Does anyone else play this way? (Rotational gameplay)

I play almost exclusively like this. Normally I start with some sort of orphan legacy or a household of non related friends who go to University together and then all branch out with their families. I'm currently on Gen 6 in my longest save file, have almost completely rebuilt the world, and have about 8-12 families I rotate through.

I have auto aging off completely for this save and sometimes I'm not super thrilled with one family or another so they get skipped over and every once in awhile, I go through every single household and age them up several times (or kill a few in different ways to keep my numbers down) to get to the next generation of young adults. It's really cool to see how they pair off, have kids of their own, and then have their grandparents and greatgrandparents living in the different siblings' households. I love seeing sims from birth to death and I love seeing how far back and interconnected their family trees get. I only add 1-2 sims each generation to keep the bloodline fresh.

The in game family tree isn't super useful for understanding familial connections so I made my own in Canva using their whiteboard and I'm excited to update it for this next generation

I play rotationally approx 25 families , now just over 6500 hours on this save file

Currently I have at least one family in every single neighbourhood apart from the latest one as i haven't yet got down my list to that neighbourhood . Just now switched to normal life lengths as i found long life was too long . 

I also swap every Sunday apart from if i play my famous sim i switch from them on a Monday so they can go to the awards ceremony at the end of their week .

I only have ageing on for my current family and townies can move in , move out , find jobs . All my families started with the basic 20k handout and either their house was upgraded or they moved to a better place when they could afford it . I try and give each one a different career and i have , Aliens, witches, vampires and plantsims , No werewolves as i tried them and  soon got bored and deleted that family , although i may try again one day .

I have totally rebuilt every neighbourhood with at least one nightclub , bar , lounge , karaoke bar , spa , gymnasium , park  in each .

The biggest annoyance for me is the sheer number of townies that the game spawns constantly , I go through other households  at the end of each week with my family and delete the ones i do not want in my game . Ones i keep i check the icon to let them move in out etc which puts the newly created townies at the bottom of the list so they are easier to go through and remove the ones that annoy me 

I play rotationally, in one save. I keep aging off except for the active household and play them one week at a time, then switch to the next household. I use the manage households menu and pick one who has not been played the longest. I slowly make over NPC's and may move them to a different neighborhood, if my game has placed them willy-nilly throughout the neighborhoods before I can get into MCCC and turn off moving in homeless. I will delete NPC's occasionally, if they aren't fitting the game I am playing. 

When do I stop? Unfortunately, I didn't realize what I was doing wrong so that when EA updated the game, everyone was reset and I would spend forever trying to get EVERYONE back to the way they were before the update. This fall, with EA updating nearly every two weeks, I have finally figured it out and now and trying to set up a save to keep playing. But, I didn't want the Reaper event to mess it up, so I have kept it out and have been playing with a new set up with only the one family to play the event. As soon as they get the little grim icon off my computer, I will try to put my saves back in and get back to play.

I always played rotationally, so whenever I add a new world (I call them districts in my game), I will also add every single residential lot to my rotation. I must have more than 100 households. I play with aging off, but turn it on for New Years Eve only. Then all sims age 1 year. Downside is that this many households means I mostly stop by each house only for a day, maybe up to 3 days if there is some reason for it. Some houses I won't even check unless there is a birthday etc. My routine and focus has changed over the years, and when I need it, I might squeeze in one extra year without the aging, just to have enough time to explore say a new world. When I implemented aristocracy and a royal family I probably added two extra calendar years to play them and get time enough to add their history to their homes etc. So, although my routine is very strict and calculated, I can take a break from the routine whenever I see it needed. Because I focus more on the community aspects than many other simmers, I also want to develop community and play through minimum 3-4 years every RL year. There is an election coming up every 5 years, and other repeating community aspects like sports tournaments and film productions etc. You can see much of my progression as I share it online:

 https://www.hinsides.no/ts4/registry/community00.html

Blog: Simmerville's Sims

Well, i don't know if how i play can be called rotational... I have one main household with which i play various legacy or not, following the new pack out or else.... but i like to have a real family tree so i switch to the household of the siblings/cousin/uncles and aunts/... to develop it. I don't stay in those household per say, just enough to chose the spouse and move out....Recently, i had to start over new because of a save problem and i was just able to take some of my old household to put them in a new game...so i started with around four families plus my main one and i follow them through time....I had fun trying to pair my young adults with some major houses of the games....I naturally let the aging on, that's the goal here after all, as i let the neighborhood stories on except the adoption one (They could go a bit crazy with this one), the adoption of pets and horses for all my household barring the main one where i disabled everything...

Sorry if there are spelling or grammar mistakes, english is not my first language....

I have played multiple families since I started playing Sims 2. 

For my PC, I do focus on one family, but have added more Sims so I can take a break from the main family for awhile. Plus, I have moved out some of the teens from the families to play more rotationally. 

My PS4 version, however, is more rotational in play, because I have created multiple families to play between. They have different dynamics, and are set up differently. Downside of doing that is that you have only so many houses and lots to have your families, so my plan is to combine some of my played families. My population right now is huge, so next generation only the heirs will have kids, with some exceptions. Planning to get For Rent on sale to add more homes for my families. 

I play rotationally, too, because it makes for a nice challenge and like you said, it's a chance to play around with different aspirations, careers, character traits, gameplay mechanics and so on. Currently, I have eight households with I think 19 or 20 Sims total, with one still being an infant. 

I started out with just one household, played that one for months on end and eventually decided I wanted a second one. Then, when the kids of the first household started to grow up, I figured they needed their own homes, too, so now the two oldest daughters have their own places.

But like you, I don't want to wait until all the kids are grown up because with five kids, that can take some time. So I added more households: a shared house with three Sims (a policeman, a scientist and an aspiring actor); a young adult couple who just got married and had their first kid; a young adult couple where he is a criminal and overall such a nasty guy that everybody hates him while his wife is well-liked and training to become a lawyer.

Usually, each household gets one Sim week, and usually I switch on Sunday morning around 3 a.m. unless there's a wedding underway or a Sim is pregnant, or when one of my Sims is in college and gets to live on campus.

I have auto-aging off and age them up manually, and a few Sims that are especially dear to me have familiars so they won't die by accident. They all have to work their way up if they start from scratch, i.e. if it's a brand new household. The kids from my main household start out rather privileged after college, though, because their parents are insanely rich and can give them enough funds to buy a nice home. 

Oh, and most Sims of those households know each other, some of them have become besties, too 😁

I play like that but more extreme. I do not use neighbourhood stories and my rules is no money nor skill limitations. I populated my town w full skill sims full cash. That is to fully experience the potential of all interaction. I dont really spend set time periods, its all improv. Mostly i have one main household and a few supporting households,  much like a movie or a teleserie. Like for rn i got Heartland in two households and i am managing my own ranch in the same neighbourhood. 

I play rotationally between the children of my original sims, so far I'm on generation 3. I keep aging on at all times and have a custom lifespan so I won't miss out on too much when rotating. I'll eventually increase the lifespan when I have more households, I'm only rotating between 3 at the moment.

I find there is too much that you can do in game to just have one household and I get attached to my sims, so would never be able to just pick one to focus on.

I used to play rotationally with aging on long but when the rental xp came out it messed up the timing so I switched to normal aging but what I do is play on normal for one round of saves (I have many) and then with aging off for a couple of rounds. I usually have only one main family per save but like to see how the other families are getting on so play them too but for a shorter time.