What Are Your Game Rules?

"Simtown15;c-17463000" wrote:
@telmarina You mentioned traits and young adulthood. Are you in the wrong forum? This is for Sims 2.

Oh i am!! :blush: im sorry! Ive come to this thread through 'recent discussions' and haven't noticed.
Very sorry!

I play every household for 1 season and then go to the other one. Right now I have Pleasantview as my mainhood and Veronaville and Strangetown as subhoods. I try to have as many Sims as possible in 1 households so all the Monty's live together, as many of the Capps, Burb + Oldie + Pleasant in 1 house. It saves a lot of time.

Every woohoo is a try for baby.

I try to listen to the Sim as much as possible, so I mainly look at their wants what they want. They only get a job or a skill point if they want to.

I pick the aspiration based on how they were as a child. If they have a lot of friends, popularity. If it's a boy and has 1 female friend or the other way around, family. If they have zero friends, knowledge or fortune.

I try to ignore townies and NPC.

@garapoes I also try to ignore NPCs because I don’t want to bring sims that aren’t mine into the rotation. And you try for baby EVERY woohoo?! The romance sims must hate you! :D

I've played themed hoods since about the first week of TS2 release in 2004.
I don't have many rules. If I get a whim to do something that's what I'm going to do. No rules, my way or the highway. :p

However, if I play characters, then they can't behave outside their intended personality.
What I mean by that is a Sim who is shy, homemaker, family, mother, loves baking would never show up at a dive bar like the Blue Whale.
This works for TS2 and TS3.

What most people don't know about TS2 is if you take a Sim to the same community lot a few times then the next time you go there with another Sim your previous Sim will also show up, everywhere you go, if you took that Sim to those places. So, finding Sims in the game isn't all that hard. You know where they will be. To keep the game from spawning Mrs. Goody Two Shoes at such places where she would never be caught dead, you would never send to her to them. It's not to say the game won't eventually send her there as one of the patrons of the place, but it lowers the odds if you don't.

Barnabas would never work as a DJ, nor sell coffee, nor work behind the bar, no matter how poor or starving. My Sims have to fall within the guidelines I set for them. If he is a serious Sim then no, he will never juggle bottles, and even if an interaction is available but I think doesn't fit the Sims then it will never be clicked by me.

Consider he is a vampire, well the rule is, he is never going to want to get down and line dance. Nor is he going to ever want to play on a refrig. or the bathtub. Most of this controlled by traits (personality points) but if any interaction or action is there then I won't use it because it wouldn't fit his character in my head.

Those are the type of rules I set. Would Willie be at the Blue Whale, yes, would Elizabeth be at the Blue Whale, No. But unfortunately the more you play a Sim in TS2 then that SIm is probably going to show up somewhere whether it fits their personality or not. Evenutally. Moving them to the bin for awhile while I play other Sims sometimes cuts all that out and then in my story they have gone missing. lol

Aging rules: I have a mod that extends their lives, (38 days) so middle age is about 27 days before aging to elderly. I play with aging on until I get the Sim to that age, and someone else in the household may be much younger but an adult but 35 days away from aging which makes them seem younger to me. I do this sort of thing for all households in a themed hood. Then aging is turned off to keep them at these stages of life.
Those I feel are older than a 35 days or 27 days are aged to 20 days etc. It's all in my head, but I keep doing it. lol

I don't have any rules but if I play a themed hood then yes, characters aren't allowed to do things they wouldn't do. No soup for you! lol Stop making a fool of yourself, you silly Sim showing the world you can't dance. Evil Sims have to be evil, good Sims must behave with manners, mean, grumpy kids must annoy, aggravate, torment and destory. Lazy Sim should never clean dishes..sloppy Sims better not start cleaning the dishes, or they will get zapped. One thing I really hated is when devs of TS2 changed the code to make even sloppy Sims clean up dirty plates because someone back in 2007 complained.

"Simtown15;c-17463907" wrote:
@garapoes I also try to ignore NPCs because I don’t want to bring sims that aren’t mine into the rotation. And you try for baby EVERY woohoo?! The romance sims must hate you! :D

Hehe yeah romance Sims are having a bad time. Sims like Dina and Nina. If you play as Don Lothario and you woohoo with female Sims, they can't get pregnant. Only when the female is the active Sim. So that's a little trick, and if there are 8 Sims in a household it is also not possible.

I don't have a lot of romance Sims though, only Bottom Summerdream because I think it really suits her.

I also never go to community lots or vacation. And my Sims also have no pets, only if they really really want one.

Well, I don't set a lot of rules for my game. There are some I have set.

