Hello my favourite Sim Community! 👋🏻I’m looking at ways to spice up my game-play and revolutionise the way I play Sims and I’ve been considering the notion of rotational play on a large scale likely involving a few families over a save.I’m used to sticking to one family for a very long time, generations actually, but I’ve been inspired reading a few posts around the forums on how people play multiple families at once. So this is where you guys come in: I’d like to know some tips on how to start out rotational play. What are the easiest rules to go by? How do you keep track of your families? What should I avoid?All help is appreciated, I am a sponge seeking knowledge!

I play rotationally about 30 households. I'm kind of interested in starting a smaller scale rotational save, but my current one is keeping me too busy. I don't follow a strict schedule, I just play whose story I feel like advancing and try to keep friends and family aging about the same pace. My best tip would be to rotate around night time, personally I rotate around 4am, to avoid sims missing work. Some criminals work night shifts though so you may still end up someone missing work, but not as many! Another tip would be to keep aging on for active household only and keep track when you put aging on for unplayed households. I'm not a big fan of rules myself, you're doing well as long you're having fun.

Well, I can give you the rules I go by, but know that there are about as many ways to play rotationally as there are rotational players. There's no "right" way to do it.My save is a Prosperity Challenge, which is a set of rules first thought up during the TS2 era. The TS2 rules were much more involved than TS4, but basically it boils down to starting a completely blank save and creating a randomized number of households, which you then proceed to rotate through on a set schedule. Over time, the numer of households grows as the Sims marry and have children. (I started with 5 houses back in 2015. I now have close to 30.) Like I said, the gameplay rules are pretty involved but I can give you the gist of how I set up my save and how I keep everything organized.Setup:1) Either download a blank save file, or evict and bulldoze all pre-made lots and families so you're starting with all empty lots. In the options menu, set your aging to "active household only".2) Roll a dice. That number (between 2 and 6) is how many households you will create. If you roll a 1, roll again.3) For each household, repeat the dice roll. This is how many Sims you will create. Again, if you roll a 1, roll again.4) For each Sim (you guessed it!) roll a dice two times. The first number represents the Sim's age. 1=toddler, 2=child, 3=teen, and so on. (If you end up with all children and toddlers, you can re-roll, since the game won't let you create a household without an adult.) The second number represents the Sim's gender (odd for male, even for female). 5) Use a Sim randomizer site (I use createarandomsim.com) to choose aspirations and traits. (There is a very long guide in the rules about how to roll for aspirations, but this is so much faster...)6) Names and appearance are up to you. Relationships are up to you as well, as long as everyone in the household is related in some way. (No roommates).Even if you don't choose to go this in-depth with randomization, I would recommend creating your own families to start off. By starting everyone fresh out of CAS together, you give yourself an equal chance to find the story for each household. (The randomization options also can force you to play with family structures and traits you may not have chosen otherwise.)I play each family for 7 days each. This is easy to keep track of (I just go Sunday to Sunday) and as an added bonus it lines up with the calendar weeks in Seasons. No matter how you choose to set up your rotation, I would recommend having some sort of a structure. I've found that having this in place keeps me motivated to play through the weeks with the families I don't love as much because I know that the ones I absolutely love are just a few lots away. As far as keeping track of them, I have my play list pretty well memorized now (I actually set up their houses in the order that I play to make it easier). I do, however, keep a list each round of Sims who are due to age up into teens during that rotation, so I can think ahead to who should end up with who. (Because the youngest child of each family inherits their parents' house, I've found that I can reduce the number of new households by strategically matching up my playable Sims rather than bringing in townies.)Another kind of odd thing that I do to keep track of my Sims is to assign each house a naming theme. These themes range from the semi-normal, such as characters from a TV show or movie, to the bizarre, like brands of medication or types of fish. That way, I can instantly tell which Sims grew up in which house. Finally, since you mentioned that you typically play a family for multiple generations, know that you can do that with rotational play as well. The 5 houses that I started with have since spawned 4+ generations of descendants, and the family lines have become so interwoven that half the town ends up showing up every time there's a wedding or a birthday. Again, this is just what I do. Just do whatever keeps you excited and engaged.Good luck!

