Not marriage material:

1. Any sims living in any of the houses in the hood.

2. Any sims in the sim bin.

3. Any sims living in a house/sim bin of any sub hoods, ie. the Larson twins and Chester Gieke in Downtown; Florence DelaRosa, Malcolm Landgrabb, any of the other playables (I forget their names - family by name of Tinker and another family) in the Bluewater Village shopping district.

4. If you have Uni, any of the playable sims living in houses around the campus, including Greek Houses, and any of the sim bin young adults.

5. DO NOT marry Repo Man, The Therapist, Social Bunny, Charlatan and Mrs Crumplebottom - basically anybody who doesn't have a name, will kill your hood. Including Mrs C. Stay away from her. Far far away.

Marriageable:

6. Anybody wondering around the hood, the shopping district, Downtown, campus, etc - if they're not playable, they can be a marriage target.

7. Cashiers, maids, gardeners, firemen/firewomen, policemen/policewomen, exterminator, pizza person, grocery delivery person, etc. If they have a normal name, you can marry them. Keep in mind that service sims tend to have little money and no job and no friends, but they can have quite a few skill points, so will usually advance quickly up the career ladder. All of them count towards points for woohooing service sims if you're playing for that particular point. As long your yoru sim woohoos them before moving them in.

If you want your sim to marry one of the playables, I would say use Inge's teleporter shrub to turn them into a townie first. And don't forget to sever any engagements and marriages first.

I started a legacy!! Check it out at http://gigi-sims.livejournal.com

There's not really anything there yet, but you can meet my founder!

Gigi, your founder is pretty! I wish I had started journaling my legacy from the beginning. They've been a joy so far - the hard part is sticking with just the Legacy/heir branch - I can't stand it that they all don't stay in close contact so I have to go play the other branches from time to time.

OK, this might be a silly question, but I'm going to ask anyway.

I've played several sort-of legacies, wherein I followed some of the official rules, but definitely not all of them. Now that I have some "practice" doing that, I'm contemplating starting one for reals, following all the rules to the letter, starting a new user account with no CC/hacks, the whole nine yards.

Thing is...I don't really want to build the house. I mean, I CAN build it, but I don't want to spend the time doing it. Plus, I'm just not very good at building expandable houses that look decent, but I can expand houses that other people have built. So, does anyone know if anyone's uploaded legacy starter houses on 5x5 lots that are easily expandable? I did a quick check of MTS2 and didn't find any, and then was hoping that maybe there'd be links to some on the challenge website, but...no. Anyone know of any? If not, I guess I'll put my thinking cap on and get designing...

you could just buldoze it eveytime, and tottaly re-build - plus most starters are box homes?

I don't want to bulldoze and rebuild every time because I like the idea of the house evolving as the days and generations pass.

It does take a little more thought as to how to start a house such that it's logically expandable without being a series of haphazardly interconnected boxes. And I would think that it doesn't have to be a boring box. I was just hoping that someone else had already done the thinking for me! I'm lazy that way... But if I have to, I can do it. I just have to get in a "this will be fun!" mindset. And if I'm successful, then maybe I'll offer them for download for other lazy people like myself. I imagine there'd be a market for such things, given the number of people who play legacies.

Take a look around MTS2 or maybe put in a WCIF - there is a set of floor tiles that act as floorplan layouts. I've seen them used in legacies before, where the player has laid out the plans for the entire ground floor level and then as the family gets more money they added walls, etc, where they were supposed to go according to the house plans they laid out.

The tiles are bright blue with yellow writing and lines on them and I think they cost 0 simoleons so you can do your floorplan layout without losing money.

Another thought - buy yourself an exercise book (I'm using the Aussie term here, basically a notebook I guess) that has pages with grids on them. Count how many tiles down and across comprise a 5x5 lot and draw yourself a plan for the house, yard layout, etc. And then stick it up next to the monitor and build to plan.

Engram, do you know where to find those floor tiles? I tried looking on MTS2 and through the WCIF, and came up with nothing

I'm not sure where they are. I've seen them on a site before and I've seen them used in a legacy on LJ. I'll look around, see what I can find.

ETA: Apparently Google is your friend I Googled "sims tiles floor plan" and it was the first result! http://www.modthesims2.com/download.php?t=253860

Thank you, Engram! That will help a lot, I think. I went ahead and drew out a plan on graph paper that I think will work, but it will be a lot easier to keep track of the building progress using those tiles, rather than having to refer back to paper all the time. I didn't even think to look for such a thing; I just searched for already-constructed lots.

I started playing a legacy on a custom neighborhood, it's totally empty except for the main family and townies, 1st gen still. Im hoping to populize(is that even a word? lol it comes out red on my spellchecker..) it with the descendants that move out ;o Im having so much fun! I try to follow the rules as best as I can, I think the only one I've broken is the 5x5 lot thing, im not a big fan of bigger ones. I moved my founder to a 2x2, that's my favorite size for lots xP

Anyways, if anyone's interested in my progress, you can check out the Blake legacy on my sims blog, link is on the sig

Hi, I was going to start a legacy. My very first one...
And I was wondering.......this legacy blog thing. Is it sort of like a story in this forum, or is it just posting random updates on how your sims are doing? It seems to be a big thing and I don't really understand it, so I'd like it if someone could explain it to me
Thanks

A lot of people decide to document their legacies on a blog and then post the links in their signatures, but you don't have to. It's just a way for people to see what's going on in other people's games, and they're often very entertaining.

