Do you put “rules” on yourself?

I don't really cheat a lot. Maybe only for storytelling or experimental purposes. Sometimes I rig the gender of my sim's baby because pop and alternative music don't work for me.

It's not really a rule that I imposed on myself, exactly. I just learned that playing without cheats is fun in a challenging way, so it fell out of habit back in TS2

I do not use cheats unless the game behavior makes me feel it has bugged. I don't give myself an 'Advantage' unless setting up for a story. Why cheat if the game already provides multiple ways to break reality. If I feel I have 'cheated' I feel I have already lost any reason to continue the play / save I have going - so why bother.

Maybe I don't have TOO MANY rules, but if I break them, that save is pretty much done.

I have a few rules. The game would be chaos without them. I just started a garden legacy. It's my first legacy game. Lol Let's see how long I last before I start changing the rules. After all if you don't like the rules you can always make your own.

I have no mods and always play without cheating. I also randomise traits etc because I found I was stuck in a rut, always picking the same few "good" traits so my sims were all the same. Randomising means I get to experience all the differences, both negative and positive, and keeps the game play interesting and challenging. :)

No affecting which gender a baby will be born. Must be random.
No changing of said baby's appearance when they grow up. Must be natural - only exception is plastic surgery for celebrities OR trans sims.
No unrealistic sims (like super sims, sims who have a ton of skills maxed out)

And another rule that you all might disagree with, but I like to keep NPC jobs very stereotypical. Butlers must be elder male, maids adult female, nannies cannot have a pink mohawk sorry, etc.

I give myself rules that differ from save to save just to keep the game fresh and not allow myself to fall into ruts and become bored doing the same thing over and over again. If I let myself, I fall into the pattern of endlessly grinding out skills and completing aspirations rather than finding new and interesting things in the game.

It is not a coincidence that the sims games are the only games that have ever held my interest for more than about five minutes. Rules are what make other games boring to me.

It's interesting to me how many people have a "no cheats" rule. Because when I first tried sims (it was sims 3 at that time) I actually found it boring until I discovered I could cheat and get rid of all those pesky "needs" my sims kept having that were annoying me and getting in the way of what I wanted to do. After finding a way to cheat on needs, was when I started having fun.

"FurSimsOfficial;c-17108752" wrote:
I am actually not sure if I can say they are a lot but I know that I am very serious about my rules and I dedicate my life to it :D

Some rules I have are:

- Only use speed x3 or x4 when ALL household sims are asleep
- Only use speed x2 when a sim does a boring interaction like skill building and there are no other sims in my household doing something more interesting
- Hit pause every time at least 1 sim in my household has no tasks. NO pointless standing around sims
- Free will is NOT an option, only with roommates and these free will played roommates are not part of my households.
- Play always on long life spawn
- No self made soul mates for my sims. I prefer to let the game decide who they run in to. I only did this once with a background story though.
- No forced scenes. All should happen according to the plan of the universe. I can only direct them.
- No occult's or unrealistic supernatural creatures are involved in my game play. If my sim stumbles upon one and it becomes a friendship/romance then I will need to delete the occult on that sim.
- When new Packs arrive, I do not force my sims to play with it immediately. Only when the time and situation is right and suits to play with the world or features of the new pack. Some packs I haven't even played with, but I like to play reserved. Way more fun in the end!
- NO gameplay cheats! Only build/buy to ease the placing of objects. I am only allowed to use the freerealestate cheat for the first household in my generation rotational play, cause they might have a certain background story.
- If a sim or pet dies.. it dies. I did not save the game a few times when it was too unrealistic though or happened because of a bug.
- My sims have a little background story and some future plans, but I let the total picture be decided to where the road takes them along within the rules I set up in this whole list.
- NO unnatural behaving such as man pregnancy, alien abduction etc.
- Sims can buy homes and pay off their debt though due to lacking loan/mortgage/heritage features in the game
- NOBODY can play with my saves :) We will have a problem if you do.
- No early aging up for any phase. Every sim deserves the most of it's lifetime.

Ehhhh ok.. I guess I do have a lot of rules then..

I don’t usually create my sims partners either. In fact, I’ve only done it twice. Once with an alien boy and once with a vampire girl. And when I did that it was only because I wanted to play around with aliens + vampires since I only make sims in cas if I’m gonna need them in my game.

The only rule I have is that I don't use cheats - this is mostly because I'm on console and want to eventually get all the trophies. I used to use cheats all the time on PC but I feel like I'd have this rule about no cheats if I played on PC because my playing style has changed.

Rules? What rules?