When I end up playing rotationally, it's usually just the result of playing one household for a long time and it expanding over the world. Like, I almost always start with one sim, but then maybe they get married, have kids, some of the kids grow up and move out, so then I'll start playing their households as well, and so on and so forth. Pretty soon I've got 20, 30, 40 households, all descended for that one sim! Most recently, I ended up popping over to another already in game household when they interacted with my played household enough that I got interested in them. So, it's always kind of an organic evolution and not something I necessarily set out to do, if that makes sense. As for tips...I have to admit, at a certain point I usually end up pausing or turning off aging for non-active households, just to make it less stressful and makes sure I get to spend the time I want with each sim. You can't really send a sim to university for instance, and then expect them to do well in school while playing another household. Generally, I tend to focus on whatever household is active at the time, giving them all my attention until I feel like I've gotten to a good "pause" point, and then switch to another one. One thing I've found kinda nice--since most of my households are related, and I have the Seasons pack, I'll end up switching up what household I'm playing for different holidays, I'll invite the rest of the fam over for Harvestfest, for instance, and so different households will end up "hosting" the big family holiday on different "years". I find it quite cute anyway :D

Thank you @FanPhoria , @purplestarz2006 and @musteni for your tips- you've definitely given me a few ideas!I think I'll go through and head into a new save and set up all the lots, etc that I want to have before starting. Who knows what I will do with the family though. Hahahaha!

My preference is to start with one family and expand as the children move out and start their own households. I really enjoy the extended family relationships, and it helps me get attached to all the households when they were mostly founded by sims I've raised. I am up to 13 households now.I play with aging on for the current household only, and play each house for the same number of days every time so they all age at the same rate. I have read of a lot of people who play with aging off most of the time and turn it on once per rotation, so even if they don't play each house the same number of days they still all age at the same rate (but some might have their birthdays while you're not playing them). And some people turn aging off and control everything with birthday cake. Anyway, how you're going to coordinate their aging is something to work out before you start.I have a sort of handwritten sims calendar where I list the weeks according to what holidays are in them, and each time I finish all 13 households I make decisions about what order I'm going to play them in the next time based on what holidays and/or seasons I want to play each family in. That's more fun for me than playing them in a set order. I haven't bought DU because I can't figure out how to fit the university semesters into my rotation, so I don't have any tips there.Be aware that when you rotate houses the following things will happen regularly:If you leave a household with a sim pregnant, the baby will be born while you're playing other households. The game will generate a name that you can't change until they age up to toddler.Pets will almost always be sick when you enter a household after playing another one.I think the sims are more likely to be sick than when you don't rotate also.When you go back into a household after playing the others, your sims will be in random places and their needs will be set to things that have nothing to do with how you left them. Generally the needs are tied to time of day, so if you usually change households at around the same time of day you should be able to develop a routine for dealing with the condition they're in at that time.If you have Seasons:I usually rotate between 2 and 5 am. If you rotate before 2 am on a holiday, the new household will only have a few hours to complete that holiday or get the sad moodlet. At 5 am the plants spawn their harvestables, so if I switch before 5 I can get produce the first day on established plants. Also almost no one has a work schedule that overlaps with that time window. If you rotate into a household during a work or school shift, the sim will almost always be at home missing work or school.That's all I can think of off the top of my head.

HELP: Tips For Rotational Play | EA Forums

20 Replies

simsimsere
Seasoned Ace
6 years ago
I play rotationally about 30 households. I'm kind of interested in starting a smaller scale rotational save, but my current one is keeping me too busy. I don't follow a strict schedule, I just play whose story I feel like advancing and try to keep friends and family aging about the same pace. My best tip would be to rotate around night time, personally I rotate around 4am, to avoid sims missing work. Some criminals work night shifts though so you may still end up someone missing work, but not as many! Another tip would be to keep aging on for active household only and keep track when you put aging on for unplayed households. I'm not a big fan of rules myself, you're doing well as long you're having fun.
purplestarz2006
Rising Ace
6 years ago

Well, I can give you the rules I go by, but know that there are about as many ways to play rotationally as there are rotational players. There's no "right" way to do it.

My save is a Prosperity Challenge, which is a set of rules first thought up during the TS2 era. The TS2 rules were much more involved than TS4, but basically it boils down to starting a completely blank save and creating a randomized number of households, which you then proceed to rotate through on a set schedule. Over time, the numer of households grows as the Sims marry and have children. (I started with 5 houses back in 2015. I now have close to 30.) Like I said, the gameplay rules are pretty involved but I can give you the gist of how I set up my save and how I keep everything organized.

