Steel Base Game Decadynasty

[hazelnut]

Yes, this is a possibly misguided attempt to play the Townie Decadynasty using only the base game.  I think it ought to be possible but I'm not entirely sure.  With only ten skills available, one of the Sims is going to have to supermax guitar, which involves rather too much luck to be entirely comfortable.  There's no alternative to rabbithole careers – and some of those require more than one skill, which could be tricky to manage.

Oh well, only one way to find out, I suppose…

Let's Get Started!
Matchmaker, Matchmaker
Doctor Donna
Stars, Rocks and Books
Waiting for Dashiell
A Busy Household
Guitar Man
Insects and Other Pollinators
Not the Happiest of Birthdays
Military Manoeuvres
Sunset Valley: the Next Generation
The One That Got Away
The Pursuit of Happiness (Points)
The Unexpected
A Long-Awaited Occasion
Crazy Daisy
Horticultural Science
Funny Boy
Twists in the Tail


Steel family tree

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

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Other family trees

Lucky Palms
Sunset Valley
Riverview

[hazelnut]

Let's Get Started!

If you're going back to the delights of the original game, who better to choose as a founder than Mr Steel?

Well, actually, not that Mr Steel.  This Mr Steel:

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Donnovan Steel, junior member of the Lucky Palms police force and part-time calendar pin-up.  He's charismatic, athletic, loves the outdoors, has a good sense of humour and is never nude (well, I suppose you don't have to take everything off to pose for a calendar).  Rather oddly, given his traits, he wants to be a heartbreaker.  The Hot Desert Cops thing went to his head a bit, methinks.

In fact, I started the game with Donnovan's romantic interest, Marisol Loera, purely because her house is better suited to raising a family.

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Marisol shares his love of the outdoors, is handy, good, flirty and a bookworm, and is a lot less scary than she looks in that screenshot.  She wants to be a professional author.

Marisol invited Don over and he'd moved in by lunchtime.  I was inclined to go for a first-day pregnancy and put Marisol on the Watermelon Diet, since the five Lucky Palms foetuses have always turned out to be four boys and a girl in previous games.  Well, apart from the time Lola Lancaster had twins, which made it five boys and one girl.  In the end, though, I decided it was more sensible to wait for a few days, keeping an eye on the pregnant ladies as well as the founders.

On the second day, Don rolled a wish to propose.  Yep, he's really into this heart-breaking thing.
 
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He was so excited he managed to stick his foot straght through a plate glass window without breaking it  .

Not rushing into producing the first heir turned out to have been one of my better ideas.  This time, the babies were three girls and two boys – and Lina Lancaster's son disappeared somewhere between birth and starting school.  I prefer to think that he was adopted by an out-of-town family rather than suffering some horrible story-progression fate.  Or maybe he just ran off to join Peter Pan. 

So Marisol ate apples instead and…

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Marisol, why are you looking at me like that?

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Oh.  You weren't.  You were looking at that other baby materialising on the living room floor.  Random twins.  Goody.  Just what we all needed to make the early game even busier  .

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Don and Marisol celebrated by throwing a wedding party while the babies were asleep and inviting all of the other new parents.  I hope Lucky Palms has plenty of babysitters.

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It's probably going to be the only wedding of the dynasty where everyone's appropriately dressed.  If you ignore Yolanda Shaw in her bikini, that is.

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The twins became toddlers and were dressed in their favourite colours: red for David, the heir, and yellow for Daniel.  Come to think of it, the Bernal twins in my first Decadynasty had the same favourites, although it was the heir who liked yellow in that case.

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Rats!  I'm pretty sure David has the loathsome greenish hair.  I thought I'd get further than generation 1 before that set in.  Sometimes I hate random variation.

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The boys learned their basic skills gratifyingly quickly and had plenty of time left over for playing and becoming friends.

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Daniel looks almost evil in that screenshot.  I wonder why?  He has a sweet personality really.

The twins had another birthday.

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David met Rachael Hudson on their first day of school.

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She came home with them but appeared to find Daniel more to her taste.  Poor David seemed to agree.  Why would anyone prefer him?

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A few days later, he had the Schoolyard Chums opportunity, with Rachael as the target, but couldn't get her to agree to come over to his house to play.  So I cancelled the opp.  But by the end of childhood they were friends anyway.  Grr!

The twins had a party for their teen birthday.

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This isn't the best of screenshots but I include it because (a) Marisol is demonstrating her awesome X-ray vision and (b) all four surviving townie babies are in shot.  That's Rachael in the greeny-blue top and brown trousers.  The unfortunately bald boy next to her is Blake Shaw.  The redhead standing between them and the barbecue is Dolores Lancaster, Lola's daughter, and the dark-haired girl in the red dress over to the right is Lourdes Tanner.  I hope to get all of their genetics into the family tree at some point.

[hazelnut]

Matchmaker, Matchmaker

After the party, the boys sorted out their new looks and I dyed David's hair to match Donnovan's.  I couldn't stand the yucky green any longer.

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He and Rachael became best friends and then a couple.

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(I think that's the first time anyone's used the hot tub in this game.  My Sims usually spend their lives in there, given half a chance.)

There were a lot of tasks to achieve before they could really be together, though.  Time to make a start…

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Oh dear!  He's supposed to be athletic.  That looks a real struggle.

By his YA birthday, David had spent enough time in the gym that he was looking much less of a seven-stone weakling.

