More Awesome Than You!

Family re-union memories used to be really easy in base game.  Just invite the family over and you'd have family re-union memories everywhere.  Pescado had a hack to stomp on them (noreunionmemories?) and fix the buggy code that spawned blank memories around the hood.  The hack was discontinued as of NL patch 2, but either something awesome is still stomping on the memories or I'm missing something about the current version of the "scenario".   

So, what do you actually have to do to get a family re-union memory?

Opinion is divided on this one.

Some say you need 10 family members present at the party, but I disagree.

Inviting family members who live on another lot seems to be essential.

What I personally believe is the crucial issue, is having three generations of family members present at the party. I was trying to get the reunion memory and made my sims get married as I thought it would help if the producers-of-grandchildren were married. There was one (adopted) child at the party, and my sims got the reunion memory at the wedding party, there was no need to have another party.

I was playing with all EPs and the zip file of MATY hacks.

You definitely don't need 10 family members, because I had reunion memories with less.
I am also not so sure about the three generations, at least you don't need grandparents. Three different age groups could be right though. One memory dates from a graduation party, with the parents, students and younger teenage siblings.
It's the Brokes, they get reunion memories every time they have a birthday party. They don't get them when only Dustin and his wife (who is the daughter of Brandi's husband) come over for a visit.

Wait, how did the game allow that?  ???
EDIT: Sorry, wasn't thinking. I assume Brandi re-married, then?

Not so hard really - My one playable sim in one hood married a CAS townie, who was created with a CAS daughter.  He now is an elder and has the hots for both mother and daughter.  The daughter does not list as family for him, but is family for any of the other spawn of that marriage.  There is a bit of an "ewww" factor, I admit, which is why I have set ACR settings to "spouse only" for him.

Meanwhile, fiancee of one brother is actively also pursuing the other brother as well (she dated both of them in Uni), which is OK cos the other brother is engaged to someone else and has hots for her and the original fiancee.  Confused?  You won't be after the next revealing episode of "Soap".

I should just say that I have had 3 generation parties before and do not recall ever getting a family reunion memory.  I would check on that, except that I find the memory system to be more or less irrelevant (except to count "best friends" or "woohoos" for LTW purposes).

I do see the 'have a family reunion' want show up every so often, mostly in family sims nearing or just past turning elder. It doesn't carry a lot of asp points, and in many cases the sim having the want is already permaplat, so I never really bothered pursuing it.

Can't be 3 generations, I just got the memory with the following birthday party:
Home - Aquitaine (Gen2), Lewis (Gen2 spouse), Albert (Gen3 teen), Bolte(Gen3 teen),  Nowra(Gen3 teen),  Merivale(Gen3 teen),  Story(Gen3 child),  Victoria(Gen3 baby/toddler/birthday girl)
Invited Household 1 - London (Gen2), Putney (Gen2), Marjorie (Gen2 spouse)
Invited Household 2 - Theodor Heuss (Gen2), Galata (Gen3 adult - child of Aquitaine & Lewis)
Total Attendees: 13 family, 2 townies, 2 outside households

Went through memories and found one more classified as a family reunion, a wedding. Again, only two generations, and not nearly as many:
Home - Aquitaine (Gen2), Lewis (Gen2 fiance/spouse)
Invited Household 1 - Brooklyn (Gen1), Randolph (Gen1 spouse), Theodor Heuss (Gen2)
Invited Household 2 -  London (Gen2), Putney (Gen2), Marjorie (Gen2 spouse)
Total Attendees: 8 family, 4 townies, 2 outside households

On both, Aquitaine was the party-thrower. I swear, I've been through way too many parties with this one. Anyways, I also don't think it's necessarily the household numbers. I've had several other birthday parties with those same households from the birthday party invited (though Galata was in the main house at those) and no family reunion memory.

If you have the old "no reunion spam" hack for older editions of the game, the memory is suppressed, because it used to be that when a family reunion occurred, you'd get like 80 bazillion of them.

