The Keahi 4x4 (Graveyard pls)

[officialghosts]

Oh hi! Fancy seeing you here. And in the Sims 3 section, as well! I used to hang around the Sims 4 section like, years ago at this point. Asides from participating in some forum tournaments, I completed some non-dynasty projects, including collecting all the paintings in the game and the Wonder Child Challenge. I still think my work then is solid from a writing perspective, if not from a "posting in a timely fashion" one. And then I kind of fell off the Sims, and the forum, for several years. And eventually realized that I was no longer finding the Sims 4 all that entertaining, especially when the complete lack of balance in the game mechanics (everything's either too hard or way too easy!) made challenge play kind of a headache. But during quarantine I decided to boot up the Sims 3 again for the first time in about 6 years. And with a much better computer than I had back then and the money to splurge on some new expansions, I fell in love with it. So now I'm back, armed with an Adderall prescription and a moral imperative to be a hermit, to complete all the challenges I only dreamed about doing when I was a teen.

Okay, I didn't actually dream about doing the 4x4 back then. The rules were complicated and intimidating, and I certainly didn't have enough worlds (or skills, for that matter) to pull it off. But it's now become my favorite, as the speed and the variety appeals quite nicely to my short attention span. I'll also be doing it as a speedrun, because even the regular medium lifespan isn't breakneck enough for me.

I’m only a couple generations in at this point, but I’ve managed to get all the way to the end of the second world during a previous attempt so I’m not too intimidated. Just hoping that writing it up will keep me on track and motivated! There won’t be a story, just a summary of the individual heirs and overall strategy. I’ll try to make it entertaining regardless If all goes well, I'll have the first update (about my founders and their get-rich-quick schemes) up later today.

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World 1: Sunlit Tides
Gen 0
Gen 1
Gen 2

Family Tree (ft. spoilers!)

[Trip]

Welcome to our side! I like what I see in the family tree.

[Chubling]

Ahhh! Yay! More sims 3 love! It's such a great game. I had the same issues with sims 4 and I while I still enjoy it, nothing can beat the sims 3 for me.

[officialghosts]

@Trip Thanks! And yeah, I've already kind of felt out who the spouses in the first world will be and I'm very excited to see how they play out.

@Chubling Agreed! I've sunk a ton of time into the Sims 4, but I've definitely found that Sims 3 is more rewarding when it comes to playing dynasties and challenges.

And now, on to the first chapter!

Gen 0: She Blinded Me With Science

I’ve had a few aborted 4x4 attempts at this point (mostly due to stupid errors on my part), and with each one I’ve simplified my gameplan even more. I stopped using helpers or even spares after a few, because managing them felt like more effort than they were worth. Anything they can provide can probably wait for a spouse anyway. I also cut down on the amount of expansion packs I was using, because I read in one dynasty thread or another that this increases the rate of opportunities and that was the main thing holding me back most generations. The packs I’m using for this game are World Adventures, Ambitions, Supernatural, and University Life. Supernatural was next on the chopping block, but the elixirs (especially Liquid Job Booster) were too enticing and vampires/fairies let me keep around original townie genes without having to worry about pollinating. Generations was by far the most painful cut solely because of the Motive Mobile, but I absolutely noticed a difference in the amount of opportunities I was getting so it was a worthy sacrifice.

Now, on with the show. Time to meet our wonderful founders, Manu and Clementine.

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Name: Manu Keahi
Traits: Ambitious, Genius, Gatherer, Family-Oriented, Loves The Outdoors, Excitable (Nerd Trait)
Lifetime Wish: Swimming In Cash
Skills Maxed: Science

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Name: Clementine Keahi
Traits: Ambitious, Genius, Gatherer, Family-Oriented, Loves The Outdoors, Eco-Friendly (Nerd Trait)
Lifetime Wish: Swimming In Cash
Skills Maxed: Science

Manu is intended to be Polynesian, to go with the strong Hawaiian heritage in Sunlit Tides. Clementine is based off of one of my favorite sims from Sims 4, a marine biologist I played in Island Living. I wouldn't remember until far too late that not only is there another sim named Clementine in town, she's our next door neighbor.

(Also, since it's probably obvious at this point, I am using custom content skin and eyes; the Blueberry Bride skinblend from brntwaffles and the Default Replacement Eyes from Syera. That's the only custom content I'll be using, the rest is just the ridiculous amount of store content I've collected over the years.)