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Daniel wasn't bad either, despite spending most of his spare time in the garden.  Well, I suppose it's not exactly a sedentary occupation.

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David joined the Professional Sports career.  It's not one of my favourites – criminal's more fun (I'm perfectly law-abiding in real life, honest  ) but I didn't want his progress being slowed down by arrests and the promotion-after-midnight bug.  Instead, he indulged his kleptomaniac tendencies by stealing statues from the park.

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Since there's only so much time I can spend watching a Sim training, I turned most of my attention to the rest of the family.  Donnovan and Marisol were now Eternally Faithful, so he quietly changed his lifetime wish to International Superspy – and achieved it.  Marisol had had to take a break from writing while the kids were small but was now close to §4000 a week in royalties.  Daniel's garden was slowly evolving towards perfection.  Now, what about a partner?  I'd been hoping to pair him up with either Dolores Lancaster or Lourdes Tanner but they're both rather prickly characters and it didn't go well.  (Dolores is hot-headed and both are grumpy.  Come to that, so is Rachael.  Must be something in the water  .)  Or maybe Daniel just doesn't like watcherly interference in his love life.  All by himself, he fell for the much older Tabbi Claremont, who was soon expecting Don and Marisol's first grandchild.

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Marisol got chatting to Cornelius Vandeen in the library and discovered that he was going out with Yuna Tanner.  So Cornelius joined the household for a day or two – and Yuna was pregnant by the time he moved out.

Two weeks into young adulthood, David became a Superstar Athlete and achieved his lifetime wish.

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Suddenly, the first house move was looming.  Better start making some progress on the other requirements.

No!  Don!  I didn't mean that!

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Um, well, I suppose I did  .  But it wasn't that urgent.  You could have lived past ninety  .

With all the expansions turned off, opportunities haven't been a problem at all.  That same day, Lourdes asked David to train her, which gave him his tenth Black Op.

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They got chatting afterwards and became best friends.  It turned out that she and Hanson Gilbert were now an item; so Hanson became another temporary household member, with predictable consequences.

David reached the top of his career…

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…and invited Rachael over.

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(Daniel and Tabbi's activities in the background were to result in a second small Claremont.)

David proposed – and Rachael said yes.

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Then he went back to the gym to knock out yet more hours of training.  With perfect timing, he finished his moving requirements on the evening before his adult birthday.  He had cake for breakfast…

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…and then threw a party.

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(I really miss the wedding arches: it was total chaos.  That's the nearest thing I have to a decent screenshot.)


Generation 1

Home: Halcyon Hideaway, 66 Sand Road, Lucky Palms
Heir: David
Traits: athletic, friendly, kleptomaniac, lucky, charismatic
Lifetime wish: Become a Superstar Athlete
Parents: Donnovan Steel and Marisol Loera-Steel
Heir on honour roll at both elementary and high school.

Household NPC friends:

• Grim Reaper
• Mario Conley (policeman)
• Bill Cantu (firefighter)
• Kerry Dailey (pizza delivery)
• Tracy Angel (postman)
• Marco Rosario (paperboy)
• Adolfo Harris (adoption worker)
• Bridgett Rivera (babysitter)
• Brooke McDonald (repairwoman)
• Misti Hsu (maid)

Household best friends:

• Rachael Hudson
• Tabbi Claremont
• Dolores Lancaster
• Blake Shaw
• Lourdes Gilbert (née Tanner)
• Ethan Tanner
• Richard Irwin
• Gerardo Acevedo
• Angelique Pinson
• Indiana Abernathy

Unique maxed career: professional sports
Unique supermaxed skill: athletic
Unique opportunities (Black Ops) completed by heir:   

• The Boiler Room
• Registering the Roster
• Time to Get Pumped
• Jog Everywhere
• No Sweat!
• Brand Image
• The Complete Circuit
• Bursting With Energy
• Push It!
• Flex and Bend

Building: The Blooming Cactus Bistro
Fully-upgraded property: Sunwest Graveyard
Heir adult?  Yes
Tombstone (large): Donnovan Steel
Set of items of unique type: ten Ambiguity Itselfs (Ambiguities Themselves?) stolen from the park
Total value: §15460

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[hazelnut]

Doctor Donna

David and Rachael moved into her family home: not Irony Ranch, as I'd been expecting, but the house next door.  Quite a few of the original townies have moved, generally into smaller homes, so that the bigger houses can be taken over by clones – although, oddly, the largest clone household of all is packed into one of those little not-quite-houseboats on the lake.

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The new Mrs Steel is an outdoors-loving virtuoso genius but balances her good traits by being a grumpy loser.

The next development is entirely predictable:

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(Rachael clearly found the broken computer far more dsturbing than labour.)

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After two-and-a-bit days, Donna had her first birthday and toddler spam ensued.  (I'm sparing you most of it.)

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Then she grew up into serious little girl, who went to school, did her homework and played chess against the computer.  Her childhood was so uneventful that I forgot to take any screenshots at all  .

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Rachael threw a huge party for her daughter's teen birthday, inviting all of their family and friends, but almost everyone stayed inside eating the food they'd brought or watching TV.  No idea why.  The only ones who went out into the garden to watch Donna blow out her candles were Uncle Daniel, his three children and a schoolfriend whose name I've forgotten.

