Chapter 4: Bald

At this stage in Leona and Fiona's lives, it's impossible to guess what they might look like later.

Randy decides that one crib cannot possibly hold two babies. He and Randi scrape together enough to purchase a second crib.

 The magical gnome of invention (Randi named him Harold) relocates to the bathtub. He really likes this spot.

Randi collapses in bed after a long day of being a criminal and training to become a better criminal.

Leona becomes a toddler. She has her father's ears and blue eyebrows.

 Fiona's hair grows in a little earlier than Leona's. Randy is pleased with her. He has no idea she's not the heir.

Randi has her very own inventing bench now. One night she's happily building more toys for her daughters when she has a terrible thought - she's getting OLDER. At this rate she'll never have enough time to get promoted, save her money, go to China, expand the house... the list goes on...

Leona learns to walk while Fiona plays with a dog toy. It has real barking action.

Also featuring: Randi's cell phone. It rings constantly; some crazy person is promising Randi fame and fortune if she'll only go here or do this or do that. Randi doesn't want to be in the public eye, so she hangs up on them, not believing their promises of random expensive items falling from the sky into her family inventory.

Randy teaches the twins to talk. Yesterday he discovered a moon and named it after Fiona.

"Your Mom isn't here because she's working out at the gym," Randy explains to Leona.

The robot kicks its little legs, desperate to get away.

The Internet can be a dangerous place.

Randi's boss, Rhoda Bagley, has had some wacky schemes lately. Randi isn't always comfortable with them, but the boss is the boss, and so Randi trains for some epic underwater heist. During her daughters' toddlerhood, Randi spends the night in jail twice.

Leona walks around for several days before Fiona gets the hang of it. Don't trip, kid. You're the heir.

Perv gnome.

Some kids have mobiles. Fiona has that tree painting in the laundry room.

One morning Leona leaps out of her crib, a child. She's not bald anymore.

Fiona wakes up a minute later. "Whoa..."

Realizing she is now the one with bad hair, Fiona takes the initiative to give herself a makeover.

It's harder than it looks.
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Challenge notes: Not much to say. At this point, I was worried about Randi's job. I didn't want to fail the challenge on generation one.

Chapter 3: Gnomes

The Randies are expecting a child... and yet, they do nothing differently. Randy continues to garden.

The gnome approves.

Meanwhile, Randi works on various skills, again making use of community lots to do so. Her body building has had to take a rest since the pregnancy.

She eventually runs out of scrap and so visits the library to supplement her crazy inventing with how-to books.

The elderly vampire paparazzi also enjoys the library.

Randy goes to find more scrap.

Today the junk yard also features an elderly Star Trek fan, who tries desperately to find that perfect piece of junk to help bring the set in his garage to life.

Randi finishes off her day on the town by going grocery shopping for a change. She wants a rubber ducky and bubble bath... and has a craving for watermelon.

Randi tries to keep in touch with an accomplice; the criminals aren't allowing her to work with that belly, so she has to use a cell phone. While chatting away with fellow criminal Alana Beck (an ambitious woman who shares one of Randi's traits: over-emotional), Randi feels a strange chill in the air. It's almost as if she were being hunted. As if a vampire were standing right behind her...

Alana Beck confirms Randi's suspicion; most of the elderly in town have been converted to vampires. Old Lady Ivanov here was too slow in her old age to get out of the sun.

Feeling uneasy, Randi retreats to the safety of her own home. This documentary about sim-eating plants causes her to seriously consider telling her husband to scrap the garden.

Eventually, it's time for the baby. To the hospital! Stat!

A crowd gathers outside the hospital for no apparent reason.

Randi and Randy are a bit too shell-shocked to ask what's going on. They had twins!

Randy puzzles over how to place two very small babies into a single very large crib.

"It would go against the laws of physics," he says, shaking his head.

In the background, one of the household objects runs amok. Randy spent a lot of time upgrading that thing... and maybe he should have been more gentle with the screwdriver.