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And so, this pair of cute nerds moved directly onto one of Sunlit Tides’ many, many, many beaches with nothing but 4k to their name and a dream in their heart. A heir is conceived by 2 pm, and then the next few days are spent researching Science and juggling Logic tabcasts. A brief interlude occurs to befriend the beautiful Alana Kahale and sell her beautiful Bwan Speedster before quickly sending her out the (non-existent) door again. Won't be the last we see of the Kahales though, if everything goes according to plan.

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Surprise! Could have posted a pic of Baby Heir I guess, but once you've seen one Sims 3 baby you've seen em all.

Ah, yes, the plan. Let's get back to the plan. Step 2 (birth baby!) is completed, as well as step 2a (age baby up to toddler!) the second we're back home. Things like her name and personality and desires aren't important right now, what's important is that she's learns all her toddler skills by tomorrow morning.

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She does, thanks to the magic of the Store's playpen and walker. Now on to step, uhhh, 2c: tutoring her up to an A by the following night. Success! Rinse and repeat as a teenager. Our first heir becomes a YA at the end of the first week, about three days after she's born. We'll come back to her soon enough, but this chapter's about the parents.

Outside of tutoring their daughter, the Keahis spend their first couple of weeks maxing Science, possibly the most underrated skill in the game. At level 9, you get the ability to clone materials; at level 10, you get the Group Science Project. These are the only things you need to make a stupid amount of money in a relatively short time. Well, okay, you also need the transfiguration table, at least if you want to get it done at any sort of reasonable speed.

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Leveling the skill is by far the most time consuming part of the process. If you use the Meteor Shower option on the science project (leveling up red, blue, and green an equal amount), your lot will be barraged by meteors that destroy all your possessions and kill your sims. Dynasty over! No, what actually happens is that gems, metals, and space rocks (among other things) will rain down from above and cover your lot. Sometimes these collectibles are pretty darn rare; it's a good way to get tiberium, or more importantly for us, supernovium and compendium.

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This is where I failed my attempt that made it all the way to World 3, by the way! I was so excited when I developed this strategy - taking the supernovium from the Group Science Project (which is generally worth around 30-40k once smelted) and using it to build up compendium bars on the transfiguration table - that I used some of these bars for my museum, forgetting that transfiguration table items aren't allowed  Ah well. It was still a good trick to learn; after a few days of cloning and building up some compendium bars, the Keahis were about 2.5 million simoleons richer. Richer in points, as well; I had them shake the Orb of Answers a few times, spamming the "Will I Be Rich?" Option. After wishing to be worth 175k, 300k, 500k, and 1million, a simple compendium bar made them about 200k LTHP richer as well.

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The fam the moment they became multimillionaires. Ft a sneak peak of our Gen 1 Heir all grown up as well.

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As a reward for their hard work, the Keahis finally got to live in an actual house.

At this point Manu and Clementine’s work is basically done, and they get to spend the rest of their lives straight chilling, enjoying the sun and sea. If I was a crueler watcher I might age them up to elder immediately just to get them out of my hair sooner, but as it stands I’ll just let them spend the next couple lifestages making kissy faces at each other and playing Gnubb (they do not actually get to play Gnubb for long, because Clementine quickly decides that Gnubb is love, Gnubb is life, and chooses to play it over eating or sleeping.)

Next time around, we’ll get to the real action: Heir 1!

[Chubling]

Ahhh! I'm so impressed. The 4x4 scares me! It seems so hectic and hard as you are doing it on the shorter life span and I'm getting armpit sweats just imagining it. You seem to be handling it well so far!

[Trip]

I've never had room on a lot for the Group Science Project but now I gotta make room...just for the sake of science. That's pretty amazing strategy-wise.

[officialghosts]

@Chubling Thanks! This kind of play isn't for everyone for sure, I just happen to be a tyrant who micro-manages my sims like crazy. Makes actual gameplay move at a snail's pace sometimes, but also means my sims lead very, very productive lives.

@Trip I'm glad I could share! Any rare material you need, Mummitomium, Pink Diamonds, Soulpeace Gems, the Group Science Project is there to provide. It can also be used to increase skill gain rates and attract a bunch of random townies to your lot, which has it's own advantages.

In fact, heir one ended up befriending several of those townies as part of her requirements. And on that note:

Gen 1, Nani: Hot Girl Summer

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The lovely Nani Keahi, charming someone who came to gawk at all of the science occuring.

At this point, I've supermaxed Charisma so often that I could probably do it in my sleep. Each time I try to do something a little different to keep it fresh; a glamorous film actress in Lucky Palms and an industrious politician in Twinbrook (both for 4x4 attempts), as well as a dramatic stylist in Midnight Hollow (for a Life States Dynasty that collapsed partway through under the weight of not rolling 5k wishes). Of this assorted bunch, our girl Nani here was probably my favorite to play.

