Moragn: Sul Sul! I’m Morgan. I’ve done a lot of text and lore & object writing since I joined the team during Seasons, and I’ve been excited about Sims lore since I was a kid myself playing Sims 2 and Bustin’ Out. I know a bunch of lore around Werewolves, Vampires, Ghosts, Spellcasters, some random NPC lore, and I wrote a lot of the text or worked with Designers who wrote text for Henford-on-Bagley, Tartosa, Moonwood Mill, San Sequoia, and Ravenwood. So these are areas I probably know the most about!

Zoe: Sul Sul, I’m Zoe, a Game Designer II on The Sims 4. As a long time simmer myself, it’s been a joy to work on High School Years, Growing Together, For Rent, Life & Death, and most recently Enchanted By Nature. I’ve contributed a lot of text writing and feature designs. And I even got to lead our narrative efforts on Enchanted By Nature which was super fun! Some coworkers call me the “Lore Lord” as I’ve been known to be a walking encyclopedia for all things Sims so I’m excited to help out today

Scott: Sul sul! I’m Scott, a senior designer on the Sims who started way back in 2007 as a producer on Sims 2 Expansion Packs. I’m not as knowledgeable about specific premades or townies as Morgan or Zoe, but I’ve always found thinking about the universe of the Sims to be fascinating! I’ve written text for lots of various TS4 packs, but contributed to the history of Werewolves, some of the religious background for Sims Medieval, and some smaller bits here and there like the bike parts collection in Nordhaven.

Zoe: spooky voice Not much is known though her closest relation is to Olivia and Samuel Goth

Scott: The religious lore in Medieval was based on a decent bit of research of how faith in the real world was viewed by different groups of people, but I also wanted to reflect that neither view was necessarily better or worse because as The Watcher, you did have control over how much to influence the priests and how the Sims might then view you as a player. There was an origin legend of brothers named Peter and Jacob that went away on pilgrimages that came back with different viewpoints that led to those two religions!

Morgan: Princess Cordelia whenever I can talk people into including her. I’m obsessed.

Zoe: Grilled cheese is delicious

Morgan: I don’t know about Old Ravenwood Estated, but have you looked to see what’s under the Specter Family Manor? That’s my favorite. We were joking about making a scary…. um dangerous basement, and the builder did AMAZING.

I think we all know why it is the way it is… maybe

Morgan: Moonwood Mill!

Zoe: The world lore I enjoyed most was for Ravenwood and Innisgreen!

Morgan: We start with sort of a vibe for a world normally, a local inspiration, and then the lore comes after. For most World. Strangerville might be a bit of an exception. With Ravenwood, we knew we needed a Ghostly Neighborhood, somethine more country, and something in town and we knew the art direction we wanted to hit for them. Then we fleshed out the NPCs and chose what the lots would be. When you get into NPCs is when a lot of the lore starts happening.

Scott: I think MySims has some great open-ended lore! The characters are full of personality and Kingdom/Agents/Racing/SkyHeroes let us really give them some storytelling moments to expand some relationships. The fun of MySims, I think, is that most of the characters have great archetypes they fit into (Morcubus will always be villainous and an egoist!) but they also all have quirks and foibles and many places they could still go.

Zoe: I enjoyed crafting the lore of how fairies fit into the rest of the supernaturals of the Sims. Who are they friends with, who are their enemies? How does their magic differ and how did they come to be? It was also really fun to step away from the usual “fairies are inherent tricksters” and see these creatures as something more than just mischief…but still adding mischief!

Zoe: With Life comes Death! It’s a natural cycle and a solid handshake between known entities.

Scott: Medieval was a long, long time ago, and some of the things that happened in those kingdoms may be a bit exaggerated or apocryphal and knowledge or traditions have changed or been lost since then, but I would consider it “light” canon. Did the crab bandit truly exist? Or was it a story passed down through the ages? Who’s to say.

Morgan: So she was in love! She was married and they were planning to have a child! You can see the nursery in Sims 3! But Eric, her husband, died during her honeymoon! She got with Robert Crumplebottom, but he also died via chandelier.

Horse Ranch Spoiler: In Horse Ranch you find out Roberto Crinkletop is Robert Crumplebottom!!!

She doesn’t know that though! Anyways, she’s been devestated by love twice now, so that’s why she’s cranky and why she hates seeing others in love! POOR AGNES.

Morgan: They have to have existed since there are dinosaurs in art and stuff! I’d guess they are uh extinct though in a similar sense. I think in Sims 3 you could go back in time and have a cave man experience with them, but that’s a foggy memory for me.

Scott: There’s a whole collection of little figurines of MySims in TS4! I think the MySims characters do exist as some sort of IP within the TS4 world. As for Summer, Liberty, and Travis – maybe an odd coincidence? Or their parents were all really into MySims, like when you name your kid Luke because you’re a Star Wars fan.

