crown_of_antlers | Winchester Farming Community

While getting settled back in after our recent trip to Yellowstone I decided to try out a world that I downloaded a while back but never did anything with: Winchester Farming Community by My Sim Reality. Although I loved the look of it, with its dirt roads and tiny county town, I didn't think it would work for my style of playing since I like to have households with horses. The world is only medium sized and from map view it doesn't look like there is much to it. I have pleasantly discovered that I was mistaken.

When you actually get into the world it feels bigger than it looks. The town and the homes are beautifully detailed. I mean it has the Korana Morrowind mods level of detail. Another thing about the world that impressed me is that this tiny little country town has everything. There are multiple taverns, a coffee house, lounges, and even the observatory near the science center. Granted the creator made country style shell buildings and put the actual rabbit holes in the basement, but still it's amazing that the town has so much to do yet still feels and looks like a small rural town.

The world is empty unless you download the save which has been provided. I preferred to keep it empty so I could add my own townies. For the experimental play (which has gone on longer than I thought it would), I used the households I created for my "Before Gloria's Conception" play in Moonlight Falls, which consists of the newly married parents of Gloria and her crew along with each set of grandparents. Finally, because I love having Supernaturals around and the town includes a Supernatural Hangout (The Howling Shack), I added three more couples; a werewolf couple, a witch/wizard couple, and a couple where the husband is a werewolf and the wife is a witch. This pretty much filled up the town.

I've thought about adding a few sims who sleep around to add some variety, but then the place could become too crowded. I don't know how long I'll play this, but if the current townies have children, those children won't have anywhere to move to when they grow up, so I'll likely just keep it at the households I added. NRaas settings have already been adjusted so that there won't be any bed-hopping.

A few screenies:

Incidentally, this is the world I got the little red school house from that I use in my Morrowind themed world.

I found this world so nice as it is that I made very few changes to it. In fact I did nothing more than add some houses with large barns to the big empty lots that the world creator provided. I also moved one house that was in a 40 x 40 lot so I could add the Evansdale Community College from her selection of custom universities. Gwen and Arthur are currently enrolled there and as they traveled to their classes on their bikes that was when I realized that the world is bigger than the map view suggested.

Another tiny change I made was to add the signs from the Dress Code mod to the community lots. I was reminded to do this when I saw Gloria's Granny Sarah walking around town in her bathing suit. Uh, Granny, although you do still "have it" at this point in your life, you really shouldn't walk around like that.

While enrolled at the community college Arthur and Gwen are living with Arthur's parents. I'll move them to their own house once they are done with their schooling. At that point they'll start their family.

An amusing thing that happened with my non-actives. I placed James' parents and grandparents in the same house, but by the second day his parents moved into a tiny house on the other side of the island. If they breed the way they did in Moonlight Falls I'll have to step in and have the two couples swap houses. The grandparents don't need to be in the big house that is set up for a growing family.

The only minor issue that has come up is I frequently get messages about a service sim being stuck somewhere but thus far this has not been game breaking. And since the town has so much to do it creates a lot of service sims.

One final note I wanted to mention is that with this world being smaller, it saves and loads much faster than the worlds I normally play. Granted it's a new game and not much time has passed, but still, world size does make a difference. Overall I can see why so many players like this world and it is indeed perfect if one is seeking to have their sims live in a small country town setting.

Something I forgot to add; Granny Sarah and Grandpa William live in one of the beach houses near the shore. More than once I've caught them skinny dipping. I never dreamed that this couple (a sculptor and a scientist) would behave like a couple of hippies.