Genaris – the First Family
Edgar Genaris was a well educated young man, working his way up the political career ladder. He hoped one day to become a senator, or even a mayor. The Confederacy saw great potential in this young man, and requested that he be one of the first to help establish a thriving community on Forgotten Island. As well as potential, it was recognised that he wouldn’t question some of the queerer orders that occasionally came forth from the Confederacy. (Edgar’s wife, Alyssa liked to call the Confederacy the United Anarchy of Domains, but Edgar hoped she was only joking, or had got the real name wrong.)
The Confederacy provided the first few families with housing and some money, at least until they got on their feet. Unfortunately, as food was growing scarce throughout the Confederacy, the people of Forgotten Island would have to find their own sources for food. Edgar envisioned his garden as feeding all of the occupants of Forgotten Island – and also thought it made for a good metaphor for the seeds he was planting for the generations ahead who would benefit from the colonisation of Forgotten Island.
Edgar hoped that he would be able to help the people of Forgotten Island to grow into a thriving community, even though they were all from very different backgrounds. He thought of himself as the leader of the ragtag bunch he’d been assigned to.
Alyssa, on the other hand, he expected to produce children, and in general be everything a good loving wife should be. They had married immediately prior to moving to the island. Alyssa had seemed pleased with the pink on pink kitchen (although truth be told, she really liked pink), and had immediately sat down to learn about how to cook Edgar’s favourite meal, pork chops.
Notes:
My roommate wants me to call the Confederacy the Free United Confederacy of Kingdoms – obviously he finds the acronym entertaining, but I thought that maybe it was a little too over the top for a name! Also, I think Alyssa’s name for it is a little more indicative of the kind of impression I want to give of my SimGovernment – not malevolent, more useless and bureaucratic, which can lead to the wrong decisions being made.
Presenting… Forgotten Island!
So I finally found a good neighbourhood that I liked, after much searching. For the last few weeks, I haven’t really had much time to play the Sims 2, but when I did, I was busy playtesting this nice neighbourhood, adding houses, and creating some families and backgrounds.
Obviously I’ve already played a few rounds (although it adds up to less than a week per family), but I think that I’ve found a workable neighbourhood that hopefully this time I’ll finally keep – I’m already attached to it, which makes me happy, and I’ve got some good story elements that seem to be popping up already.
The concept that I’m going to go with is that of slightly dystopian universe, with overcrowding over much of the known areas. As a result, the Confederacy (government) has decided to populate areas that were previously deemed pointless or worthless. The original discoverer of Forgotten Island has long been forgotten (surprisingly enough), and the area had not been thought about for years. Forgotten Island is therefore an area where a few groups of families are being sent to as part of the population crisis.
It will be played similarly to a Prosperity Challenge (with rounds, because hopefully that way I won’t forget to play anyone – I actually don’t mind round based play for that reason…otherwise I end up with people being discordant ages etc), but also have its own economy (and I must give Jade credit for that, as well as pbox). As part of this, after the first day, people are not allowed to buy things for their houses from the catalogue – they have to buy them off each other (which I’ve been finding difficult as everyone wants to buy ten million copies of the same counter, but not one crib for their babies!).
Here’s a picture of it taken just a few minutes ago:
Anyway, hopefully I’ll be able to play this without it breaking for a while, and also (hopefully) rediscover the creative writing talent I had a few years ago, before embarking on the crazy mindnumbing boringness that is my current life.
Also, I made progress on my calendar… and then went backwards, because I didn’t really implement it ingame. I’m not too fazed though – there are only four families at the moment, and I have a feeling I’ll mess up their ages a bit so they don’t all age up at the same time. I think it’s one of the things that I’ll work out as I go along.
