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Showing posts with label Druff. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Druff. Show all posts

Saturday, May 1, 2010

Druff Estate, Round 1 - A New Life

Dan DruffMisty (Cupp) Druff
Nathan DruffNeville Druff
Norris DruffLuey


We last saw the Druff family in Druff Estate – Introduction & Backstory. Misty had been newly resurrected for the second time by Bud Wieser, and had been reunited with her husband and children in their new house. Life for the family fairly quickly settled into an ordinary routine and they began to put their paranormal misadventures behind them as they sought to become a normal family. Dan had adopted Luey from Crystal Ball, the mother of his other children, and brought him home for his sons. He began working with him to teach him the tricks he’d need for his career.


Misty worked on her Creativity skills, and managed to finish maxing out all of her skills in the process.


Nathan also worked on his skill, primarily by playing chess to increase his Logic. It earned him a membership to the Games lot, and the representative found him to issue the invitation just as he was going to shower after having been in the pool.


Dan and Luey worked their jobs, with both getting chance cards. Luey came home with a promotion early in the week.


Misty helped Nathan with his homework after school, while Neville chatted with a friend he’d brought home with him.


Later that evening, Misty helped Neville get his homework done, and Nathan worked some more with Luey to teach him the new skills he needed now since his promotion. At some point during the day, Arlina Pennington had dropped by for a visit, and she was busy watching a game on TV while the family went about their own tasks.



Dan worked on teaching Norris how to walk, though after they’d finished, instead of taking him up and settling him in his crib to sleep, he left the exhausted toddler to crawl into Luey’s bed to take a nap instead.


The elderly butler generally did a fair job of taking care of things around the house, but was often to be found standing in the foyer with a confused look on his face as he tried to remember what it was he was going to do next.


Meanwhile, Misty had gotten herself another job in her preferred field, and she and Dan both had opportunities related to their hobbies crop up while at work.


Neville was proving to be a fairly social little boy, frequently inviting friends home from school with him. One day he invited Thomas Shi over.


While he was talking and playing with Thomas out front, Misty came home with a promotion and a friend of her own. Her friend offered to hook her up with better pay for her work.


After Thomas went home, Neville put off doing his homework some more and decided to try jumping rope instead. He discovered that he really likes doing Fitness activities.


Another day, another chance card for Luey who was doing quite well in the Showbiz career.


That day, he and Misty both came home with promotions. Luey’s put him at the top of the Showbiz career after only a relatively short time working in it. This is likely due to the fact that he was getting a lot more attention with the Druffs than he probably would have at Crystal Ball’s house, since he would have had to compete with his parents and littermates there for someone to train him.


As the days progressed, Norris grew up to be a child. Unfortunately, his parents had been so busy with their jobs, his brothers, and Luey, that he didn’t learn all of his toddler skills before he transitioned. He had received plenty of attention still, however, so he still grew up well.


Dan caught the flu from one of his patients at the hospital, but a bowl of comfort soup that night helped him get over it quickly before he’d passed it on to Misty or his sons.


Neville frequently played chess with Nathan since they were both trying to raise their Logic as much as possible so they could get good scholarships for college one day. One night the Games lot representative came and issued him his own membership to the secret lot.


Even though he was at the top of his career now, Nathan still worked at teaching Luey new tricks. Norris also took an interest in Luey, though mostly as a playmate.


On her day off, Misty was feeling a bit cooped up in the house, so she decided to go shopping, and perhaps meet some more of the townsfolk. She tried talking to Maura Midlock, but Maura wasn’t very interested in talking to her.


After giving up on trying to have a conversation with Maura, she met Sue Shi and chatted with her awhile while Sue’s son Terrance listened in.


Neville went outside to jump rope every chance he got, and it wasn’t long before he was offered a membership to the Platinum Gym.


Later, his friend Luke Warm came by for a visit. Though Luke was a zombie, he’d been quite nurturing in helping raise both Nathan and Neville when they were little and the family had still been living with Bud Wieser and Luke.


