How to make the game randomly generate certain types of townies/household?

Hi, Your trying is interesting.
Do you use the Neighborhood Stories System? It let to premade NPCs & automatically generated NPCs can adopt children or make babies. If you don't mind edit households, you can get the household your hoping.
In no Mods playing, I think it's quite difficult to automatically generate a family with the desired household composition.
I own more than half of the DLC, but out of the dozens of households I've generated, I could count the number of single-father & daughter households on one hand. I know that households with children are generated when I go to the park, but the gender of the children seems random. There may be some rule for generation, but I think it's ultimately random.
If you play for a long time, you may find that automatically generated NPCs end up with single-person households with the same surname. One option is to edit the NPCs and make them married when sorting them, but NPCs generally don't give birth automatically, so you'll still need to use the Neighborhood Stories System.
I think that's about all you can do to play according to your requirements.
However, when using this system, births and adoptions may occur frequently. If you're not careful, you could end up with a lot of large families.
I hope this is helpful.
**This is a translation of the text. If you have any questions or would like to clarify anything, please feel free to ask.

Thank you for sharing your experiences!

Yes I am using the neighborhood stories system currently, and is trying to make the townies to date by themselves through the allow romance changes feature where I will make the townies to get married to each other if I heard the news that they started dating through the mailbox or phone calls before turning on the having babies features. But somehow my game has been ignoring the sims sexual orientation settings, I have been getting a lot of same sex couples regardless of their sexual orientations, so when I moved in the sims that are dating together to make them to get married, their partner will reject the sims romantic approach, so it will be impossible to get married. And I need to end their relationship so that they are free to date someone else.

Currently I have only a few pairs that have the correct sexual orientation toward each other that I successfully got them married and have their having babies features turned on, a few sims weeks have already passed but somehow no news of them getting baby… So now my main sims are trying to befriend them, hoping they will call my sims asking if they should try to have a baby. Since the last time I used the discuss expanding the family option, they still adopt a child instead of having a baby, even though I already turned off the adopt child feature😕.

So I was wondering if it was by design that the probability to have male child in randomly generated townies (not through having babies or adoption) are really high, that maybe I should make a feedback to The Sims team instead. But since I never have any DLC, I would like to know other people experiences who play unmodded, what kind of household they usually get, and do they ever get married couples or other types of family in their game, in case of those kind of households are actually tied to certain type of DLC, like, maybe certain type of lot traits from the DLC help to generate that kind of household🧐.

Based on my further testing, I found out going to bar actually spawn both new  male and female sims as bar regulars, they may be young adults or adults sims, and when you go home and invite them to come over later on, they will lose their bar regulars job and become unemployed, so maybe that’s where my homeless unemployed male sims came from, aside from the few sims that were generated to fill the world when you start a new save.

I also tested on whether different worlds have different chances when generating family with kids since for my current save, I only play in Willow Creek, so I created two new saves where my sims live in Oasis Springs and Newcrest respectively, and they only visits the lots in the world they are currently living in. From my current observation on those three worlds, I still didn’t get any randomly generated household with female child or married couples yet.

I searched around the forum in case others also have similar issues, but only found one person who mentioned about no female child in randomly generated townies, and it was 5 years ago… So I was wondering maybe actually my game are not working properly? Or I need to have some DLC to get my game to generate certain types of households😅.

Until last year, I have been playing with sims that I created myself, rarely interacting with the game randomly generated townies. So I never noticed what kind of households the game have generated by itself before, and my old save files are now modded, so can’t be used as reference. So I would like to know what kind of households that other players have when their game randomly generated for them, and also if anyone knows certain conditions that will help generate certain types of sims other from what I already mentioned. I really appreciate hearing experiences from other simmers!

Hi, Those are the informations from official about Neighborhood Stories System.