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Dan's kids, from left to right, are Owen Claremont, Olivia Steel (who was adopted because the previous household was short of NPC friends.  Sorry, Olivia!) and Benjamin Claremont.

Donna grew into a pretty teenager:

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David had continued his interest in 'collecting' stuff in his leisure time but had turned to the rather more legitimate field of gemstones (apart from the occasional wish to steal something – the park did lose a few more statues.  It's a good thing they keep regenerating).  Now Donna took an interest in his discards – meteorites were more interesting to her than shiny stuff.  And if she concentrated hard enough on identifying them, she could pretend to be oblivious to her parents being embarrassing in the background.

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When she wasn't at school or analysing her dad's latest finds, she played chess – against real live opponents now.  By her next birthday, she was at the third level of the tournament.

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Chess was all very well but she knew that she really wanted to use her cleverness to help other Sims.  So she went off to the hospital to sign up as a bedpan cleaner.  A disgusting job but at least it was the first step towards her real ambition.

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Between shifts, she carried on with the chess matches.  Undoubtedly her toughest, and most frequent, opponent was her own mother .  You'd think Rachael's loser trait would swing things pretty deciisively in Donna's favour but apparently not .

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It wasn't until she spent a couple of evenings in the library reading logic books that Donna was able to progress to other opponents  At least, until the computer announced that the next match was against someone in her own household AGAIN.

Her very last game was against Daniel, and I discovered that Tabbi must have proposed at some point – his surname was now Claremont.

Unfortunately, being a Grand Master wasn't nearly enough.  Donna's hobby of  astronomy was going pretty well but there was also a lot of tutoring to be done.  She took to hanging around the library in a suspicious manner, waylaying kids and teens and insisting on helping with their homework.

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(For some reason, almost every teenage boy in town is wearing that same outfit.  It's very confusing.)

Once she'd maxed logic, she turned to skill tutoring.

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(Despite appearances, she is tutoring Rachael in logic here.  Donna had picked up a stray cooking point somewhere but Rachael was at about level 6.)

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At 92 days, Grim came for David.  So much for the Marathon Runner challenge .  Rachael, who was older, outlived her husband by several days.

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Or, in fact, by a lot more than that.

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Well, Grim had come for David while Rachael was in the library.  She needed to make sure of him as an NPC friend somehow.  And nobody in the family had learned to make ambrosia yet.

Like her father, Dr Donna reached the top of her career just before her adult birthday.

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She threw herself a birthday party and, while there were plenty of witnesses to hold him to it, proposed to her old schoolfriend Alexis Gilbert (son of Hanson and Lourdes).

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Three days later, with her requirements completed, she threw a rather smaller wedding party.  Somehow, the groom, who was neither insane nor inappropriate, managed to turn up in his everyday outfit instead of formals.  Never mind.  The bride was radiant enough for both of them.

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Generation 2

Home: Symphony on the Cube, 80 Sunset Boulevard, Lucky Palms
Heir: Donna
Traits: good, heavy sleeper, bookworm, genius, computer whiz
Lifetime wish: World-Renowned Surgeon
Parents: David and Rachael (née Hudson) Steel
Heir on honour roll at both elementary and high school.

Household NPC friends:

• Grim Reaper
• Terrence Bautista (paperboy)
• Nicola Ballard (postwoman)
• Regan Miranda (maid)
• Aubrey Neff (pizza delivery)
• Susan Covington (repowoman).  Getting that NPC friend hurt!
• Shelly Murry (policewoman)
• Josef Farrow (firefighter)
• Elmer Doyle (repairman)
• Stephenie Vasquez (adoption worker)

Household best friends:

• Alexis Gilbert
• Olivia Steel
• Owen Claremont
• Benjamin Claremont
• Lionel Shaw (son of Blake Shaw and Dolores Lancaster)
• Marianne Tanner (daughter of Yuna Tanner and Cornelius Vandeen)
• Courtney Ferguson
• Jasper Prather
• Elmer Doyle
• Deon Schwarz

Unique maxed career: Medicine
Unique supermaxed skill: logic
Unique opportunities (Black Ops) completed by heir:   

• The Writing Club
• Puzzle Panic
• The Giving Sort
• A Stimulating Experiment
• Friends in Good Places
• From Two to One
• Fixing the Celestial Slump
• Taking Down Sinclair
• Shades of Grey
• Riddle Away

Building: Silver Swallow Day Spa
Fully-upgraded property: Sport Fishing
Heir adult?  Yes
Tombstone (large): David Steel

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Set of items of unique type: heart-cut gems
Total value: §38540

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[Trident]

Geez, and I thought an Immortal base game dynasty was hard. This seems like a nightmare!(But a very fun nightmare).

You're whizzing through this! Have you already beaten the challenge?

[hazelnut]

No, I'm nowhere near finished (currently on gen 4, thanks to a lot of playing time over Easter).  The first two generations were easy - it's so nice to have opportunities popping up all the time.  There have been several that I can't remember seeing before.  I've been making it a little harder for myself by trying to keep a few other townie families going alongside the Steels and the collections are more of a challenge than I'd been expecting: even though I know the value's going to be a lot lower than last time, I keep trying to improve it.  That made gen 3 a less fun nightmare (interesting concept!) than it should have been  .

[hazelnut]

Stars, Rocks and Books

The newlyweds moved into the Tanner family home, which Alexis had been sharing with his cousin Marianne.