By the end of the week, Neville had grown enough that he transitioned to being a teenager. Since the family wasn’t really big on birthday parties, he did so without much fanfare in the backyard one night while taking the kitchen scraps out to the composter.


He decided that he wanted to have a big family of his own one day – and that he also wanted to explore the myriad possibilities inherent in Grilled Cheese sandwiches.


Not to be outdone by his little brother, Nathan decided on a secondary aspiration finally as well. He decided that having a lot of friends would be cool.



And thus another week came to an end at the Druff household. All had settled in nicely to their new home, though they still had many things to accomplish. The boys still had skills to work on and scholarships to earn. Misty was still working hard to get to the top of her career, and Dan was contemplating a career change. If only he could find time to do some job hunting…or to plant some things in the lovely greenhouse they had in the backyard. Perhaps one day he would.

*********************************************************

Author’s Notes:
My apologies to those who had been following my blog here in the past for the long hiatus. Unfortunately, shortly after playing the Druff household last August I found myself suddenly burnt out on playing the game and blogging. And so their pictures have languished on my hard drive for months now, waiting for me to find the time and motivation to write their story. I’ll apologize also for the rather sketchy text in this update, but it’s been so long since I actually played the lot for this update that I don’t really remember what happened, other than not a lot did happen really. Just ordinary day-to-day sim life for the most part. Luckily I’d taken plenty of screenshots while I was playing, so I did my best to piece together the week’s story from those.

I hope to get back into Challengeville to keep the stories going, though unfortunately I don’t have a lot of time to play or to blog these days. They’re calling to me more and more as time goes on though, so hopefully I can get my feet wet with one of the families here again soon. Probably the Roper family next, though I’m still contemplating various options of how to proceed with the neighborhood, whether to keep going in the Prosperity rounds fashion that I have been and work through all the many households in the neighborhood (there are a great many that haven’t been seen yet in the blog), or to switch over to working on the various TSR challenge lots that are in the ‘hood to play those challenges out before I worry about continuing with the neighborhood-wide time progression. If any of you have any thoughts about what you’d like to see here, leave a comment, and I’ll take it under consideration. Until such time as I make it back here with another entry, however, take care all, and happy Simming.

Thursday, December 25, 2008

Druff Estate - Introduction & Backstory

The Druff house is an offshoot of the Wieser household, and most of their story to date is told there. This post will follow up with the Druffs on their new lot as they start their own household separate from Bud Wieser's. I didn't play them for very long after moving them to their new house, but there is still a little more of their story left to tell. But first, a recap of the residents here.


Dan Druff
Dan Druff
Aspiration: Knowledge/Family
LTW: Become Chief of Staff; Become Mad Scientist
Hobby: Sports
Zodiac: Gemini
Turn Ons: Fitness, Vampirism
Turn Off: Fatness
Personality: 4 Neat, 7 Outgoing, 8 Active, 3 Playful, 3 Nice
Badges: Silver Fishing


Misty (Cupp) Druff
Misty (Cupp) Druff
Aspiration: Knowledge
LTW: Become City Planner
Hobby: Sports
Zodiac: Gemini
Turn Ons: Fitness, Vampirism
Turn Off: Fatness
Personality: 4 Neat, 7 Outgoing, 8 Active, 3 Playful, 3 Nice
Badges: None


Nathan Druff
Nathan Druff
Aspiration: Pleasure
LTW: Become Game Designer
Hobby: Fitness
Zodiac: Gemini
Turn Ons: Creative, Good at Cleaning
Turn Off: Makeup
Personality: 2 Neat, 10 Outgoing, 10 Active, 6 Playful, 7 Nice
Badges: None


Neville Druff
Neville Druff
Aspiration: Grow Up
LTW: N/A
Hobby: Fitness
Zodiac: Scorpio
Turn Ons: N/A
Turn Off: N/A
Personality: 10 Neat, 8 Outgoing, 10 Active, 4 Playful, 3 Nice
Badges: None

Norris Druff
Norris Druff
Aspiration: Grow Up
LTW: N/A
Hobby: Games
Zodiac: Sagittarius
Turn Ons: N/A
Turn Off: N/A
Personality: 4 Neat, 2 Outgoing, 8 Active, 10 Playful, 3 Nice
Badges: None


After Misty had been eaten by her cowplant a second time, Dan decided enough was enough. There was a newly renovated old Victorianesque house around the corner that was up for sale, so he quickly purchased it, packed up himself and his 3 sons and moved them there, leaving Misty's grave and her cowplant behind. He didn't want to risk losing any of his sons to the nasty thing as well.