One rule I do is that until adults have children their aging is turned off (with aging off cheat). Reason is simple: adulthood lasts 29 days while baby to teen stages last 30 days. Plus additional 3 days from pregnancy.

There is always an apartment building in my neighborhood that is designed as retirement home. Every retirement home household consists of one adult (a caretaker who is immortal with the elixir of life). As apartments can have up to 4 households, each retirement home can hold up to 28 elders. If elders live in an apartment, the must move out to the retirement home. If elders live in a house, it's my choice whether they live the rest of the life in their house or in the retirement home.

For some games, I have a main family. After playing with that family, I write down how many days I have played with them and play the same amount of days with other families. Once their days are up, I'm allowed to rotate. Days count while sims are either at home or on vacation. Once all the other families are caught up with, I'm allowed to once again play with the main family.
However, there are some things that affect how many days I play with a family. If the household has only elders or parents whose children have moved away, the amount of days I play with them is two times less. If a family moves in, I can play with them one day less. If a family is on vacation when I last left them, they get extra days depending on how many days are they on vacation. If I have played less than three days with the main family, all the college households get three days. Should I accidentally or on purpose play with an household overtime, I'll write down the amount of days I played over so I can play that amount less next time.
For notes, I use two things: an electronic device to count the days and family/household description to write down whether they're not played with, are currently being played with, or have been played with (with numbers of course).
Though these rules do have their own cheesing moments. For example, if I want a sim to graduate faster, I send them to a college community lot so their semester finishes up faster while the day counter stays the same. If I want to keep sims from aging up, I send them on vacation.

Sometimes the neighborhood story is used as a newspaper. If that's a case in a game with a main family, I have to write 5 stories before rotating back to the main family. After that, it's fun to see what other sims have done. Perhaps someone found a treasure. Maybe a businessperson got "The Best of the Best" award. Or maybe, just maybe, there was a sim who didn't live in the apartment building who only drank bar drinks for days and had bladder failures as he was too focused on the bar.

I guess I wouldn't call it rules but here is my gameplay style.

I chose a empty template and made a new world named Sanders. I made 14 base families and built all their houses myself. I put down pre-made costum/in-game lots because I don't have the patience lol.

My neighbourhood is soon gonna be 3years old. 400 sims. All made via Try for Baby, except when I feel like I wanna add some new looks so I create families which isn't often.

Here is I guess what I would kinda consider rules.
1. No cheats;
2. Same gens should be very close-by in age;
3. No deleting tombs;
4. No adding money to my sims;( exluding Brokestoon which houses the sims that aren't the most well off financially, so I make a family, the cheapest house ever, make their funds 0, and make them build up their house and life, and I use online banking which is awesome because every sim can save up money and I can take a loan if I really need one.)
5. Play every family equally, no matter if I like them or not.

I don't know how many people would have the patience to play a neighbourhood for 3years but it doesn't get boring and the family trees are a sight. My 1st pair of 1st gens just died 4months ago so that should give you a idea of how many sims I have (400) to play. They were my fave sims too.

Mine is trying not to inadvertently kill a Sim (and in TS2, it is easier to do that than TS3 and 4), and use as few mods as possible. TS2 needs none at all. It is finished very well, although graphics are poor by today's standards. No cheats either, other than those allowed by the (paper) manual.

I set up the "rules" depending on the story I made up for my families but generally here's what is the most common between them:

- NO cheating (money especially). I only use it is for stuck Sims.
- NO mods or CC (I just like to play the game as is).
- I generally rotate between families after a few Sims days, a full season usually (more if I'm really invested in the story I'm creating) or I just create another one. I especially like to explore things I don't usually play with (businesses, vacations, supernaturals, etc.) and then I focus on it until I rotate again.
- I generally didn't take photos until quite recently, maybe because I didn't want to take too much place in my folders.

My 'routine' is not exactly a set of rules but just the way i found that i like to play

- i play only legacies (same family)
- i start the legacy/save with a young adult
- i randomize traits and choose the aspiration based in those.
- i focus only in the heir and leave the remaining family with full autonomy (when my heir is sleeping or at work i do make some 'life adjustments' to other family members)
- The new heir will be the youngest in the family (so that i can play him/her more time and even if he/she's still a toddler). He will begin his journey as a heir when the last heir dies.
- i have a huge list with all features (gameplay and special objects) that came with all the packs that i own. This list helps me build my storyline and don't forget anything that i have available in the game. It has helped me do more elaborate stories and actually use content that i constantly forgot about.
- all families need to have kids or adopt so that the legacy keeps going. (But not always the heir has kids, it can be someone else in the family. The next heir will be the youngest, regardless of being the latest heir's son or nephew, for example).

And that's it :)