INTRODUCING NEIGHBORHOOD STORIES - Bringing New Life to the Neighborhood
NEIGHBORHOOD STORIES SYSTEM - From the Neighborhood to the World

Both of those were provided at that system released. But it will make you understand that system more and give a hint for you deside to get which add-ons.
If I'll add the hint for you, 2 premade NPC households, from City Living EP & Growing Together, have a baby after you get those EPs. This is pre-designed as part of their own story, so it will happen regardless of whether you use the Neighborhood Stories System. However, I always have aging turned off and I've never looked at those NPC households from the household management screen, so I've never checked the gender of the babies that are born. I also don't know if the gender of the babies is random. I'm just offering this as a hint.

Hope this help.
*It would be great if others could also offer some suggestions.

It definitely sounds strange if you’re only getting randomly generated families with male children. My impression has always been that the game would generate what was lacking both in terms of age groups as well as genders, and then various lot types would spawn specific sims depending on certain criteria, but I don’t actually know how it works 🤷🏻‍♀️🙂

• How many children do you currently have among your unplayed households - premade and randomly generated?
• In the save where you’re on gen. 5, have you also stayed in Willow Creek the entire time the same way as you’ve done in your test saves?

As for the issue you’re experiencing with neighborhood stories ignoring sims’ sexual preference that might be fixed in the upcoming patch. Even though it’s listed as a bug from Lovestruck, it might be something that has affected everyone’s games whether they have Lovestruck or not seeing as it has been affecting neighborhood stories.

You did inquire about the experience of other players and I know that in my old Cottage Living save I had both randomly generated families with children and single sims with children (male as well as female). 

I checked my current event save (keep in mind that A) this save is a copy/“save as” made from a save which I originally created as a short test for Eco Living so the foundation of it is somewhat old, B) I’ve used it for all the events since June 2024, C) I have almost every pack up until High School Years, D) It’s a single sim household and I play with ageing off for both played and unplayed households and E) Neighborhood Stories has death, adoption of children, cats and dogs, and move out set to off) and what I found was:

• The premade families have produced 25 babies (14 girls and 11 boys) courtesy of neighborhood stories.
• Randomly generated households with children consist of:
  • 2 single moms (both have 1 girl)
  • 3 single dads (1 has 1 boy, the other 2 have 1 girl each)
  • 1 female couple (with 1 boy of which only one is the mother)
  • 2 male couples (both have a teen girl and in both families only one of the men is set as the father)
  • 1 male couple (with 1 teen girl, 1 female child and 1 male toddler again only one of the men is registered as being the father)

It seems the households in my game more often have girls than boys, however,  the number of randomly generated households with children doesn’t strike me as being very high compared to how I remember my Cottage Living save, but then again I haven’t actively been searching for children as I’ve been playing a single sim household and so I can’t really say when these households were generated. All 3 male couples are fairly new, I think, as is one of the single moms with a female child. However, one of the dads with a female child has been in the save for a long time.

Now it piqued my curiosity so I also checked the event save that I’ve been helping my son with as he has fewer packs than me. This save was created for the first event back in June 2024, the household currently consists of 2 young adults, 1 ghost, 1 male child, a female toddler and baby girl - all kids born in game. Ageing is turned off for all and Neighborhood Stories has death and adoption turned off. Current status is as follows:

• The premade households have produced 8 babies (3 girls and 5 boys) and then Vivian Lewis had manager to adopt a toddler (boy) before adoption was turned off
• The randomly generated households with children consist of:
  • 1 single mom with 1 female child
  • 3 single dads (1 male child, 2 female children)
    • The 4 households mentioned above were all generated either during or right after the first event and stem from going to Selvadorada (Jungle Adventure)
  • 3 single moms who all have 1 teen girl and 1 male child
    • Similar to what you’ve been seeing
    • One of these households is pretty new from the latest event, I think, and one of them has been there for quite a while

I was rather surprised that there weren’t that many households with families and that none of the randomly generated households with children have two parents 🤔

So basegame lots that will spawn children apart from parks and playgrounds are libraries and public swimming pools, but there’s no guarantee that it will generate new households. I made a quick pool just to test in my son’s event save and sent the boy from the played household there. 5 children came to the pool - 2 of the premades and 3 that he already knew from the randomly generated households mentioned above. Of the walkbys 2 were kids but again ones that he already knew from the randomly generated households, but I’m big on the randomly generated townies so with so few kids in the save, chances are he has already met them.