Meanwhile, back at the Wieser house, Bud decided that it was worth bringing Misty back from the dead once more so that his friend Dan's family could be complete. He made the call, but this time when Misty came back, she had no memory of Dan whatsoever. She did remember her children, however, and when one of them called she eagerly accepted the invitation to come over to their new house as she was anxious to see them again. She was at first puzzled about who the man was they were living with, but once he began talking to her and took her into his arms to give her a kiss, it all came flooding back. She happily accepted his invitation to move in with them. And so, the family was once again whole.

Shortly after moving, their oldest son Nathan had his transition to teen, followed a few days later by their son Norris transitioning to toddler. They decided that it was time to see if they could get Nathan and Neville into private school, and so they called up the headmaster and invited him over for dinner. Things with the dinner went rough for awhile*, but in the end the headmaster agreed to accept the boys into his school and told them that they could start the next day.

* Actually, it took me about 4 attempts at the headmaster scenario, leaving without saving in between each one, before I could get it to work. Each time I kept either being glitchy, or I simply messed up on it since I hadn't attempted it for a long time and had forgotten how to do it all. In the first attempt, Norris wanted to transition to toddler right in the middle of it, which distracted everyone from what they were doing with the headmaster. And from there it was just a disaster. They were rejected and Misty promptly went into aspiration failure since, as a Knowledge sim, she had a fear of her sons being rejected. Dan was already permaplat by this point from achieving his LTW, so it didn't affect him so much. For the second attempt, I had Nathan grow Norris up ahead of time and then kept Norris busy playing with one of his toys up in the nursery, flagrantly cheating his needs up to max so no one would get worried about him being hungry or anything and interrupt what they were doing with the headmaster. I'd planned for Dan to make a sparkly fish dish for dinner, but the butler had made hamburgers before then and everyone had filled up on those. Traffic in the smallish kitchen got jammed up, I had to keep fighting everyone to keep them on task, and again, it was a disaster. Third try, I turned free will off temporarily so they wouldn't keep trying to wander off on their own. I cheated motives up to max ahead of time to keep the butler from preparing a meal that wasn't on the agenda, then pulled them back down when it was time for dinner so they'd eat and not end up fat. But again, I couldn't figure out why the headmaster wouldn't come when I used the "Call to Dinner...Guests" on the plate of fish. Eventually I figured out I had to use the "Entertain...Call to dinner" option instead to get him to sit down, but by the time I did, time had pretty much run out and it failed again. So, exit, try again with free will still turned off for the lot. And the 4th time was a charm. Tour went great, as it had all of the previous times pretty much since I gave them a pretty nicely furnished house, I got him to come to dinner alright and it got high points on the scenario. In fact, between the tour and the dinner of sparkly fish it scored something like 101/90, and the scenario ended in a success well ahead of the time limit. I'll have to practice with this some more in other households so I can get the hang of it better. I think that dismissing the butler early that day, if there is one, might help, since he seemed to just get in the way. I'll also not attempt it on a day that someone in the house is due to have a birthday, especially if it's a baby that requires help to grow up.

