I'm playing a version of the Asylum Challenge where I'm only controlling one sim in the household. There wasn't much to do in the house in the beginning so most of the uncontrolled sims have been woohooing like hyperactive rabbits which means that three or four of them are now level 10 in KS and most of the others aren't far behind. One of the level 8 or 9 sims gave a KS lecture at the lectern. The one sim listening to the lecture went from level 3 in KS skill to level 9 in approximately 7 sim minutes.

I thought it was hilarious, I might have to break the rules and send the uncontrolled sims out into the town to give public lectures if they are that good at teaching but should this have happened? Or was it a one off fluke? I don't recall any of the other sims in the household gaining several skill levels from a KS lecture before but to be fair I think they have mostly been too busy woohooing to listen to a lecture.

Er, might the extremely fast learner be a vampire?

I think this might be just a thing, though. The KS skill doesn't have the same kind of requirements as most other skills, rather it's all notch based. Although the KS skill books that some very clever player devised some time ago do work properly as the skill level will seem to rise smoothly and slowly, not all at once. Who was that player who devised these again, again (looks around, innocently...) oh, hi there!

Okay, I've just taught you your own mod (sort of)! But did you not have to take any special steps with those books to prevent the sudden bursts of skill levels as they are read?

The fast learner was not a vampire, he's a straight forward human sim. Your suggestion did make me wonder if he has the fast learner reward as I have a feeling that at least one sim in the asylum got that reward. I will have to go back in game to check that.

As for the books, oh crikey. It was so long ago that I did those. Honestly I didn't have a clue what I was doing when I made them. I followed a tutorial and Twallan was awesome at answering my dumb questions. I may or may not be remembering this correctly but I think I played about with the number of pages, or the speed at which the pages were read. I know I spent a lot of time with Goodwin Goode and Sinbad Rotter making one of them read the KS books and one of them read the logic books so I could compare the time it took them to read the books. Then I'd tweak numbers in the mod and make them read the books again... and again... and again... until I got the time about right. I'm sure someone who knew what they were doing could have done it more efficiently but I had to bodge randomly put in numbers strategically test different values to get something that worked.

Also is it sad if I confess that even though I spent hours making the mod my sims very rarely use the books? Apparently they prefer practical to theoretical learning although it always amuses me when I catch townies reading the KS books at the library.

Those lectures are hilarious, yes.