My last post was about Gen Con, and that was two weeks ago. The last couple of weeks have been pretty barren as far as gaming goes. I cancelled my World of Warcraft account again. I got a free month of Rift at Gen Con so I’ll probably check that out before too long. Then Star Wars: The Old Republic will be coming out some time this year and I’ll check that out too.
Mike and Kevin hadn’t seen Portal 2, so I played through that for them to watch. I love that game. The concept is smooth, the puzzles are well designed, and the writing is amazing. I love everything that comes out of Cave Johnson’s mouth. The replay value is a little sketchy. There were some rooms that took me forever to figure out the first time I did them, but once I’d figured out the solution it was really easy to remember the next time I played.
On the tabletop games front, I’m getting into a play-by-post Pathfinder game that is going to be following the Carrion Crowne adventure path. I’ve never done play-by-post before, but I’m excited to see how it goes. I’ll be playing a Halfling Paladin. I’m going to do my best to play a lawful-good paladin without being the giant d-bag that the class is known for. I’ll let you know how that goes.
On Monday I went to my friend Nicky’s place for her weekly game night. I played a game called 7 Wonders that I had heard good things about but hadn’t had the opportunity to play. I really liked this game. The sequence of play was very simple and after a few rounds we had it figured out, but the strategy is really involved. There are about six different ways to gain victory points and several of those involve the cards that the players on your left and right have played. I didn’t win either game that I played, but I had a great time anyway. Another group there was playing a game called Telestrations that also sounded like a lot of fun, but I couldn’t work in a game.
This brings me to the meat of the post. I’ve beenn playing The Sims 3 on my PC for a while. I’m trying an experiment this time. I’m making a family specifically so that they can make Ambrosia. Then I’m going to make them friends with all of the characters in the game that I’ve created to represent my friends. I plan on keeping my immediate circle of friends young, but allowing their children to grow naturally. I don’t know how well it will work, probably not at all, but that’s why it’s an experiment.
One thing that I’m somewhat disappointed about with The Sims 3 is the way they decided to handle Story Progression and Ageing. When the game launched you could turn Story Progression and Ageing on and off (seperately) for the entire town. Then they released a patch where they said that if you had directly played a household then Story Progression (and I think ageing as well) would be off while you were playing other households. Well, that didn’t work out apparently.
What I did in my experiment was I created my family and our circle of friends and placed them all in the game. I built each family’s house and played them long enough for everyone to get a job. Then I created my Ambrosia family and pretty much ignored the rest while I was working on their skills, confident that my sims would remain exactly as they were aside from relationship scores. Then I send one of the Ambrosia family to the house of my wife’s and my characters to make friends, only to discover that we had both aged to Elder and had children. I was unhappy with this and immediately turned story progression and ageing off for the entire town intending to delete the existing characters and replace them at a later date. I hope that works out the way I intend.
What I would really like to see, and EA can take this one for free, is for Ageing and Story progression to be able to be affected on a per-household basis. Just give me a little toggle when I’m on the Edit Town screen to flip those settings for each household as I see fit. I can’t imagine that it would really be that monumental a programming challenge. And if it’s not something that can conceivably be worked into a patch, at least work it into The Sims 4.
That's all I've got for now.
Good Gaming!
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