I left off playing this house after the headmaster scenario had finished and they'd been accepted. Before I close this post, however, here are a few more pics of them:

Norris as a toddler playing with his xylophone


Norris plays the xylophone


A screenshot of the lot info on the neighborhood screen the way it looks currently


Lot Information on 12/20/08

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Wieser-Druff - Introduction & Backstory

After playing the Ball lot and all that happened there, I decided I should probably go ahead and play the Wieser lot and do their challenge before any of them got any more tangled up in the lives of the others in the neighborhood. The challenge for this lot was The Supernatural Challenge which focuses on Bud Wieser, and involves his friends Dan Druff, Misty Cupp, and Luke Warm. When you first load the lot, Bud, Misty and Dan are there, and Luke is a tombstone on the front lawn. Along the way they get to experience zombies, vampires, a cowplant and aliens. Before I get started on their story, let's meet them.



Bud WieserBud Wieser
Aspiration: Knowledge
LTW: Become Education Minister
Zodiac: Leo
Hobby: Music & Dance
Turn Ons: Vampirism, Black Hair
Turn Off: Fatness
Personality: 10 Neat, 10 Outgoing, 0 Active, 0 Playful, 5 Nice
Badges: None
Dan DruffDan Druff
Aspiration: Knowledge/Family
LTW: Become Chief of Staff (achieved!)
New LTW: Become Mad Scientist
Zodiac: Gemini
Hobby: Sports
Turn Ons: Fitness, Vampirism
Turn Off: Fatness
Personality: 4 Neat, 7 Outgoing, 8 Active, 3 Playful, 3 Nice
Badges: Fishing - Silver
Misty (Cupp) DruffMisty Cupp Druff
Aspiration: Knowledge
LTW: Become City Planner
Zodiac: Gemini
Hobby: Sports
Turn Ons: Fitness, Vampirism
Turn Off: Fatness
Personality: 4 Neat, 7 Outgoing, 8 Active, 3 Playful, 3 Nice
Badges: None

Notice that Misty is labeled as being Misty Druff on her picture? Well, that's because almost as soon as I'd started playing the lot after renovating and furnishing the house, ACR got ahold of her and Dan, and before I knew it they were in bed and I heard chimes. This immediately threw a bit of a kink in the plan I'd had to have Dan move in with Crystal to help raise their triplets once I'd finished this challenge. Misty was slated to get eaten by a cowplant at some point to satisfy the requirements of the challenge, so a relationship between them at this point didn't really matter, but for Dan to move in with Crystal, he'd have had to leave his child with Misty behind, and I'd hate to split up a parent and child like that. But I went along with it and figured I'd sort it out later. Then - and this is where I messed up and made the challenge uncompletable with the original sims, more on that later - I decided that if Dan was going to have a kid with Misty, I wanted it to have his name, so I had them get married. Just an informal exchange of rings, nothing fancy. A few days later, Misty gave birth to their son Nathan. He grew to child while they were still on the lot, though was close to becoming a teen by the time they moved. Here's a look at how he progressed - I'll introduce you to him more completely in a future post.


Nathan Druff

Meanwhile, all of them got jobs. Bud got a job in the Paranormal field to start working toward the grim phone reward that he would need to resurrect Luke as part of the challenge, as well as a position as UFO Investigator which was another requirement for him. Misty got a job in the Natural Science field to start working toward getting the cowplant that would cause her ultimate demise. She of course didn't get to start right away due to her pregnancy. Dan had no particular career requirements for the challenge, so I got him a job in the Medical field to work toward his LTW. Once Nathan was born, their work schedules were all spread out such that there was always someone home, so a nanny was never needed for him. Misty hadn't been back at work very long when thanks to ACR, she got pregnant again, thus further complicating the plan to have Dan move in with Crystal when this was all done. At least she was getting plenty of time to work on her skills so she'd be all set for promotions while she was on maternity leave. Shortly after Nathan had transitioned to toddler, she gave birth to their second son, Neville. By the time they moved, he'd become a child. Here's a look at how he progressed - as with Nathan, I'll introduce you to him better in a future post.


Neville Druff

While Misty and Dan were busy filling the house with babies, Bud was working on his skills and friendships to get promotions. By the time Neville was born, or shortly thereafter, he had gotten the promotions he needed to unlock the grim phone reward. He collected his reward, set it up in the study, and made the phone call to the Grim Reaper to bring Luke back to life. Since the challenge required that Luke be resurrected as a zombie, however, he didn't pay very much even though they could have afforded it. And with that, I had my first ever zombie, with the typical zombie personality.