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Alexis has a weird combination of traits: good,  mean-spirited (why don't those traits clash?) brave, couch potato and green thumb.

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Donna asked her cousin Owen Claremont and her colleague Lionel Shaw to move in.  Lionel only stayed long enough to produce a couple of offspring with his cloney girlfriend, before marrying her and moving out.  Owen, a genius and natural cook, became a permanent addition to the household.  Marianne Tanner stayed around long enough to become romantically involved with Owen and then moved out, since I wanted any kids she might produce to be available as future housemates.

Donna became pregnant on her wedding night and in due course Dashiell put in an appearance.

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If anything, he was even more solemn-looking than his mother.  Donna took this as a good sign – maybe he was going to grow up to share her love of learning.  She took him to the library and read him most of the toddler books to give him the best possible start.

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As a child, he looked more worried than studious.  (I ended up giving him neurotic as his final trait, just because he looked as though he should have had it already.)  He did well in school, thanks to his mother's tutoring, but preferred to play video games with Alexis, curl up with a good book or try writing his own.

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Donna was pregnant again.  She made a point of seeking out the other pregnant women in town and giving them amazing medical advice.

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"No, it's nothing to worry about.  We call it Glitchy Top Syndrome.  Your baby's fine in there.  Oh, and you're having a girl this time."

Appropriately, Dawn Steel was born right next to a telescope, but it was too dark for a good screenshot.  She had her first birthday on the same day that Dashiell became a teen.

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Unlike her big brother, she very much took after her mother.  She was delighted when she had another birthday and was (just about) big enough to use a telescope.

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Another shared birthday…

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…and Dawn was suddenly nearly as grown-up as Dash.

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Dashiell joined the journalism career.  He wasn't very good at it and kept just missing promotions, despite having high writing skill and all of the useful rewards.  He far preferred sitting at his desk at home, working on his latest book.

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Life in the Steel household became more than a little boring.  Dawn went to school, Dashiell went to work and the three senior members of the family stayed at home (Donna had rolled a wish to retire as soon as she aged up to elder).  Owen cooked and Alexis gardened but mostly they were glued to their telescopes night and day.

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Owen turned out to be an amazing astronomer.  He discovered more than a hundred stars, together with an assortment of other celestial objects, including a black hole.  He was awarded §12000 by the Astronomical Society for that one.  He also had a remarkable knack for spotting meteorites falling to earth and was largely responsible for this house's collection.

To break the monotony, they had the game's first burglary.

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I was delighted – a chance to acquire two NPC friends without trying! Surprisingly for an old man with zero athletic skill, Alexis beat the burglar to a pulp before the policewoman arrived – but they all ended up as friends anyway.

Donna ran out of time.  She died as she would have wished, looking for a new book to read.

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Grim was as tactful as usual.  "What are you begging for?  You know the rules: someone needs to provide a tombstone so that your son can move on.  You're it."

The girl standing behind Grim in that screenshot is Owen's daughter and Dawn's best friend, Lucy Tanner. last seen as a misshapen bump in the art gallery.  Along with Emily Shaw, she was a leading candidate for Dashiell's future wife.  Emily had inherited the Lancaster red hair, which was a big point in her favour, but otherwise looked to be taking after her clone-faced mother.  Lucy looked almost exactly like her mother and grandmother – Yuna Tanner has some impressively dominant genes – but was too closely related to Dash for me to feel entirely comfortable with her as a spouse, even though that doesn't really matter for Sims.  Ultimately, the decision was going to come down to who had the most suitable house and the Tanners looked to be winning there.  They were living in Darren Dreamer's old house, which I know and like, while the Shaws were squashed into a tiny house by the dried-up lake.  That one would need an extensive basement or a complete rebuild to be playable with a family.

The day after Donna's death, Dawn became a young adult and took over her mother's telescope and rock-identifying duties.

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Dashiell was still plodding through his career  .

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Soon after his adult birthday, he achieved his lifetime wish of becoming a professional author but was nowhere near finishing his dynasty requirements.

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He eventually made it to star news anchor, helped by being asked to work late on the day when he would otherwise have missed his last promotion.

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He phoned in his resignation as soon as he got home and turned to writing full-time.  The speed writer challenge still seemed impossibly distant.

At long, long last, with less than a week left before his elder birthday, Dashiell supermaxed.

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I'd been keeping an eye on the Shaws and Tanners and was very disconcerted when both families disappeared from the map.  After a few days, that strange resorty place by the military base acquired a label saying 'Tanner'.  OK, I could live with that.  Except it appeared that Lucy wasn't living there – even in the middle of the night, the only Sims that showed up were her two older brothers and a couple of random clones.  The Shaws were still missing.  Maybe Dash was going to end up marrying one of his ex-colleagues instead.

With Dashiell's requirements finally completed, I checked the map once more and found that Lucy was now living alone in one of the big houses by the golf course.  Dash invited her over at once and, despite the embarrassing presence of his elderly father and housemate, proposed.

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(I didn't get a screenshot of the actual proposal – Owen, Alexis and the furniture managed to block every possible angle.)

I'd downloaded the wedding arch from the Bohemian Garden set, hoping that it would work without Generations, but time was much too short for a party.  Early the following morning, Dashiell and Lucy had a private wedding in the front garden.