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Challenge notes: After noticing the vampire and celebrity outbreak, I asked around for a mod to replace EA's story progression. Twallan's was the logical choice, and I will be using it for the foreseeable future.

The twins are named Leona and Fiona. They complete the two kids requirement for generation one, and another roll indicated Leona as the heir.

The roll for generation 2 is single parent, one child, military career. Leona's goal will be to have perfect children (erm, perfect child, in this case), and misc. fun is homemade. Good thing Randy took up gardening, because as an adult Leo's going to get very picky about knowing where her food comes from. Fittingly, Leona is the neurotic one. Fiona is brave, and they are both eccentric, which fulfills generation 1's "runs in the family" challenge. This just leaves Randi's job; she has to get high enough in the criminal path to choose the evil branch.

Randi's had some problems at work since she couldn't get promotions when on maternity leave, and on top of that she became a two star celebrity and a random scandal ruined her relationship with her accomplices.

Chapter 2: Fresh Start

Randi gets a positive moodlet for moving. Randy does not. Perhaps this is because he left that grape vine sprout behind, and he loved it very much.

Randy tries to soothe his pain by taking a nice bath. R&R lack a shower, because Randi just COULD NOT PASS UP this Pythagoras Tub thing. Unfortunately, Randy's eco-friendly nature leaves him upset about all this wasted water.

Do you spot something missing in this bathroom?

A toilet, perhaps?

Stuck home all day, Randy finds his true calling. Being a house-elf!

When not gardening or doing laundry, he tries to educate himself by surfing the web. He looks up "how to talk your wife into buying a more eco-friendly..." blah blah.

Uh oh.

Poor Randy.

Remembering the mysterious absence of firefighters in this town, Randi leaps into action.

Randi seems.... murderously angry. Lord Sponge is her favorite.

Later, everything is okay again. Randi fixes her computer and sets to work hacking. At one point the government sends her a virus in retaliation, but luckily that problem is easily solved by poking the keyboard with a screwdriver.

Randy has about four wishes in life now. One of them is to buy a smoke detector, and his wife promises to indulge him if she can only hack enough simoleons.

Randi returns to the fire station a time or two to use their workbench. She cannot afford her own. In a fatigued, sleep-deprived stupor, she invents a gnome.

She was going to sell it, but her husband is easily amused by shiny objects so she decides to keep it.

"I forgive you for the fire, you know."

Well... that was fast.

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Challenge notes: "Change of scenery" challenge met, I guess...

Chapter 1: Homeless

This is the story of Randi (R1) and Randy (R2). For a while, anyway. I have turned aging on for the first time. My boyfriend shook his head at my new game, annoyed that I wanted to know obscure details about his old RPG character Randy. Such as eye color.

"What does it matter what they look like?" He complained. "Since you're going to kill them."

"It matters because I want to know," I said. And so we begin.

Randi Archer is a young simulation who ran away from... something. Something awful, back home. It's given her a need for vengeance. She shall make the world pay.

Her first act as a young adult is to seduce one of Santa's elves. Maybe. Not even Randy is sure what he's supposed to be anymore.

Randi and Randy have found themselves in Riverview, a rural area away from city life. Randi purchases a really big lot, with lots of grass. She figures elves like grass.

"Stay here," Randi says. "Put a hat on or something. I'm going to find a computer."

She then leaves to scout for a job. Randi's dream is to create sentient robots.



Randi has complex, barely legible schematics drawn out for her dream home. Randy examines what the remainder of their household funds was able to do about constructing it.

There's a bed and a laundry hamper in the corner, but no other furniture anywhere.

Well! Time to go fishing.

Meanwhile, Randi has trouble finding work in her dream field. The science facility is full up on employees, and most of the inhabitants of Riverview seem wary of new people. Letting a stranger into their soil and water treatment facility is unthinkable. Luckily, a nice woman named Rhoda Bagley is around to give Randi a job as a criminal. Randi decides to go with a cliche; "you do what you gotta do."

Randi knows being a criminal is going to be tough work. She hits the gym.