Luke WarmLuke Warm
Aspiration: Knowledge
LTW: Max out 7 Skills
Zodiac: Leo
Hobby: Games (maxed)
Turn Ons: Underwear, Vampirism
Turn Off: Fatness
Personality: 0 Neat, 4 Outgoing, 2 Active, 1 Playful, 0 Nice
Badges: None


I wasn't sure what to expect with Luke the Zombie, but I found out they're not really all that bad. His needs were all near critical at first, of course, though it didn't take all that long to get him into better shape. I learned that his needs, some of them at least, deplete a lot faster than normal sims, so he takes a bit more maintenance. He also reminded me pretty quickly of why I don't let very sloppy sims take a shower - they can't seem to do so without flooding the bathroom and making a huge mess that they whine about when you make them clean it up. Luckily I'd also put a bathtub in the house, so most of the time I can direct him to use that instead of the shower. Overall, however, he made a pretty good addition to the household. I didn't make him get a job, so he was always at home to serve as a live-in nanny of sorts for Nathan and Neville. He did pretty good at it too, and at times I think he was doing more for the kids than their parents were. When he wasn't taking care of the kids, he spent most of his time playing chess to work on his Logic skills and to cater to his love of Games.

Once he'd resurrected Luke, Bud got to work on one of the next requirements of the challenge and went downtown to try to meet a vampire. He got lucky, and was able to meet Contessa Angel Tellerman and get to know her fairly well.


Contessa Angel Tellerman


He didn't immediately work their relationship up high enough for her to bite him, but he continued to call her and work on the friendship. In due time, they were best friends, and one night when he was off work, he invited her over. Prior to this, however, I'd had him call up the gypsy woman and have her come over so he could buy a few bottles of the vampire cure potion. He gave one to Dan as a gift, to give his relationship with him an extra boost and so Dan would have one in his inventory, then kept the other two. Once they were both set up to be able to change themselves back quickly after being bitten, I had Bud invite Contessa Angel over. Within minutes of her arrival and Bud greeting her she was working her spell on Bud and then bending him over to have a drink. Bud was thrilled to become a vampire, and immediately went inside to nibble on Dan. Then, once Dan had turned, I had both of them chug their potions. And voila, three of the challenge requirements met within a couple sim hours. Bud pretty much ignored Contessa Angel after this - eventually she either left on her own with dawn came, or he said goodbye to her, I forget which it was. Since she'd served her purpose, and their chemistry wasn't really high enough for her to be a good romantic match for him, I didn't make any direct efforts for him to stay in contact with her after that.

Next on the agenda for Bud was for him to get abducted by aliens. This is where the Freetime aspiration rewards came in handy - with the Summon Aliens ability he got from the Knowledge line, he had no real trouble getting himself abducted. I did learn that the ability only really works at night, however. When I sent him to the telescope to Summon Aliens during the daytime, he just stood there swinging it back and forth and up, and murmuring something along the lines of "Here alien, alien, alien" but nothing ever happened. When I sent him to do it after dark, he got abducted almost immediately. And soon, baby number 3 for the household was on the way. Luckily Nathan had aged up to child by this point, or was close to it, so I didn't have to get any extra cribs, not that buying one would have been a problem for them. A few days later, Bud gave birth to his son Castor who by the time I finished with this lot had aged up to toddler.