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Generation 3

Home: La Casa, 96 Sonora Street, Lucky Palms
Heir: Dashiell
Traits: couch potato, friendly, bookworm, perfectionist, neurotic
Lifetime wish: Professional Author
Parents: Donna and Alexis (né Gilbert) Steel
Heir on honour roll at both elementary and high school.

Household NPC friends:

• Bettina Phan (burglar)
• Felicia Faulkner (policewoman)
• Grim Reaper
• Lucinda Harp (postwoman)
• Lauren Blanchard (papergirl)
• Terrance Huntley (pizza delivery)
• Guadalupe Gerber (repairman)
• Kevin McDaniel (maid)
• Rebecca Patrick (firefighter)
• Desirae Neumann (adoption worker)

Household best friends:

• Lucy Tanner
• James Tanner
• Robert Tanner
• Andrew Shaw
• Emily Shaw
• Rufus Littlefield
• Nicklaus Simmons
• Dominique Matthews
• Marta Haley
• Felicia Faulkner

Unique maxed career: journalism
Unique supermaxed skill: writing.  (He also had level 5 charisma.)
Unique opportunities (Black Ops) completed by heir:   

• Pile of Permission Slips
• The Research Project
• Correcting Past Mistakes
• Late Night Crunch
• To Boldly Go
• A History of One
• Digitizing Your Notes
• Sit, Listen and Learn
• It Was All Yellow
• Getting to Know You*

*Not the charisma opp, which has an extra …  This is from the journalism career and is another one I can't remember seeing before.  I probably wouldn't have spotted the slight difference in the names if 'Getting to Know… You' hadn't popped up for Dawn almost simultaneously.

Building: Area-52 Test Labs
Fully-upgraded property: Paint a Desert Art Gallery
Heir adult?  Yes
Tombstone (large): Donna Steel
Set of items of unique type: space rocks
Total value: §57079

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I didn't get as lucky with the space rocks as in the 4x4.  I still remember that gigantic mesosiderite fondly.  (Over §31K for a single rock!)  The one large rock in this collection is mesosiderite (and worth §1560) but the gigantic ones are all of medium value.

[Trident]

Ack! What a nail-biter for Dashiel! (Goodness, and I thought that the hardest one would be the guitar heir, knock on wood). Congratulations on three generations so far!

I like what you're doing with the townie genetics. I've played with pollinators, and you're right, it does make for a more fun game! Plus, you get to see all the super interesting genetics play out.

[hazelnut]

Ack! What a nail-biter for Dashiel! (Goodness, and I thought that the hardest one would be the guitar heir, knock on wood). 

Dash is certainly the problem child of the dynasty so far (and it didn't end when he was no longer the active heir).

Yes, the guitar heir is the one I'm really dreading, just because it's so dependent on getting opportunities.  So far, they've been coming in faster than usual, so I'm hoping for the best.   I wasn't looking forward to the writer, because it's not one of my favourite skills and I dislike the journalism career for no very good reason.  I wasn't sure whether it would be possible to get to level 10 with just writing (it might be but would take ages, based on Dashiell's performance).  Several other heirs will have to have two skills but they should be easier to control.  Once charisma's unlocked, that's it.  As it happened, although he got two challenges immediately and gained the first few levels quickly, it slowed down dramatically at level 5, probably because that was when he maxed the career and started spending most of his time writing rather than talking to people.  He eventually reached level 6 in extreme old age.

[Nindigo]

Just popping in to say I'm enjoying your story, hazelnut. Reading it in fact inspired me to have my own Sims go and live in Lucky Palms

[hazelnut]

Thanks.  It's one of my favourite towns to play in.  There seems to be so much space and the townies have interesting genetics without going to Twinbrooky extremes.


Waiting for Dashiell

House 4 had loads of space, although not all of it was useful.  It also turned out that NPCs couldn't get in through the front door (because it was on a diagonal, maybe?)  A useful feature when there was an attempted burglary but infuriating when the repair Sim got stuck outside for hours, then just charged a fee and drove off without fixing anything.  Lucy had to learn handiness fast.  The house was pretty to look at, though.

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After the long and boring generation 3, I was keen to get started with a different heir.  Dash and Lucy tried for a baby as soon as they'd moved in.

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Then Lucy went to sort out her new outfit (plus pregnancy-enabled stuff ) and I got a good look at the latest genetic input into the family.

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As I'd thought from a distance, she could be Grandma Yuna's twin.  Her traits are interesting: artistic, couch potato, vegetarian, perfectionist and inappropriate.

The next bit is predictable…
 
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Delia had her first birthday and, surprisingly, turned out to be blonde.  Not only that but I'm pretty certain that's Tabbi Claremont's non-standard blonde.  I can't remember a hair colour skipping two generations and then reappearing before.

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Lucy taught Delia her toddler skills.  Dash was too busy writing.  In my first Decadynasty, Penny stayed in journalism all her life (which was a lot easier with charisma as a free skill) and specialised in articles, writing well over a hundred.  In that game, I was going for happiness points and she racked up a ridiculous number of them.  This time around, I planned to have a collection of books, so Dash was now writing masterpieces with a view to changing his specialism from articles as soon as possible.  Even with the speed writer challenge completed, it was going slowly.

Delia had another birthday.

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The Shaws had joined the household a day or two after Dashiell.  Andrew produced the next generation with his townie girlfriend then moved out.  Emily, who had points in several skills, stuck around for longer, helping out with the garden, repairs and cooking and becoming Delia's tutor.