On another note, is there a way to change my sims' names? I was stupid and accidentally had my intended heir take his wife's name instead of the other way around, and they're already pregnant with baby #2... His twin brother still lives in the house and will also be getting married soon, so I can use him instead, but I just don't like him as much (probably only because he and his girlfriend are both fortune sims).

meggie272 - it's just a way to document/share with others the progress people are making. If you are playing for points, one of the points is for "Storyteller", where each generation has to write a novel and the player must publish a story about the legacy. It's kind of turned into just about everyone publishing their legacy, even those not playing for the Storyteller point.

grindylow - there are several ways of changing a sim's name.

1. SimPE: Open the hood using SimPE, go to Sim Description, select the sim whose name you want to change, change the name in the plug in panel, commit then save.

2. Lot Debugger: Activate debug mode in neighbourhood view, enter the lot, buy the bat box. Shift click on the box then find change name (or similar). Type in the name. Then chift click again and select copy first name to surname. Then shift click AGAIN to type in the first name for the last time. Rinse and repeat for all characters whose names you want to change.

3. I believe you can also use the InSimenator and the SimBlender to so this.

4. I additionally have a vague recollection that this may (or may not, I'm really not sure) also be possible with the spawnable sim modder.

Thanks! I was pretty sure I'd heard about some of those ways before, but I couldn't find the info again for the life of me.

Could I do a legacy story here in sim stories??

meggie - you can definitely do a legacy story here! You just need to keep it in story format rather than commentary style, ie. make it a proper story rather than just doing short comments on pics like you see on Livejournal. Jenny's Lana Logan and brilliantcat's Raven's Hollow are both legacy stories. Take a look at them, see how they are written.

I would love to have a legacy but - well I am always losing interest in the new generations. I am always so attached to my founders that I would not be able to let them die. I would be as sad as their kids - no even more sad.

And I am never able to keep family ties strong once the kids moved out. So this challenge would break my heart.

I've been looking to start a legacy, but every townie that walks by the lot is awfully ugly. I'm really serious, I think if my founder and one of those townies had children they would never grown into the cheekbones xD. The marrying townies thing just isn't working for me... do I /have/ to follow the rule? That's really the only rule I'm having trouble with following... any suggestions?

iLollipop - I use the cleaned up templates from MATY and get the game to generate new townies, using replacement face templates from MTS2. This means that the new townies are better looking than the original Maxis townies you would normally get. Or you can make a bunch of your own sims and turn them into townies using something like Inge's teleporter shrub or cat from Simlogical. That way you're still marrying in townies, but they're better looking.

I can kind of understand that. I've only just started my first "real" (as in, rule-following ) legacy, but I've done two huge non-rule-following one. (My first one is at about 22 generations.) I found that a good way to keep interest up is to do so silly things with the spares, all of whom I play and I let their wants solely dictate what happens to them; I make no plans for them at all. If they want 10 kids, they get 'em. If they want to be an old maid, that's what they get.

I do "traditional" inheritance in that the first-born male is always the heir (even if he's fugly/nasty/boring) and carries on the family name, but with the spares I like to do fun things like make them a supernatural Sim. Or I deliberately give them the grilled cheese aspiration. Or I let them have multiple spouses with my handy-dandy hacked wedding arch and jealously turned off on the lot. Or I have them found a convent/monastery where I can toss together other spares and work them hard to survive self-sufficiently. Or I use them to start a challenge-within-a-challenge, like an asylum, starving artist, or black widow challenge. Or if they're a romance Sim, I try to make every last person they meet fall in love with them, something I've never been successful at, but I keep trying anyway because it's fun. Just wild, crazy, silly things like that.

And with the direct legacy line, if I end up with ugliness, as often happens due to townie marriage, especially because I let the Sim choose who to marry (As in, the first Sim he meets with whom he has two- or three-bolt attraction. Often, that's the ugliest townie imaginable. ), I have fun trying to breed it out...or making the family even uglier. (Beauty isn't everything. ) And I always give my founder(s) at least one unique physical characteristic, pretty or otherwise, and then watch how it passes down. Basically, I do interesting things so that I don't get bored and so that I don't get too attached to any one Sim, so that I can easily let them go because I've got so many other interesting Sims to play.

I started my 8th trillion legacy last night and I'm now determined to atleast reach generation 5! You can read about it here..
I decided to post it on LJ because I think it'll keep me motivated to keep playing the family because I have to continue the story..
Well there isn't much yet but you can meet my founder Levi!

You can use freewebs (webs) blog for the story and then you have 19 other pages to use for whatever you want, a forum (discuss the story ect) or if your'e using wordpress try some of DustRavens themes (TS2)

http://specterlegacy.net/ is an example as well as http://houseoffallentrees.net/index.html

You can find dust raven here: https://dustraven.net/

I think he's made more too, they are just some examples :howdy:

They all fit in (game blue) so check them out :smash:

I've started anew with a legacy, first chapter is up @ LJ
I love playing this family, its MEGA fun!

Do you have University? If so you could send your sims there and find somebody not so ugly through the Campus Directory.

Of course that isn't going to work with your founder, but with my current generation I discovered the Campus Directory and my current heiress is married to a not so ugly sim! The Campus Directory is huge and is bound to have a few good looking Sims.

You could go with Engram's suggestions, but aren't those kind of bending the rules? (especially creating your own townies.)