You can also try to choose “make friends” when you send your child sims to school, but how many new households this action will generate or if it will just pick from already existing ones I don’t know.

Googling led to a suggestion that choosing to adopt a child on the computer would generate babies, toddlers and children, however, none of them generated into new households when not choosing to adopt them.

Well, this ended up a bit longwinded without any actual solution 😳🫣

Thank you for the references regarding the neighborhood stories system! I didn’t know that the sims traits also play a role on whether they can have babies through the neighborhood stories or not, which was the reason why the couples that I turned on the feature would not have babies, as both couples have a partner with hate children trait😅.

And I also didn’t know that a mix of certain packs will unlock a new stories for a pre-made household, that’s really interesting! I should take it into consideration when I’m buying DLC in the future.

Regarding the gender of the babies, I think it probably just my luck on having male babies more🥲, as other premade households that I sometime control for my gameplay story progression did have a few female babies, maybe I’m just lucky that my main sims somehow have a strong genetic to get male offsprings more😂. I finally got female babies on my 5th generations, but the other household that I wanted the heir to get married also got a female baby, so now I’m hoping their next generations will give both male and female offsprings.

Thank you for sharing your experiences, I learned new things today!

Hi, I'd like to correct one misunderstanding you have.
There is no need to mix DLCs. The Bheeda family from City Living and the Robles family from Growing Together each have their own story. Even if you add only one of those EPs, the story will still start. Don't worry.
I'm glad that your story has progressed a little. 
Have fun playing your Sims Life.

Thank you for sharing your experiences in your saves and also information about the bugs. I did not noticed about it since I read the base game fixes only😅.

Regarding your questions:

How many children do you currently have among your unplayed households - premade and randomly generated?

There’s currently no children from premade household, as they have aged to teen from my gameplay. Currently I have 3 male children from randomly generated household (all single mom with female teen and male child), and 1 male children that was born from neighborhood stories features.

In the save where you’re on gen. 5, have you also stayed in Willow Creek the entire time the same way as you’ve done in your test saves?

For my current gen. 5 save, I once visit the park and also the bar in oasis springs around the 3rd gen., since at the time I wanted to see if the world influences the type and gender of sims spawning, and I did checked and labeled any new household that was created after I visited there. And starting from gen. 4, my main sims now living in Newcrest. And based on my experiences, for now, I assumed that the three base game world does not influence on the type of household with kids that the game will generate.

After seeing your reply, I decided to check the gender of all children that were born to the premade family through my gameplay, where they gave birth to 12 males and 9 females babies. And when I looked through each generations of all the families, each generations do have at least one female baby, so I was just unlucky as all those female babies were born not on my main household, but I finally got one on my 5th🥳. So regarding the gender of babies, I agree it is totally random, just my luck, since I didn’t do any of the stuffs that may influence your sims offspring’s gender.

Starting from gen. 3, I decided to let two randomly generated household with children to age up together with my kids, so I remember at the time when I checked my unplayed household, I had around 5 households with children. And I always make my child sim to visit the park or playground lot every generations, so the game spawned new kids each generation, but never a female child. And I don’t think the gender of the child sim visiting the lot influences the gender of child sim spawn there🤔 (based on my experiences from playing as Olivia Kim-Lewis on my first generation, and later with male child and continue with female child on my 5th generations).

I tried your suggestions on going to library or pool, but it did not spawn new ones, so I tested on my other saves, where at the time I only have 2 premade child and 2 randomly generated, going to library or pool did not generate new households, but going to playground will surely generate a new one until it reach around 5-6 randomly generated households with children. Probably those lots have different requirements of type of children they need to spawn on the lot🤔. I also tried the adoption method, based on my quick test, it didn’t generate any new one yet, but I will test on it more after this. I’m not sure if “make friends” works the same way as “socialize at work”, as for the latter, if no existing sims have the same job as your main sims, I think the game will just increase your sims social bar, without making your sims meet new people.