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A Charisma supermax isn't much more complicated than giving a sim Good Sense of Humor and Observant and sending them to random houses; it's the career that's the real struggle. I was originally gonna make Nani another politician, but it didn't really fit her peppy beach girl vibes. So I decided to give Sports Agent a shot for the first time. This turned out to be a pretty great call, because I quickly discovered it's an incredibly easy career to max. "Analyze Statistics" fills up the progress bar like crazy and takes only minutes of in-game time to do. There's also "Negotiate Contract", but that takes longer and has a risk of failure. It wasn't even that much of a time investment to get her to level 10 jock, just a weekend of chatting up the mascot and a few purchases of Jock Influence, powered by the car she bought before her YA birthday and sold right after.

At this point I had the first of what I assume will be many "Well, I could have done that better" moments. I'm not sure why I didn't abuse Analyze Statistics into Ask For Promotion as soon and as often as possible; as it was, I waited until her first weekend off to have her meet her boss. And was quickly rewarded for my sluggishness by having her die before Nani could even ask 

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RIP Eleanor Waterson. Nani is crying because she just lost one of her best friends. I'm crying because they had just finished discussing work.

Ultimately it's not a big deal, and Nani still completed her requirements on the day of her adult birthday, quicker than any of her predecessors. But still! I am trying to make this a speedrun. Honestly if I wasn't writing this down I might have just started over since we're so early in, but I've already grown attached to Nani (and her child!) so we'll just have to live with it!

Speaking of her child, let's meet the babydaddy.

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One of Nani's clients was local hunk Gilberto Gonzalez. Well, okay, he wasn't actually her client, but I like that story better than "I stalked his house until he got home while Nani texted other people"! Over the short time frame of this challenge I've already developed this image of Sunlit Tides as a place with a thriving sports scene (even though I think Gilberto's bio contradicts that ). A large proportion of the people the family knows at this point are either in the Sports Agent or Professional Sports careers, so it at least feels like it does.

As many a popular girl and popular boy have before, Nani and Gilberto went from friends to lovers to more pretty quick. They got married the night Nani finished her requirements, or, well, at least tried to; they were interrupted by another very untimely death.

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Nani never thought the biggest impediment to her success would be old ladies.

This created a very fun scenario where the game just refused to let Nani and Gilberto get married. The option was there, but the action would drop as soon as they faced each other. A cache clear fixed this, but most of the party guests had already left at this point. But in the morning light they finally got married with the parents and a few stragglers as witness, and ushered in Heir 2 shortly after. 

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Heir 1 Stats
Name: Nani Keahi Gonzalo
Traits: Ambitious, Charismatic, Excitable, Good Sense Of Humor, Loves The Outdoors, Lucky (Jock Trait), Neat (Nerd Trait)*
Lifetime Wish: Swimming In Cash
Skills Maxed: Charisma
Unique Career Maxed: Sports Agent
Unique Best Friends: Mary-Sue Pleasant, Owen Clinton
Skill Challenges: Comedian, Everybody’s Best Friend, Personable
Opportunities: Getting to Know… You, A Public Speaking Event, Charismatic Cash, Looking for a Friend

*This was part of a bold attempt to try and get someone in the house to actually clean up on their own. It didn't work.

[Chubling]

I love Nani! But I'm a sucker for the hot ones. And congratulations on getting everything so far! I'm can't wait to see how the baby turns out x

[officialghosts]

@Chubling Well if you're partial to the hot ones, you're gonna love heir 2!

Gen 2, Noa: Total Football

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Good news for all you fans of hot people out there: Noa is very hot. I have a lot of sims I would consider attractive, but often unconventionally so. Noa's just straight up a male model, and in another life I'm sure he's appearing in centerfolds in between matches. It's kind of amazing, but I guess that's what happens when you choose one of the most attractive sims the Sims 3 has to offer as a spouse (and watcher knows Nani's no slouch either). Said hotness made me decide he's probably a soccer (sorry, football) player, since my limited understanding of sports tells me that's what all the pretty boys play.

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Serving face in the living room.

Ironically, despite his prettiness, I don't actually have that many pictures of Noa at all. This is because Athletic is a boring supermax and Professional Sports is a stressful career. When I opened my screenshots folder and found out I had a grand total of 1 (one) picture of Noa working out I was surprised, and then remembered that I spent all of his workout time at speed 3 and became less surprised.

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Most of his work outs being at night probably didn't help either.

But Noa was pretty much destined to be an Athlete from the moment he was born, wasn't he? And not just because that's what I had written down in my plan. His father was a professional athlete, his mother managed athletes professionally, it's basically a family business at this point! Nani and Gilberto both rolled the massive ~10k wish to see him become a Pro Athlete, even. I'm sure there were some bitter grumbles about nepotism from teammates as he got promotion after promotion.