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Delia had rolled a wish to buy a toy oven almost as soon as she aged up and I was only too happy to go along with it.  No harm in making an early start on her supermax.

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It was hard to imagine how her first attempts at muffins could have turned out worse – horrifying quality, pouring smoke and invisible  .  This didn't exactly bode well for her future career.

It was a pity that David had already supermaxed athletics.  Delia appeared to have a hidden Loves to Swim trait, even without Island Paradise.  Whenever I took my eye off her, she headed for a pool.  I was sure she'd unlock the athletic skill with all that swimming but somehow she never did.

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She became a teenager and immediately wished to eat at the bistro.

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Delia appeared to be their only customer.  Clearly, someone needed to take this place in hand.  Maybe she could do it – later.  For now, she needed to learn proper cooking.  She did much better with the real, grown-up oven.  It probably helped that she was now a natural cook.  (Shouldn't that be a birth trait?)

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Her teens passed in a whirl of school, socialising with friends, several short-term part-time jobs and lots of cooking.  And more swimming, of course.

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Lucy threw a party for Delia's young adult birthday, inviting all of the teens and young adults in town.  The Skull and Crossbones Duo are the latest generation of Shaws.  By this time, they seem to be pretty much pure clone apart from the surname .

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Delia had already chosen Five-Star Chef as her lifetime wish, so she went off to the bistro to get a job as a scullion and then returned to her own kitchen.  Large quantities of autumn salad and peanut-butter-and-jam sandwiches were made and chucked straight in the bin.

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Since she was progressing though her career amazingly quickly (especially by comparison with her father), I started looking around for a spouse.   Her boss was a clone but had decent traits and rejoiced in the name of Seneca Suggs, a big plus point in my view .  Or there was always Oscar Shaw.  He'd grown up with unfortunate hair but a nice personality – and, more importantly, Delia was attracted to him.  In a change from the Sim-standard bathroom courtship, they spent a lot of time in (and under) the water together.

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And it seemed that Oscar wasn't entirely cloney after all.  He'd inherited body hair and muscle definition from someone back in the family tree.

Delia finished the 75 meals for the World-Class Chef challenge while she was at level 8 of the skill, so spent her non-working time over the next few days in the library, reading the third skill book and then the recipes she'd been carrying around in her inventory since the bookshop had had a sale when she was a teen.

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Three days before her adult birthday, she maxed her career and achieved her lifetime wish.

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With her supermax already done, all that was left was for Delia to age up, Lucy to make a few more NPC friends and someone to provide a tombstone.

Which brings us back to Dashiell.  He'd now written a dozen masterpieces, several of them bestsellers.  He'd had his life extended with a plate of Rachael's ambrosia and then with two or three life fruit to give him time to finish the twelfth masterpiece but, about halfway through Delia's young adulthood, I gave up trying to get a higher-value book and left him to his own devices.

(Disappointingly, the random variation in book value seems to far outweigh the benefits of writing more in a genre or becoming a specialist.  His highest value masterpiece was the fifth, closely followed by the second.  With hindsight, I wish I'd stuck with that one and let him have a natural-length life.)

By Delia's birthday, Dash was still going strong.

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I sighed and got on with making sure that everything else was ready for the move.  Like Delia proposing to Oscar, for example.

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And then we all waited.

And waited.

And waited some more.

And finally…

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Yay! He snuffed it!  Erm, I mean, sadly, at the age of 108, Dashiell left us.

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Despite finishing her own share of the requirements so early, Delia was over halfway through adulthood when she moved out.  Again, it didn't feel as though there was time for a wedding party.  She and Oscar married in a quiet ceremony just outside the glitchy front door.

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They drove to his home, collected his sister and then took a taxi to the airport.

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[hazelnut]

Generation 4

Home: Modernista, 71 Golf View Road, Lucky Palms
Heir: Delia
Traits: excitable, heavy sleeper, friendly, natural cook, great kisser
Lifetime wish: Celebrated Five-Star Chef
Parents: Dashiell and Lucy (née Tanner) Steel
Heir on honour roll at both elementary and high school.

Household NPC friends:

• Latoya Burdick (postwoman)
• Jerimiah Dowdy (burglar)
• Brendon Grayson (policeman)
• Kirby Saunders (babysitter)
• Joni Buck (pizza delivery)
• Trisha Durant (papergirl)
• Kara Simpson (maid)
• Teresa Harman (repairwoman)
• Dedrick Adams (firefighter)
• Grim Reaper

Household best friends:

• Oscar Shaw
• Dustin Steel (Dawn's adopted son)
• Seneca Suggs
• Jedidiah Patten
• Antwan Riddick
• Jasmin Henderson
• Jacques Vanhorn
• Rasheed Vanhorn – the Vanhorns appear to be a family with a fascinatingly varied background.
• Shonna Tanner (no relation)
• Robin Gillette

Unique maxed career: culinary
Unique supermaxed skill: cooking
Unique opportunities (Black Ops) completed by heir:   

• Research Project
• After School Employment
• The Greatest Food Ever
• Borrowing Ingredients
• Corporate Dining
• Spying on the Cuisine
• From One Chef to Another
• That's Outstanding!
• The Dish Showdown
• Swim into the Grill

Building: Lucky Llamas Stadium
Fully-upgraded property: Perfect Paradise Pool
Heir adult?  Yes
Tombstone (large): Dashiell Steel

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Set of items of unique type: Books (ten copies of Dashiell's highest-value book, Mass to Peace.  I was getting a bit desperate for titles by this time.  My favourite was Peaceful Mastery.  Very zen – but unfortunately only worth about §800.)
Total value: §11630

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[hazelnut]

Lucky Palms family trees

Tanner:

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Lancaster:

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Shaw:

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[hazelnut]

A Busy Household

The new Mr and Mrs Steel moved to Sunset Valley and bought Wagner's Repose.

