Date Posted: 8th Jan 2012 at 6:30 AM

Warwickshire 2.0 is released--finally! I am very happy to have a rest from writing for a while. In the meantime, while I am settling in to play 2.0, I plan to do a major overhaul of the Warwickshire website. I have a lot of content to fill in, which means picture taking and story writing, both of which I do enjoy, but both of which are VERY time consuming.


Beyond that, I foresee myself working on writing some careers--I have a long list of them I would like to do--and continue building lots, which I never seem to be finished doing. Today, I finished the prison tower for Hampshire Court, but I still have oodles of lots to finish, and the list just keeps getting longer and longer. As for the prison tower, I am quite satisfied with it. I hope that a few of the prisoners escape to give me some outlaws to play! Overall, I'm really looking forward to playing the challenge and seeing how much trouble I can get my sims into

Date Posted: 5th Nov 2011 at 9:52 PM

Version 1.3 will add a new class station: Outlaws and Outcasts!
Now your sims may suffer the consequences of Royal disfavor or Clerical disgrace.

Outcasts and Outlaws will lose the rights to their family name, and will be cast down to level 0 on the social hierarchy. All outcasts will have to change the spelling of their surname to indicate their altered social status and to indicate their separation from other family members who are still "received" in good society. So, a sim named Green may become Greene after becoming an outlaw.

Outcasts are sims who have committed heresy and have been excommunicated from the Church.

Outlaws are sims who have either committed treason against the Crown or who have escaped from prison.

Sims who have been cast out from society will meet with severe consequences:
1. Loss of all Royal Favor and Clerical Favor points earned.
2. Loss of all titles held.
3. Loss of all fiefs held.
4. Loss of all personal inheritance and property rights.
5. Loss of family residence.
6. Loss of all family funds.
7. Banned from all community lots.
8. Banned/Excommunicated from the Church: no marriages, funerals, etc.
9. Banned from being buried in sacred ground; i.e. cemetery.
10. Banned from visiting sims who are not also "outcasts."
11. Banned from marrying sims who are not "outcasts."
12. Banned from working or owning a business, including a home business.

Of course, sims may choose to break a ban placed on them, and in such cases sims will have to roll to determine whether they have successfully gotten away with the behavior.

Relatives of outcasts or outlaws may decide to disown the family member, or to continue associating with them. If they disown the family member, they must cut all ties with them or run the risk of becoming outlaws themselves--which is what will happen if they continue associating with them.

This is just a teaser ... there will be ways for sims to re-enter society, and ways for them to live in isolation from good society. All of these options are left open-ended to allow players to decide how they want to play.

It will definitely allow for a measure of uncertainty and a whole new set of stories to be told.

Date Posted: 3rd Nov 2011 at 4:49 PM

Because Warwickshire is already so big and complex, it may be difficult at first deciding how to set up your neighborhood. For this reason, I am reworking the introduction to the challenge and providing more guidance about neighborhood and character development.

Don't worry, however, the challenge remains open to a great degree of latitude in player decision making. The changes here simply give a bit more structure to how to go about making those decisions--in the hopes that this will ease some of the anxiety associated with the very overwhelming task of starting a new neighborhood from scratch.

There is a new randomized method for character creation. The first step is to roll for the Monarch--which may now be a male or female. Here are the results of my first trial at this:

Roll #1: Determine Monarch's Gender: 1, 3, 5: Male; 2, 4, 6: Female. I rolled a 6: a Queen!
Roll #2: Determine Monarch's Age: 1: Infant up to 6: Elder. I rolled a 1: the Queen is an infant (!).
When this is the case, the next character to create will be a Lord Chancellor to oversee the affairs of state until the Queen comes of age.
Roll #3: Determine Monarch's Zodiac: she is an Aries, it turns out.
Roll #4: Determine Monarch's Aspiration: she rolled popularity--for when she gets older, I guess.

Now, I rolled to create the Lord Chancellor.
1: Male
2: Elder
3: Capricorn
4: Fortune
Hmmmm .... wonder how he'll oversee the raising of this little Queenlet?

Next, I rolled to determine how many family members to create in the household: 6 as it turns out. A new chart determines how each family member will be related to the monarch.
1st Member: Servant
2nd Member: Sibling
3rd Member: Aunt/Uncle
4th Member: Advisor
5th Member: Cousin
6th Member: Servant

So, the whole household is:
1. Queen-to-be Mary, infant
2. Lord Chancellor, Lord Walter Cumberland
3. Anne White, Serving Maid, a child--she will be the Queen's companion and playmate
4. Katherine Wislet, the Queen's older half-sister, a child; she is the child of the King's
first marriage, but not eligible to inherit the crown. She may be jealous ...
5. Lord Arthur Grangerford, the Queen's uncle, an adult. Being the closest male relative to the Queen, he will serve as Regent until she comes of age. Wonder if he'll be willing to step aside in fifteen years' time ...
6. Annika Rochester, a child, who will someday become the Queen's Lady in Waiting, and her closest, most trusted advisor.
7. Edward Grangerford, the Queen's cousin and son to Lord Arthur Grangerford. He is a teen, 12 years old. Rather mean and spiteful. He thinks his father should be King ... and that the line of succession should fall to him. He may become dangerous someday.
8. Martha White, Anne's mother. She is the housemaid for the royal family. She is a Cancer, and a Romance sim. Could be she's looking for a new husband ...

I really like this method so much more for creating families than going into CAS and coming up with the same old stodgy arrangements I always produce on my own.

Of course, this royal family will need some blanks filled in: the first and most gaping of which is the need for more adult servants and advisors, a royal cabinet, etc. But these are posts that may be filled by other created sims which are either playable or townified. And there are no limits on creating servants for royals and nobles--the point of the challenge is to have a well-established system for your sims to try to ascend up through, so don't worry about having lots and lots of playable characters and families right from the start. Just don't overwhelm yourself with too many playables ... you might want to only create what you absolutely need to tell the story and get started.

Geesh! I wish this royal family was the one I was playing and not just an example.
Still, King Harold has been wanting a war with Westsea: maybe this is their royal family?

More later on adding new subneighborhoods. I am planning a War expansion for Warwickshire to allow for conquest and empire building!

Cheers,
Heloise

Date Posted: 31st Oct 2011 at 8:48 PM

Well, the past few weeks have been hectic, but I am trudging along slowly with the revised 1.3. There are important changes afoot. For starters, I am including more information on neighborhood setup, tweaking a lot of charts, and generally just cleaning up the original.
Not only this, but there will be lots more options for how to play, to give players more control over how to maintain the structure of the challenge while having a great degree of latitude over how to play in order to better fit individual player styles. Finally, there will be a much better, more detailed tax code for the challenge, designed to help players set up a self-sufficient economy. I am working very hard to keep everything simple and streamlined, while preserving the spirit of the original. As I've said all along, Warwickshire is more of a play style than a challenge: it is designed to help players inject some random outcomes, while maintaining a clear structure for the game. So, if you're reading this, you're probably interested in storytelling or in creating a medieval game.

A quick note: if you're interested in 1.2, just let me know by PM and I'll get it to you.
Keep watching here for updates on 1.3!