Setup:
1) Either download a blank save file, or evict and bulldoze all pre-made lots and families so you're starting with all empty lots. In the options menu, set your aging to "active household only".
2) Roll a dice. That number (between 2 and 6) is how many households you will create. If you roll a 1, roll again.
3) For each household, repeat the dice roll. This is how many Sims you will create. Again, if you roll a 1, roll again.
4) For each Sim (you guessed it!) roll a dice two times. The first number represents the Sim's age. 1=toddler, 2=child, 3=teen, and so on. (If you end up with all children and toddlers, you can re-roll, since the game won't let you create a household without an adult.) The second number represents the Sim's gender (odd for male, even for female).
5) Use a Sim randomizer site (I use createarandomsim.com) to choose aspirations and traits. (There is a very long guide in the rules about how to roll for aspirations, but this is so much faster...)
6) Names and appearance are up to you. Relationships are up to you as well, as long as everyone in the household is related in some way. (No roommates).

Even if you don't choose to go this in-depth with randomization, I would recommend creating your own families to start off. By starting everyone fresh out of CAS together, you give yourself an equal chance to find the story for each household. (The randomization options also can force you to play with family structures and traits you may not have chosen otherwise.)

I play each family for 7 days each. This is easy to keep track of (I just go Sunday to Sunday) and as an added bonus it lines up with the calendar weeks in Seasons. No matter how you choose to set up your rotation, I would recommend having some sort of a structure. I've found that having this in place keeps me motivated to play through the weeks with the families I don't love as much because I know that the ones I absolutely love are just a few lots away.

As far as keeping track of them, I have my play list pretty well memorized now (I actually set up their houses in the order that I play to make it easier). I do, however, keep a list each round of Sims who are due to age up into teens during that rotation, so I can think ahead to who should end up with who. (Because the youngest child of each family inherits their parents' house, I've found that I can reduce the number of new households by strategically matching up my playable Sims rather than bringing in townies.)

Another kind of odd thing that I do to keep track of my Sims is to assign each house a naming theme. These themes range from the semi-normal, such as characters from a TV show or movie, to the bizarre, like brands of medication or types of fish. That way, I can instantly tell which Sims grew up in which house.

Finally, since you mentioned that you typically play a family for multiple generations, know that you can do that with rotational play as well. The 5 houses that I started with have since spawned 4+ generations of descendants, and the family lines have become so interwoven that half the town ends up showing up every time there's a wedding or a birthday.

Again, this is just what I do. Just do whatever keeps you excited and engaged.

Good luck!
Fanphoria
Seasoned Ace
6 years ago
When I end up playing rotationally, it's usually just the result of playing one household for a long time and it expanding over the world. Like, I almost always start with one sim, but then maybe they get married, have kids, some of the kids grow up and move out, so then I'll start playing their households as well, and so on and so forth. Pretty soon I've got 20, 30, 40 households, all descended for that one sim! Most recently, I ended up popping over to another already in game household when they interacted with my played household enough that I got interested in them. So, it's always kind of an organic evolution and not something I necessarily set out to do, if that makes sense.

As for tips...I have to admit, at a certain point I usually end up pausing or turning off aging for non-active households, just to make it less stressful and makes sure I get to spend the time I want with each sim. You can't really send a sim to university for instance, and then expect them to do well in school while playing another household. Generally, I tend to focus on whatever household is active at the time, giving them all my attention until I feel like I've gotten to a good "pause" point, and then switch to another one.

One thing I've found kinda nice--since most of my households are related, and I have the Seasons pack, I'll end up switching up what household I'm playing for different holidays, I'll invite the rest of the fam over for Harvestfest, for instance, and so different households will end up "hosting" the big family holiday on different "years". I find it quite cute anyway :D
wehaveobsessions
New Spectator
6 years ago
Thank you @FanPhoria , @purplestarz2006 and @musteni for your tips- you've definitely given me a few ideas!

I think I'll go through and head into a new save and set up all the lots, etc that I want to have before starting. Who knows what I will do with the family though. Hahahaha!
Daephene1
Seasoned Ace
6 years ago
My preference is to start with one family and expand as the children move out and start their own households. I really enjoy the extended family relationships, and it helps me get attached to all the households when they were mostly founded by sims I've raised. I am up to 13 households now.

I play with aging on for the current household only, and play each house for the same number of days every time so they all age at the same rate. I have read of a lot of people who play with aging off most of the time and turn it on once per rotation, so even if they don't play each house the same number of days they still all age at the same rate (but some might have their birthdays while you're not playing them). And some people turn aging off and control everything with birthday cake. Anyway, how you're going to coordinate their aging is something to work out before you start.