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It was the final home of my previous Decadynasty family and I was hoping some of their success might rub off.  Plus, it has a beautiful vista and plenty of living space, which this generation was going to need.  First, though, they had to deal with a minor crisis.  Squatters had been living in the house and had left piles of rubbish scattered about; fortunately mostly in the garden and garage, with a few on the various decks.  The house itself was almost unaffected.  Some of the rubbish piles had attracted rats.  Rather cute, if unconvincing, rats.

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That's another thing I can't remember seeing before this game.  My Sims have had to deal with meteor strikes, flooding, ancient burial grounds and cockroaches before but not squatters.  Oscar's sister Helen, who was neat, did most of the cleaning up and then was, rather unkindly, kicked out.

Oscar went off to the mirror and dresser for a makeover.  A very minor one, as it turned out.  Most of his outfits were already in his favourite colour, brown.  As for his appearance, I'd been desperate to change it but somehow he didn't look like Oscar any more with a full head of hair.  So, in the end, he kept his hairstyle.

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His traits are artistic, virtuoso, family-oriented, kleptomaniac and easily impressed.  Not bad at all.

While her husband went off to the library to start learning a selection of useful skills, Delia ran around Sunset Valley making friends.  The collection for this house is going to be skill certificates, so the Steels were going to need help.  Jack Bunch, Yumi Sekemoto and Agnes Crumplebottom were all persuaded to move in.

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(You'll notice that Delia was working on the next generation as well.)

Christopher Steel wasn't originally going to be a member of the skilling team, although I'd been planning to use him as a pollinator later on.  I wanted someone to catch deathfish so that Delia could make a supply of ambrosia for this town, but Claire Ursine would have been a more logical choice.  On the other hand, I'd like to keep Claire's unborn baby as a potential spouse and I like Chris better.  In the end, Delia decided it.  She kept bumping into Chris and they became best friends.  So he joined the household as well.

Oscar had his adult birthday outside the bistro after completing an opportunity.  Half the town seemed to have turned up to cheer, so he took the chance to try out his new charisma skill and make friends.

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Meanwhile, back at home, another birthday was happening.

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Dylan turned out to be dark-haired like his father but with Delia's skin tone.

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Delia taught him to talk.  Neither of them seemed to enjoy it much .

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In the few days before he'd moved in, Chris had become romantically involved with Erin Kennedy.  Once he'd caught a few deathfish, he went over to visit…

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…and a few days later, Erin came over to introduce him to the results.  Well, one of them.  The other twin seemed to have been left behind on her own.

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Delia was also doing her bit for the non-clone population of Sunset Valley.

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Yet again, we had Steel siblings who shared a birthday.  Darcey became a toddler on the same day that Dylan aged up to child.

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Dylan wasn't academic.  He'd far rather be playing video games than doing homework.

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Playing in the sprinkler was good, too.

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By the kids' next birthday, the population of the house had changed.  Only Jack was left of the original skilling team, still working on upgrading the last few appliances and maxing his career.  Instead, a succession of pollinators joined the household for short periods.

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Dylan grew into a rather sulky-looking teen who was even more devoted to the TV and games console than he'd been as a child.

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Darcey, on the other hand, was a sociable little thing.  On her first day of school she made friends with the Kennedy-Steel twins and they invited her over to their house.

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Isla, on the left, seems to have inherited Erin's square jaw.  She's also grumpy and insane.  Evie, in the middle, is excitable, loves the outdoors and is generally adorable.  I think we may be looking at the next spouse, assuming things go well this generation.

The pollinators continued their work, helped by the heart-shaped bed.  (It's tough but someone has to do it…)

I'd been planning to pair Mortimer up with Bella yet again but the Bachelors had left town early on.  Instead, he hooked up with Darlene Bunch (and Jack was able to move back in with his family when they subsequently married).

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For once, Darcey had a birthday on her own.

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And the pollination continued.  Sam Sekemoto and Ramona Ursine were clearly made for each other .

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Dylan grew up at last…

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…and Oscar gave him his old guitar.

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At last he'd found something useful to do that was as much fun as video games  .


Dylan is, of course, The Heir I've Been Dreading.  So far, the opportunities haven't exactly been flooding in (they seem to have slowed down for everyone since the relocation).  He's currently nearly halfway through young adulthood and has only had two opps since he left school – and only one of those was for guitar.  I came quite close to giving up last night but hopefully things will improve.

[hazelnut]

Guitar Man

At 99 days, Delia left work and met Grim.

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She just missed seeing her daughter grow up.  I hadn't been paying Darcey much attention recently and was astonished to notice that she was now a pyromaniac.  Where did that come from?  I know there are no NPC firefighters in the family tree (unless someone was cheating behind their spouse's and my backs) and the only Lucky Palms townie with the trait is Phoenix Ross, according to the Sims Wiki.