It takes about five minutes for the gym to be full of nosy neighbors. Randi feels they are stalking her. She tries to ignore them and stay focused on her fitness; she always preferred computers over people anyway.

Randi is a computer whiz, handy, grumpy, eccentric, and over-emotional.
Randy is absent minded, clumsy, eco-friendly, eccentric, and also a computer whiz.

The sun goes down and Randi realizes she has no food, and no money. There's only one thing to do.

Steal vegetables from the community lots and neighbors.

Randy is excited over his catch. He's so hungry. If only he had a fire to cook this over. Maybe there's one in the park or something?



Randi is too tired to make it home. How can she face Randy anyway? She decides to crash at the local fire station. It's a spooky place... nobody else is there! Where are all the firefighters?

Randy worries when his wife doesn't return. But he can't fight off sleep deprivation forever...

Fortunately, a call from Randi in the middle of the night brings Randy to the fire station. He's pleased to leave the home lot, which has no roof, wallpaper, or shower.



Nervous about his situation in life, Randy has trouble sleeping. Oh, what's this? This thingy is cool.




And oh, paint! Elves like to decorate.

Valuable insight into Randy's psyche. Or a tree.

Randi creeps away from the fire station to attend to her criminal activity. Remembering his wife's dreams of inventing, Randy decides to help. He shall collect scrap!

That other guy is Sherman Bagley. Randi later tells Randy that Sherman and his sister Rhoda are minor celebrities around town.

More importantly, Randy finds a grape seed in a nearby lot and goes home to plant it. He shall nurture it and treasure it always.

He returns to the firehouse and dines on stolen watermelon.

The days pass quickly. Randi thanks Randy for the scrap and uses the fire station's work bench to dabble and invent... but only when she's fatigued from all the working out. Rhoda may like Randi, but the rest of Randi's coworkers aren't pleased with a shrimpy girl on the team, even if she is from the big city where the criminals are tough. She'll have to impress them before the boss can feel comfortable promoting her.

For Randy, all alone in the fire station while his wife works, exercises, invents and sleeps, it's another day of painting and stargazing, surviving on stolen lettuce, tomatoes and... wait a second...

Seems he's found a kitchen!

Ice cream? They didn't have this in middle earth! Riverview is the best place ever!



Randy returns to the home lot every day to care for his grape sprout. One day he notices they have mail. A bill! And it's.... one simoleon. Thankful for the excellent roads and the adequate schools he hopes to one day send his future children to, Randy pays his taxes like a good citizen.




An old guy appears as R1 and R2 are getting ready for bed. Is he a firefighter?

"He's a paparazzi," whispers Randi. Working with Rhoda is suddenly causing unexpected consequences.

"What are you talking about? He's a vampire!" whines Randy, using his elf ESP to notice the fangs and glowing eyes Randi overlooked.

The vampire paparazzi begins to snap pictures. Terrified, Randi returns home and arranges a move...



"I'm sorry, Randy," she says. "I made a miscalculation. We need a smaller lot."

The giant lot is sold, and a smaller lot is bought.

With the funds left over, R&R are able to afford a roof over their heads.
 

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Challenge notes: I was inspired by this blog to do this challenge. The challenge involves playing ten generations of sims under randomly rolled parameters. There is also a thread on Mod The Sims, which is how most people find the challenge and decide to play.

Don't read this blog unless you've played Sims 3 for more than ten minutes, because it really won't make sense.

So far so good. I've never enabled aging before! This is an entirely new (and sad) experience for me. I made R&R in CAS, basing their designs off of some old roleplaying characters from a completely different game.

For primary income I rolled criminal (evil), and for secondary income I rolled the dreaded nothing. Not very good for founding sims. They both have the LTW of "Tinkerer".

I'm not going to consider Randi's job parameters met until she gets the option to choose the evil branch. She has a long way and a lot of fatigue moodlets to go.

I rolled that they will have two children, a "change of scenery," and "runs in the family." I'll make their two children eccentric, just like Randy and Randi are eccentric. The eccentric trait isn't really that helpful, but whatever.