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Which he did! To the exclusion of anything else. Noa's work-life balance was terrible. Well, okay, terrible in a way different from my other sims. When he aged up it took several days for him to actually go to his first shift, and I got too in my head about it and focused hard on his career, spending much of his free time working from home or chasing down his incredibly evasive boss. (Seriously, this man just did not want to see Noa OR Gilberto, who was also his coworker. And then when he finally agreed to hang out for me he almost immediately had to leave for work! I ended up using the Moodlet Manager on him to get him to drop his "Go to Work" action and keep talking to Noa instead ) But all that meant that I didn't dedicate the time I should've to working on his supermax, and he maxed his career with almost 40 hrs of working out left to do! He ended up completing his requirements a couple days after his adult birthday, which isn't too bad considering his skill and job but still isn't great.

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But whatever, Noa's requirements were done! He called up his coworker Leilani Kahale (who ALSO didn't want to hang out at first despite being best friends with both him and Nani), devampired her, and got to flirting. She was one of my two prospective spouses for him anyways; her also being an athlete was just a nice coincidence. (The other one was Maggie Strong, a coworker of Nani's who has some very beautiful eyes under those glasses of hers, but there wasn't any spark when they met the way there was with Leilani.)

Conception proved a little difficult; Noa completed his requirements on Leilani's adult birthday, and they tried multiple times with no luck before I suspected that that might be interfering. She rushed downstairs for some cake, and wouldn't you know it, chimes were heard soon after.

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Heir 2 Stats
Name: Noa Gonzalo Kahale
Traits: Ambitious, Athletic, Loves the Outdoors, Lucky, Workaholic
Lifetime Wish: Swimming in Cash (Multitasker and Steel Bladder are more important than being interesting, unfortunately)
Skills Maxed: Athletic
Unique Career Maxed: Professional Sports
Unique Best Friends: Suzuki Hinata, Joey Curtis
Skill Challenges: Body Builder, Marathon Runner, Fitness Nut
Opportunities: Desert Air... Good?, Inter-Office League, Adonis in the Making, Ticket Counting

As a bonus, here's a picture of Gilberto without his big sunglasses on. Seems like Noa is just a clone of him with his mom's coloring.

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And as a bonus bonus, here's some cute pics from Noa's very brief time growing up.

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Clementine and Manu spent the rest of their life hanging around the house before passing some time in Noa's young adulthood. The only thing of note either of them really did was Manu doing Herb Experiments at a science station to improve the quality of Basil so that it would be more reliable and I would no longer miss important promotions bc my sim got sick. He was too good at it though and kept turning them into Super Spice instead. Then I realized it might be more effective to just clone the nice Basil I already had, and then he kicked the bucket before he could actually do that. I wouldn't expect anything else from The Sims though.

[Chubling]

Noa is a hottie! Look at that face! It helps take the sting out of the nepotism. And it is looking like the next gen is also going to be a stunner

[Trip]

Leilani is probably my favorite townie there for genes. Mad my decadynasty broke right before my heir was gonna marry her descendants. She seems to always become a vampire too? I think that's an act of charity for us.

Will our next heir be a couch potato to make its ancestors extremely mad?

[CeresIn]

Your sims are gorgeous! It's interesting to see your strategy using things that I know work well but I'm too lazy to try.

[officialghosts]

Hey everyone! Thank you for all the nice comments. Bad news, I'm going to be scrapping this dynasty attempt. I think I could probably, legally, get away with continuing, but I ran into some situations that made want to abandon it and start fresh with some better planning and some lessons learned.

The final nail in the coffin was that I just straight up didn't give myself enough money to buy out the entire world which is pretty embarrassing! I could've just spent another day building up a compendium bar. I also could've have just stuck around town for another week or so to build up some more cash, but this felt like the final indictment of my poor planning for this challenge. Beyond a general outline I was mostly just relying on my wits, which ended up with me making some dumb mistakes and wasting time.

Even without that, there was another thing that happened that might have made me have to restart anyways.

Let's start with a brief summary of the last two generations though.

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Heir 3 was a quiet, laidback fisherwoman named Kaile'a. She was basically just a copy of her father but I still liked her a lot; she always kind of looked like she was laughing at a joke only she was in on. She also had a twin, Haukea, who took more after their mother. It wasn't at all planned, and I realized afterwards that Leilani's favorite music genre is Kids. I played most of the pregnancy on speed 3, so I assume she just changed every radio she could find to the twin-making station! Haukea was tutored and aged up after Leilani was done helping Kaile'a, and then they moved out together.

