of 2 people actually destroy it? I'm still working on the solution.


But Peni's suggestion about making a backup of the hood before all the dramatic changes sounds like a feasible one. To play one or the other to see how they differ and feel to you is a good way to test out certain changes. I might do that myself.

There were several precursors to the guillotine, which seem to have been around from at least the early medieval period onwards. I've seen a 17th century one myself (called The Maiden) in a museum in Edinburgh (though I must say I'm glad they don't use it any more!). So you really wouldn't be stretching historical precedent far to use it in Arundel.

For myself of course I just cannot bring myself to kill a Sim. Having played for years with aging off, I can't even bring myself to turn it back on to let the likes of Consort and Patrizio die of old age, even if it would make sense in my story. When I see the living breathing Sim that I know in front of me, it just feels completely wrong for me to do anything to bring that life to an end.

The nearest that I've ever come to killing a Sim for story purposes, is deleting a Sim in CAS, before they ever made it into the game proper. I made a female and a male Sim in CAS. Then I used the "pacifier" to give them a genetic child. I then deleted the father in CAS, but saved the female and her child to the game. My "story" of course is that the father died. I suppose I often make Sims in CAS for the purpose of "rolling the pacifier", so that doesn't feel nearly as bad to me as bringing a Sim into the game and then killing them.

I hope that by recommending to FranH that she use a beheading machine, I haven't made myself an Accessory to Homicide!

Should not have read about the 'breaking wheel'. That's terrifying!

When reading up on the subject of infidelity in marriage, (during the medieval times) it appears that killing the offenders was not a common outcome, and more likely exile/stripping them of any money or power might be more appropriate.

Men were allowed a lot of leeway in these affairs (pun sort of intended) and they got away with a lot then (and we won't even go into modern times..)
Women were punished far more harshly for offenses concerning their marital faithfulness.

Although any other crime would be punished, infidelity did not seem to be considered one. I shall spare those who have offended the monarch. So nobody has to be in fear of helping commit murder.

Well the stocks are always available for a cheating husband who needs to be embarrassed!

If I have a sim that needs to be dead/ or disappear so as to not be able to have any interaction with other sims I will put them on a barren lot, with the VC to ban any and all sims from the lot, and give them Inge's Prisoner tag. This way they can be "dead" without actually bein dead. The situation that I have used this for is when I play the Brokes. I have the mod that has the non-resident parent pay child support. However, dead men can't pay So I'll bring him back and do as I said above.

I like how the thread went from "How do I creatively justify imposing tragedy on my sims?" to "What kind of medieval torture technique do I use on my sims?"