And thanks a lot for your detailed experiences with your saves! It really gave some new hints! Based on your saves, it seems to be possible to have a female child from randomly generated household, regardless of them having single or both parents. And interestingly, your save does not have any randomly generated households with single mom, female teen and male child, but your son’s save have it. Since you said your saves have more packs than your sons, it makes me wonder if some packs actually have some types of influence on the type of household with children the game will generate for you🤔.

I check on my other saves that was recently created, where I didn’t make my sims visit any park or playground lot yet, and I found out one of my saves have a household with single mom and male child, and another household with one married couple, for the other save, it have a household consisting of a married couples and their children are a male and a female teen, and a household with two single males. So I’m guessing that, at the start of a new save, besides from single service sims and a few unemployed single sims, the game will generate a few households with different relationship dynamics. And when I tried to forced the game to generate new children on those saves by visiting playground lot, it always generated a new household with single mom, a female teen and a male child😞.

If you are available to test, can you try to make a copy of your current save, delete the randomly generated household with children, and make your sims to visit any playground lot (make sure it only have base game lot traits, but do not use teen neighborhood trait, or maybe just set it as no lot trait) and after you see your game spawning new kids on the lot, can you check if your game generates female child, and also for newly generated household with children, what kind of family do they have?

Sorry for the long post, I tried to provide as much details as I can, in case if somebody else wanted to try test on their game and wanted to know what I already did. If others want to share their findings, either about a method on how to make the game generate certain types of households, or maybe about what kinds of family does your game generate for the households that have children, please feel free to add! :)

Congratulations on finally getting a girl as part of your legacy family 🥳 Hopefully it will be more equally divided from now on ☺️

I was able to do a little bit of testing today (music & theatre night at my daughter’s school the other night so haven’t had time before now), but I misremembered your request so in the copy I made from my save, I went to a park instead of a playground. I had deleted all randomly created households with kids (toddlers, children and/or teens) as well as the one single teen household I knew about. There might be more of those, but they can be a bit difficult to spot sometimes and as there are more than 100 unplayed households in my save, I didn’t bother checking every single one of them.

Anyway, I had my sim visit the park in Willow Creek 2 times and the one in Oasis Springs 2 times as well (and I also had my sim go to the bar in Evergreen Harbor, where she resides, because of the “Night on the Town” holiday), and this is what happened: 0(!!) new randomly generated households with children spawned. All the children and teens who came to the two parks on the four different days that my sim went there were from premade families. I honestly couldn’t believe it. There might have been some new single households that were generated, because I sent my sim to the bar, but I’m not sure seeing as there are so many unplayed households. However, among all the randomly generated households there are only 3 that consist of more than 1 sim (ignoring the 10 households I deleted) - one is an elderly couple (husband and wife), the other two are both female couples, one of them with a dog - and all of these three households were generated during the latest event.

Now I did keep this test very restricted in terms of travelling, but I’ve always had the impression that the more lots your sims visit, the more households would generate, which is also the reason why I asked if you had only stayed in one world while playing your household through various generations. But I find the lack of variety among the households in my save rather perplexing even though I have just been playing a single sim household (except for the latest event which required a child so I switched to the randomly generated household consisting of a male couple with three kids) as I believe my old Cottage Living save had lots of different types of households, but maybe I’m simply misremembering. I’ll try to have a look at it one of these days 🧐

I also decided to test my son’s event save by creating a copy in which I deleted all randomly generated households with children plus the five single teenage households. First off the male child in the household had to go to school. I chose “make friends”, and you might very well be right in that this is equivalent to socializing with colleagues at work, that the game won’t generate any or assign any sims to that type of job if none already exist or are in that line of work, because he only “met” children from premade families.