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I actually enjoy maxing fishing more than most. Not having a rabbithole career to worry about was nice, although in the end she took almost as long as the other heirs to finish because of opportunities. Partly because of bad luck; it felt like Noa was getting one every other day and she was only getting about one a week. But also partly because I didn't keep tight enough control over the Multitab and she ended up with a single point in writing that immediately infected her skill opportunities. (the other big flub I made this generation was just not at all thinking about her third skill challenge until she was an adult, and giving her the decidedly unhelpful Eco-Friendly as her last trait over the much more useful Gatherer.)

After maxing the Angler career she took a job in Science, a career I always want to explore that's just never strategically viable. She got an opp to wash some dishes on her third day. Out of curiosity, I had her leave work, run to the nearest community lot with a sink, wash the dishes, and return to work. I knew it was possible that would just break the opp completely but wouldn't you know it, it actually registered! Kaile'a left (again) as soon as it did, ready for some babymaking with the fiance she had picked up in China, Bao Louie.

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Bao was his son's final opponent in the Grand Tournament. Surprisingly cinematic for the Sims.

Bo was a big cutie and a great mix of both of his parent's features. I'll be sad not to get to play with him more (at least in this challenge, it's entirely possible I'll pull a classic simmer move and give him a second chance somewhere else). Most of his supermax took place during an extensive trip to China to complete the Grand Tournament. Another example of my poor planning occurred here though. I last minute decided to put him through the Spy branch of Law Enforcement, instead of the more interesting but glitchy Thief career. If I had looked at it more closely beforehand I would have sacrificed one of his many useful traits for Workaholic. With that it would've likely been possible to max the career before his adult birthday; as it was, he had to wait a weekend with a 2/3rds full progress bar for his last promotion.

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When I got down to a week or so left with Bo I started to get worried about something else, though; Noa was just not dying. He must have had a full bar for over a week now. The longest I've had any heirs last in a previous attempt was almost 3 weeks over, and that one wasn't even an athlete! By that point I was also getting tired of managing him, even in an offhanded way, so I set up a little prison cell for him, as you do. And in that cell I put a jellybean bush.

I didn't think much of it. He'd eat like, one a day and I'd think, "haha, wouldn't it be crazy if he actually died from this?" And then he did.

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And now I was in a weird edge case scenario. It wasn't like I was shoving jelly beans in his mouth (this was his third one over several days) and I was pretty taken aback when he actually kicked the bucket. But on the other hand, I knew this was a possibility when I bought the bush and had him eat from it. It's the kind of thing where I feel like I could get away with it, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to get away with it, you know? I played out the rest of Bo's requirements but looking at the graves at the end I was already considering taking this L and starting over. And then I ran out of money.

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I had even already taken the end of world photo.

It's a shame to see these guys go! I had a great time sharing them with you. And I'm definitely being too hard on myself with some of this strategy stuff, but well, I'm glad to have a chance to do better. As for what's next, I'll probably hold back from starting another dynasty right away, to avoid getting too burnt out and to do some proper planning. Probably wait until I'm a little deeper into a challenge to start posting about it. Maybe sink my teeth into one of the other dynasties for a while and then circle back around and start fresh. I am experiencing some FOMO from catching up with all these Immortal Dynasties

Thanks for reading and commenting, I really appreciate it. Here's hoping for good genes and better schemes in the next one!

[Chubling]

Sometimes stuff just doesn't work out! You learned and that is what was important. That and you made some hot sims, which is all we can really good for. But it was very fun to read and while I'm sad to see them go, hopefully you'll jump into another dynasty before long!

For my dynasty plans, I have a big old binder my household has started calling my eugenics bible because I keep all my pollinating info in there. It's a lot of work planning for the various dynasties! And then you get tired of the planning and full of hubris and all the planning you did do and then you are all, "I'll just wing it!" And the next thing you know, you are sobbing, surrounded by the flaming wreckage of your dynasty, begging the sky to tell you where it went wrong, but you already know.

But this really was a fun read and I am still deeply impressed you got this far on a short life span. I would have been in hysterics trying to get it all done!

[officialghosts]

@Chubling Thank you! And yes, hopefully I can get some hot sims out of the next one (catching up on your immortal dynasty has made me realize how many interesting faces there are in Moonlight Falls, maybe I'll venture there...)

And a binder is a good idea. I have a journal where I write out general plans but I could stand to go more in depth. Most of the time I start sketching out a plan and get so excited to play that I just start and figure out the rest on the fly And then I'm scrambling to get things into place later!