Actually, the game does not want to allow them the full fun, although there is no reason for it. Dustin was in love with his girlfriend first (both still teens), then Brandi decided - way before ACR but still all by herself - she wanted the father (Father and teenage daughter were CAS-created and lived across the road). I did not want to create any problems for the teenagers and waited until they became students before Brandi and her lover moved together. So far everything was fine.
I think the change occured when Brandi got married, but I only noticed it later. The students were going to woohoo for the first time and I got them a love tub for some preliminary romance only to find out that they couldn't get in together.
It occured to me then that I had not seen any of the "Oh my god, he/she is so wonderful"- heart thoughts, that were so common for them, in a while. When I investigated I noticed: 1. No romantic interactions in the hot tub were possible, 2. No romantic pictures in the photobooth and obviously no public woohoo option, 3. All expressions of attraction were gone, and - worst of all - when I tried "scope room" they only shrugged! That was really bad, because if I ever had a perfect couple it's them.
When I got them engaged the heart thoughts and the scope room interaction returned and I always wanted to check if the other options are available since they got married. They are too busy making and bringing up more Brokes though, so I did not have the chance for it yet and since I got ACR the missing options are not such a big issue anymore.
But I would still like to know what tests are run and what stopped them using these objects.

Anyway, I think those difficulties made the Broke family only dearer to me and even if it happened by accident I like their special family situation. It is the reason why I like the family reunion memories too, because they are always big events (Brandi has 7 children), it's something I'd imagine them to think back to. They don't fulfil any wants or serve in any other way, but is this important? Some details simply add to the characters and the story.

I always got the memory if I had the sim throw a party and only invite family members. My game only allowed about 4 people to come to a party, so it definitely wasn't 10 members, and if I remember correctly I only ever invited siblings and parents since I never used to play families long enoygh to get more generations than that.

This was in uni though and I haven't bothered to check since installing OFB and seasons.

I take it that means there's nothing awesome stomping the memories in the current director's cut.  I checked for the obsolete no-reunionspam hack and it's not in my game, but I posted on the TSR thread about that just in case it affected others.  I didn't want to play without them to find out - mini-resets are annoying.

We know Maxis fixed the family re-union bug so we get fewer memories than before.  I haven't seen one since base game. Maybe they tightened the requirements for the memory to appear as well as stomping the bug.  I don't really care what they did, but I'd like to figure out how to trigger that memory now!  I figure it has to be something simple like a minimum number of some kind (visitors, family, family not resident on the lot....).   I'm still wondering if it has to be a party or not though surely they'd have made a special scenario if it was - a family re-union party.   We've ruled out min 10 invited family and 3 generations, so I'll check if the secret is to invite sims from 2 different households as in Jolrei's post.  My first attempts at getting the memory to show might have been a lot of different sims, but all from 1 household.

PS If any of you guys knew rsn, I had a mail to say he has just died.  He spent a lot of time on the boards helping newbies with techie questions like "will my PC run sims2?" and was a very patient, kind and helpful man.  We'll miss him a lot.  Drop by if you want to know more or say a few words
http://thesims.ea.com/bbs/messages.php?threadID=a53f66800d67995a540507bb7a7f69e2&directoryID=341&startRow=1&openItemID=item.341,item.322

I don't know the exact requirements for the family reunion memory, but I do know that you need to throw a party. I think any kind of party will do, not only marriage, birthday or golden anniversary.
I'd say the key is in family members from different households.

I finally got re-union memory yesterday having failed to get one for the same family previously.  I'm still not clear what the actual triggers are but I suspect there is some minimum size for the party.  I'm committing necromancy to see if anyone has any further thoughts on it.

Three households; mum, dad + kid at home, YA in a greek house, 2nd YA in a different greek house

Mum holds a party and invites YAs home, no other guests - no memory.
YA holds a party and invites all the family, no other guests - no memory
Graduation party with all the family and other guests - family re-union memory

I've also discovered that the lot debugger cleanup options delete family re-union memories!  Fortunately I'd run the TSR wizard and logged my success before I cleaned up!