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Dylan was progressing quickly through the music career, although it was almost certain to slow down once he was working later hours.  He tended to go back to the theatre even on his days off, to play for tips outside the doors.  He met most of the town that way…

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…and someone else as well.

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Grim seemed to turn up remarkably often.  If I was an elderly Sunset Valley resident I'd make a point of avoiding buskers, just in case  .  Grim even stayed to listen sometimes, although he wasn't much of a tipper.

Oscar got to 100 before Grim came for him.  He didn't go nearly as gracefully as his wife.

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(The Sim on the right in that screenshot is Max Keaton, the last pollinator for this generation.  He ended up failing to find a spouse from one of the original townie families and married a clone instead.)

After having very few opportunities in the first half of young adulthood, Dylan suddenly had a whole run of them.  If he'd been any of the other heirs, he'd have been almost done.  As it was, he needed another five guitar opps.   Still, it wouldn't hurt to start preparing for the move.

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Shortly after Evie became his girlfriend, one of Dylan's older colleagues died and was replaced – by Evie.  They spent almost all of their time together and soon had a maxed-out relationship.  She was definitely The One.

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A week after his adult birthday, Dylan emerged victorious from the Local Musician Showdown to find Evie waiting for him outside the theatre.

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He whispered in her ear.

"Hey babe, your boyfriend's a Guitar Star.  Nearly there!"

All that was left was to get to level ten of his career – and he did that on his next work shift.

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Dylan had bought Central Park as his property and installed an arch and seating as part of the upgrade – which meant that he and Evie could have a proper wedding where the guests sat and watched the ceremony instead of milling around and getting in the way of my screenshots.

It was slightly spoilt when Grim appeared to collect a random townie who happened to die of old age in the park just as the guests were gathering  .

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And I discovered I could have counted him as an NPC friend after all.  Darcey had only just started learning charisma when Oscar died, so I was pretty sure her relationship with Grim was too low.  It hadn't occurred to me that he'd qualify as an old friend of Dylan's.

With the townie's soul duly reaped, Grim went about his business and the wedding began.

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The guests included most of the second-generation townies.  The bald teen in the red shirt in the picture above is Derrell Landgraab, son of Malcolm and River (née McIrish).  Ignoring the ceremony, he wandered off to do his homework at the other side of the park immediately after that screenshot was taken  .

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Seated in the front row, in the yellow top, is Latarsha McGraw, who looks remarkably like her mother, the former Blair Wainwright.  At the other end of the row, and not quite sure whether he should sit or stand, is Matthew Alvi, son of Miraj and Sandi (née French).

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In the front row on the other side of the aisle,we have Jeremy Goth, who has inherited Grandma Cornelia's purple hair and doesn't show much sign of his Bunch heritage – which is probably a good thing.  In the back row, in her bikini, is the bride's twin sister Isla and, next to her, Kathleen Sekemoto, who thankfully seems to have avoided her parents' alopecia.

And so, with (most of) their family and friends watching, Dylan and Evie became husband and wife.

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(I slightly regretted choosing 'formal' as the dress code.  The bride's formal outfit turned out to be more casual-looking than her everyday one.)


After all that worrying, Dylan finished his requirements quicker than his mother and grandfather.  So glad I didn't give up when it was looking so unpromising the other day.


Generation 5

Home: Wagner's Repose, 250 Redwood Parkway, Sunset Valley
Heir: Dylan
Traits: virtuoso, loves the outdoors, couch potato, party animal, vehicle enthusiast
Lifetime wish: Rock Star
Parents: Delia and Oscar (né Shaw) Steel
Heir on honour roll at both elementary and high school.

Household NPC friends:

• Tim Gage (paperboy)
• Sherri Walker (repowoman) – met in the park while Dylan was playing for tips
• Jed Fultz (maid)
• Shauna Coulter (postwoman)
• Clay Baker (pizza delivery)
• Lauren Liles (policewoman)
• Alisa Dow (repairwoman)
• Corey Pappas (firefighter)
• Miriam O'Brien (adoption worker)
• Antione Cox (babysitter)

Household best friends:

• Evie Kennedy-Steel
• Isla Kennedy-Steel
• Latarsha McGraw
• Ramona Sekemoto (née Ursine)
• Derrell Landgraab
• Darlene Goth (née Bunch)
• Gage Briody
• Arlo Bunch
• Sandi Alvi (née French)
• Tim Gage

Unique maxed career: Music (Rock)
Unique supermaxed skill: guitar
Unique opportunities (Black Ops) completed by heir:   

• Stinky Bugs
• Outside Reading
• Guitar Up!
• Floating in the Sea
• Stick Around for the Music
• Jammin' on the Streets
• I Got Your Back… Up
• A Skilled Guitarist
• Raise the Fun(d)
• Music Class!

Building: Wilsonoff Community Theatre
Fully-upgraded property: Central Park
Heir adult?  Yes

Tombstones (large): Delia and Oscar Steel
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Set of items of unique type: skill certificates
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Earned by Yumi (cooking), Agnes (cooking and painting), Chris (fishing), Jack (athletic and handiness), Oscar (handiness, gardening and guitar) and Dylan (guitar).  I wasn't sure whether Delia's cooking certificate would count but I suspect not, since she brought it with her from the previous house.
Total value: §10000