After school the boy first had to partake in an extracurricular activity that he has due to an expansion pack so it got a little late in the day before I could send him to the playground (not sure it would have mattered if I had just sent one of the adults instead of the child) and the result was that three children belonging to the premade families and the toddler that Vivian Lewis has adopted spawned and visited the playground and that was it. It appeared that it was just going to be a repeat of what I had experienced in my save 🙄 But I decided to give it another try the following day, ditched the extracurricular activity in order to get there earlier and sent the boy off to the playground right after school. And this time they came, the randomly generated children. 4 of them and on the nearby streets I noticed 2 or 3 teens, one of them with a different surname than the four children on the playground. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to do more testing at the time, but before logging out I checked the unplayed households and it turned out that 6 new random households with kids had been generated - all of them consisting of a single mother with a female teenager and a male child!! I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry 😂

It will probably be another couple of days, but I’ll try to see if I can get more or different types of multi-sim households to generate even though you did mentioned that in your experience, the game will currently only generate 5 or 6 of these households and that’s it. I’ll also test my save again and remember to make a playground this time 😁

And apologies for the long post, but I also wanted to make sure to provide you with sufficient detail 😊

Thank you for your detailed updates! It’s interesting that your save generates new household from events, which I never observed in my current save although i have been playing a few months already in the save🤔.

Reading at how you tested your save had given me new ideas to try, where I decided to test whether the game will generate a new set of households if I deleted every randomly generated households and left with only premades and my main’s, as I noticed that if you created a new save, the game will randomly generates a few households with more than 2 sims.

After deleting all those households, I was left with one toddler in my main’s and others consisted of teen and older sims. For the test, I stayed on the lot I visited for a few hours, and will check the household management everytime before I visit another lots, labelling the new randomly generated sims so that I know on which lot there were generated.

Here are my findings:

Library (Willow Creek)

• Sim that I controlled to visit the lot: Male teen
• Time: 4pm-8pm
• New randomly generated household: 1 male sim (librarian)

Nightclub (Willow Creek)

• Sim that I controlled to visit the lot: Male adult
• Time: 8pm-12am
• New randomly generated household: 1 female sim (mixologist)

Home lot (Goth House in Willow Creek)

• Sim that I controlled to visit the lot: 1 adult male, 1 young adult female, 1 teen male, 1 toddler male
• Time: 12am-8am
• New randomly generated household: a few single sim households (probably the services sims needed in the game)

I then deleted again all the newly generated households before visiting next lots.

Park (Willow Creek)

• Sim that I controlled to visit the lot: Female young adult
• Time: 8am-12pm
• New randomly generated household: a few single sim households and one household with child (single mother, 1 female teen, 1 male child)

Pool (Newcrest)

• Sim that I controlled to visit the lot: Female young adult
• Time: 12pm-3pm
• New randomly generated household: none

Playground (Newcrest)

• Sim that I controlled to visit the lot: Female young adult & male toddler
• Time: 3pm-9pm
• New randomly generated household: 4 household with child (all single mother, female teen and male child)

Bar (Oasis Springs)

• Sim that I controlled to visit the lot: Male adult
• Time: 9pm-5am
• New randomly generated household: 6 single sim households (but i barely see those sims in the bar, i only noticed they exist after checking the household management)

As you can see, my game no longer generated any new household with more than 1 sim, except for that household with child (single mom, female teen and male child). And visiting park generates child sim slower than playground, and do not need as much child compared to playground, maybe that’s why you did not have any new child generated in your test save as the role can be completed by the child from the premade family😅.

And I think the age of sims visiting the playground lot does not influence the type of family household generated, as I have tested both as a child sim and also adult sim visiting the lot, all gave same results.

At this point, I feel like maybe it is better for me to just create a feedback regarding of this matter as the more I tested, the sadder I get after seeing the results🤣😇. But I’m really curious as your save did have a handful of randomly generated multi-sims households, so if you or others are willing to try, can you check for visiting playgrounds lot only? Delete all randomly generated households with child, and try visit playgrounds without any lot trait active, and check what kind of households it generates, and then repeat it again but try to use any traits from any packs that you think might made the lot more child friendly and check if it give different results.