Morgan: I’m not sure off the top of my head, but in Sims lore we do regularly do matriarchal names passing down, not just patriarchal, which is more typically seen in real life so that could be why.

Morgan: Yeah! They might be slightly different from game to game as Sims happen to be, but that’s the same person as far as I’m aware.

Zoe: Marriage can be hard, but a fable in Enchanted By Nature may show hopes their relationship is on the mend! Although I’m sure Bob will mess it up somehow.

Morgan: Werewolves. Getting to flesh out Spellcaster, Vampires, and Werewolves lore was amazing! We all bounced off each other when writing. Scott (Designer) did the original outline for it, and then we all extrapolated.

Morgan: Werewolves. Getting to flesh out Spellcaster, Vampires, and Werewolves lore was amazing! We all bounced off each other when writing. Scott (Designer) did the original outline for it, and then we all extrapolated.

Zoe: I will shout to the moon about how fun it was to write fables for the Enchanted By Nature errand/quests. Each one reveals a beginning (sometimes middle) and end of a story. I spent a lot of time crafting stories with lessons, lore, and simsy fun that players can choose to believe…or not!

Scott: We’re always exploring the different ways we can build out the storytelling in our world and in our Sims, and we saw that player feedback to more lore was pretty positive, so we’ve tried to respond to that accordingly (which has then resulted in more lore in more recent worlds)!

Morgan: We actually had a team argument over naming Greg Greg. SOMEONE (Ninja) thought the name was boring. But the Designer and I fought to keep him called that, because we thought it was hilarious. Did you know his real name is Greggorious Lunvik?

Morgan: It would be SO much fun to get to go back and write lore for them. I’d jump at that opportunity!

Morgan: YES

Scott: Trashley is legitimate and normal, thank you very much.

Morgan: I always start from reality and then try to think about how to make it silly. Also, if something is too dark, you can often just rethink it and ask “how could this actually be silly?” Look at the bandaids on Sims after a werewolf attack as an example. But having fun and trying to get the fun Simsy vibe across is really important.

Morgan: I know this one! Forgottton Hollow was once under Werewolf control, in the days of the war. After the War, during Operation High Fang, Vlad moved in. He arrived with a mob of around 25 normal Sims and manipulated them into driving the Werewolves out. They, of course, didn’t know he was a Vampire. They even put up a statue in his honor.

Those people disappeared.

The pack first went underground but continued conflicts with the vampire families drove them away. Their meeting place was eventually boarded-up by the remaining families. A feral werewolf remained underground. Vlad eventually, started to turn people into Vampires, creating something of a small Vampiric community.

Zoe: Fairies believe spellcaster’s magic is unnatural mostly due to it not being inherent to their species and also not a gift from Mother Nature. The acquisition of fairy familiars by spellcasters did not help to ease any tension either.

Morgan: BAH I’m trying to remember. I don’t know if we’ve answered a lot about their parents.

I do know that Lilly who lives in the Volkov Houshold actually has a history tying back to Caleb and Lilith, so if you want more lore on them – she might be a good avenue to find it out. She was very close with Caleb and Lilith Vatore when they were children – cousins. Their mothers were sisters.

Lilith says, “I remember when my cousin, Lilith, first told me she’d met a fascinating man named Vlad. After that, she started spending a lot of time “training” with him. I thought she meant they were workout buddies. It wasn’t until later that I found out she’d been lured to the dark arts. ” She also says, “We were young when my cousins Caleb and Lilith were turned into vampires. Lilith was turned by Vlad, and Caleb by Miss Hell. Vlad came for me as well, but I hid in the underground tunnels—which is how my own transformation, of a different nature, came about. I stayed there, half feral, and I tried to make it work with my cousins when they visited. After I discovered Moonwood Mill and my pack, I learned that they’d officially moved to Forgotten Hollow. It’s upsetting.

Kind of a tragic story, but we don’t know a lot about the Vatore parents that I’m aware of.

Morgan: I don’t know I didn’t work on that one, but that’s a great question! I feel like I need to play Strangerville again! It’s been a while.

Scott: I think there is strong evidence that it is extraterrestrial in origin, but I wouldn’t have put it past the military meddling and experimentation to have made a neutral situation bad. I do think there is intentionally some space for player interpretation.

Zoe: The Alto family owns Apartments in Uptown, still in direct opposition with Landgraab Apartments and their ongoing various business feuds.

Scott: We can’t talk about future content, but a blanket answer for “will we expand on this lore?” is usually: if we feel that there’s an opportunity where it fits and have the right resources to believe we can deliver it in a satisfying way, we’d love to! Once lore exists in the Sims universe, we try our best to document it and remember it for when we may get a chance to expand or reference it.

Morgan: I think its because they were modernizing the world in Sims 4 and trying to represent modern day. I’d love to see landlines in the future though. I really want like an oldies pack or something with 90s stuff. That’d be so much fun.

Zoe: Panya Li does not have any further lore for me to share other than being a hunk who owns a lot of properties.