Castor WieserCastor Wieser
Zodiac: Aries
Hobby: Music & Dance
Personality: 8 Neat, 10 Outgoing, 5 Active, 1 Playful, 10 Nice

Now, the only thing left for Bud to achieve for the challenge was to Drink Misty Cupp. Misty eventually had managed to stop being pregnant long enough to go to work and get a few promotions while everything else was going on in the house, and so not to long after this she was able to get the cowplant reward. For reasons I don't quite remember now, I didn't feed her to it immediately upon getting it, though I did within a few days. Her husband and kids were understandably devastated. But, not to worry, we have a grim phone in the house, and we have lots of money now, so we can get her back easily and as good as new. I had by this point given up on the idea of moving Dan in with Crystal and had decided instead to have the Druffs move out to their own place once the challenge was finished. So, once Bud had gone out to drink Misty from the cowplant, I had him resurrect her. He paid top dollar this time, so she came back perfectly. And as a bit of a surprise, she was still married to Dan. Nothing had changed with any of her relationships that I could tell. Not sure why this was, but I'm guessing it had to do with how quickly she was resurrected - it was within sim hours of her death. At this point I thought I was done with the challenge. I exited the game and ran the challenge wizard to be sure though before moving the Druffs out, and...I wasn't. It hadn't registered that he had Drunk Misty Cupp. Hrm. I went back into the game to check his memories, thinking maybe resurrecting her so soon somehow negated it, but no, he still had a memory of "Drank Misty". Huh. Well, we'll try again.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to try again right away, because just after Misty had been brought back to life, ACR had its way with her and Dan again and she once again was pregnant. Quite the fertile woman is Misty. This forced me to wait until she'd had her baby, since while I was perfectly willing to kill her again for the good of the challenge, I wasn't willing to kill the baby as well. So, I waited, and a few days later she gave birth to her third son, Norris. Then, almost immediately after she'd given birth to him, I sent her back out to the cowplant. It gobbled her up, then I sent Bud out to milk it and drink her. I checked his memories, and now he had two "Drank Misty" memories in his panel. This time I held off on resurrecting her and exited to check it with the wizard to see if it had completed. It hadn't. Still didn't register a completion for the "Drink Misty Cupp" requirement. *sigh* So, all I can think of at this point is that there must be something in the code that knows he drank Misty Druff, not Misty Cupp, even though the memory just says Misty with no last name, and it must be making a difference to the challenge wizard being able to recognize it as completed. So...while I could have just called it finished at this point, I wanted it to get officially marked off as completed, so I decided that I'd just have to create another Misty Cupp to feed to the cowplant, which I did. Here she is:


Misty CuppMisty Cupp
Aspiration: Knowledge
LTW: Become Head of SCIA
Zodiac: Cancer
Hobby: Science
Turn Ons: Blond Hair, Logical
Turn Off: Cologne
Personality: 6 Neat, 5 Outgoing, 5 Active, 4 Playful, 5 Nice
Badges: None

I did goof a little though, and moved her onto the lot before I'd resurrected the original Misty again, and once I had, the lot was full and it wouldn't let me resurrect her. So I had to have Dan go ahead and move out with his boys to the house I'd already gotten ready for them. Once they had gone, I was able to resurrect Misty Druff with no problems. This time, however, she came back unmarried, and she didn't even know Dan at all now. He was missing completely from her relationships window. She still knew all of her children though, and her relationships with them were unchanged, even baby Norris who she'd only just given birth to when she died. Her not knowing Dan was bothersome, but I figured I could fix it easily enough by having one of the boys invite her over once I'd finished with things in the Wieser house.

Now that I had the original Misty Cupp, who was now Misty Druff, back and mostly ready to go and start a new life with Dan once I got the relationship issues straightened out, it was time for the new Misty Cupp to meet the cowplant. Like a trooper, she went marching right out to its pen at my command and soon she was a tombstone by its pot. I sent Bud out to have his 3rd drink of cowplant juice, checked the memories to make sure "Drank Misty" was there for a 3rd time, and exited. And, hooray! it worked. The challenge was now complete, and I was free to go follow the Druffs to their new house and work on getting their family back together. Stay tuned for a follow up report on them in the next post. For now, I'll end this post with a look at how things stand with the Wieser lot currently:


Lot Information on 12/20/08

Future plans for the Wieser household involve getting Bud and the new Misty Cupp together as a couple. Perhaps they'll have some kids together so Castor won't be an only child. I'll most likely keep Luke with them in the house. Always nice having a live-in nanny for the kids. And might be kind of cool seeing him get to know subsequent generations of Wiesers without ever changing himself.