So it occurred to me this morning (something woke me up just after dawn and my mind was all spinning round and round with no interest in calming down and going back to sleep) that (A) I'm getting sort of tired of the current crop of grownup townies in Neighborhood One (for one thing Sally's in love with most of them, and it'd be nice if Eleanor in working slowly on her "Woohoo with 20 different Sims" LTW had access to some lovers that hadn't already slept with her Mom (eew!)), and also that (B) I had so much fun with Rooms to Let that it might be neat to do something vaguely like it again (only with a different narrative basis and with a "converted mansion" feel rather than a "converted warehouse" feel). And thus was born The Townie Project.
The project will involve move-inning six (to start with) adult Neighborhood One townies (where by "townie" here I mean non-controllables in general, including service NPCs), letting each one stay in the moved-in lot long enough to get aspiration levels reasonable (and whatever else seems required), and then moving them all out to the Bus Stop (currently unoccupied now that Kennedy and Eleanor have moved into a very nice little house that I ought to post pictures of), and then moving the combined household into a big elegant old mansion out by the seashore. Then we'll have (hopefully) six new game-generated townie adults in the neighborhood (for variety and for Eleanor), and we'll have a new big lot full of controllable adults to play when we feel like it. And we get to design a big 100K+ house!
The first beneficiary of the Project is Mitch the Fireman:
Welcome, Mitch; here's your plumb bob!
Mitch Lawson, father of Romance sims Gina and Eleanor Raptor, turns out to be Family aspiration, with a Lifetime Want to marry off six children. Ah, the cruel irony!
And here, offered as evidence that it's a good thing my day job involves neither designing nor naming houses, is the first photo of Casa Townie:
Still mostly unfurnished and unlandscaped, but pretty much entirely built.
My first house with either a basement or an accessible attic (it has both). Slightly raised foundation thanks to Greg's advice on the subject. Somewhat too close to the road (is there any way to move a house en bloc to a slightly different place in its lot?). Four big bedrooms, two somewhat smaller ones (they'll have to draw straws or something), a big common dining room and separate kitchen, lots of recreation space, a big main hall behind that grandiose two-storey door. Even a cute rear entrance to the basement (not shown). It'll be fun to test it out; but even unfurnished its current price is nearly 70K, so we'll have to wait until three or four more townies join the project to move anyone in.
Tentatively scheduled additional Project townies are Christy Stratton, Mellisa Fancey, Dr. Goopy Gilscarbo, Joe Carr, and Remington London the pizza guy. I'm too fond of Andrea and Ivy as lovely mysterious incarnations of the Other to want to change their status at the moment, so they'll have to stay bobless for now.
Since Sally is still busy with Mitch, we had Eleanor do the second move-in, into the neat little house that she and Kennedy had built on the north side of town. (Theirs is very much a partnership of convenience: one Romance and one Fortune, both with good-paying jobs, and Kennedy perfectly willing to put up with Eleanor's ways as long as she doesn't flaunt it too obviously in his face.)
Welcome, Melissa Fancey; here's your plumb bob!
She's Romance (yipes, another one!), and although she's only a Prep Cook she brought in 17K simoleans, which was a great help. (Kennedy's constant wants to buy stuff, not to mention my own enthusiasm for decorating the place, had brought on a bit of a cash-flow problem in the house.) Her LTW is Professional Party Guest, so why she's a Prep Cook isn't clear. (Silly Sims!)
Eleanor is in love with both of her roomies; by careful timing of who was awake when, she managed to have a "welcome to the Project" woohoo with Melissa in the hot tub, and then a nice bedtime one with Kennedy indoors later on after Melissa was asleep.
Odd place for a bed.
Melissa wasn't entirely pleased to be sleeping out on the deck in back, but her life is so much better now than it (apparently) was as a townie that she wasn't complaining. (It's a neat little house; these pictures don't really do it justice (he said modestly).)
(It occurs to me that Kennedy Cox could be grandfathered into the Project as well, but I think he prefers his current house. My guess is that Eleanor will eventually move out as she continues to sleep her way around the neighborhood, and maybe Kennedy will eventually find a mate and raise the next generation there, or become a crochety old bachelor miser, or something.)
The in-story explanation for the Project is that due to a big funding scandal one wing of the big state-sponsored Generic Townie Dormitory had to be shut down, and the townies were offered mysterious unspecified incentives if they could find someone in the visible part of the neighborhood to move in with. Or something like that... *8)
(The Townie Project continues here.)