I have a sort of handwritten sims calendar where I list the weeks according to what holidays are in them, and each time I finish all 13 households I make decisions about what order I'm going to play them in the next time based on what holidays and/or seasons I want to play each family in. That's more fun for me than playing them in a set order.

I haven't bought DU because I can't figure out how to fit the university semesters into my rotation, so I don't have any tips there.

Be aware that when you rotate houses the following things will happen regularly:
If you leave a household with a sim pregnant, the baby will be born while you're playing other households. The game will generate a name that you can't change until they age up to toddler.
Pets will almost always be sick when you enter a household after playing another one.
I think the sims are more likely to be sick than when you don't rotate also.
When you go back into a household after playing the others, your sims will be in random places and their needs will be set to things that have nothing to do with how you left them. Generally the needs are tied to time of day, so if you usually change households at around the same time of day you should be able to develop a routine for dealing with the condition they're in at that time.

If you have Seasons:
I usually rotate between 2 and 5 am. If you rotate before 2 am on a holiday, the new household will only have a few hours to complete that holiday or get the sad moodlet. At 5 am the plants spawn their harvestables, so if I switch before 5 I can get produce the first day on established plants. Also almost no one has a work schedule that overlaps with that time window. If you rotate into a household during a work or school shift, the sim will almost always be at home missing work or school.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head.
LiELF
Legend
6 years ago
My one main rule in my game is: There are no rules. :D

I love to create Sims as much as I like to actually play the game, so putting them all into one save all over the world and utilizing all of the gorgeous towns makes my gameplay more satisfying. I play whichever household I'm in the mood for and keep aging off so I can age Sims up manually when I'm ready. Sometimes I leave them all in "stasis" for a while so that the children can get to know each other and the teens can find their best friends.

Since I play a lot with supernatural Sims, I like to have some groups that involve them, or challenge myself by playing a "mundane" household with the intent that if they meet a certain type of supernatural, they get turned into one.

I also love taking a large household to Selvadorada to explore the jungle and temple. Large households are harder to control (I always leave autonomy on) so I need to pause the game a lot, but I make them bring tents and coolers (from Outdoor Retreat) and spend one or two nights in the jungle to raise the risk of danger and make it more challenging. I don't allow them to return to their vacation house until they've completely explored the temple to the end. One group also camped out in the temple itself. This is especially fun if you have mixed personalities in your household like good/evil, sloppy/neat, Sims who hate children but bring a child along, etc. I also had a Vampire and an Alien with a group of mortals once and it was so much fun. They had to travel mostly by night for the Vampire. :D

There's really a lot of potential for various types of gameplay if you open up your world to rotational play. And the best part is that all of those Sims have the chance to meet and know each other so that stories cross over in unexpected ways.

Whatever you choose to do, just make sure you're having fun doing it. Enjoy! :)
kellybellin
6 years ago
Because there's soooo many ways to do it, I'd suggest just trying it out on a "test save" with aging off for a while and see what you like. Maybe you'll keep the save, or maybe you'll get inspired to start over with rules or a diff approach. That's what I had to do because the idea of diving into rotational play was overwhelming, I thought I had to get it all figured out ahead of time.

Personally, I prefer the "no rules" approach - I switch when I feel like it. Might stay on a family for a very long time but since I have a different mindset about the save, of developing stories that cross households, I do start thinking about moving on. The biggest struggle IMO is age settings. Still haven't gotten that down but for now I've turned aging off so it doesn't stress me out.
elliebreton
Legend
6 years ago
"LiELF;c-17456212" wrote:
And the best part is that all of those Sims have the chance to meet and know each other so that stories cross over in unexpected ways.

That really is so true.

I have played all sorts of varieties of rotational games. My current one is my favourite though - no set rules for it, seasons at 28 days each, ageing on normal lifespan for active household only (this enables you to see how much you have played each household as well as only ageing the sims as you play them).

I set the worlds up first with the lots I wanted, then I added a multitude of households - mainly just young adult couples who I want to progress with families and generations. I assigned every single sim a different job and tried to keep traits and aspirations as different as possible so that there is a wide variety. I am playing about 3 different households per world at the moment, roughly around 30 households in all. I may add more as I go, either as extra playables or just as background fodder (for work colleagues and friends to interact with).

I keep a spreadsheet of the family names, which world they live in and which jobs they have - this is so that I can see at a glance who I fancy playing at the time - so, if I want to play spellcasters one day then I visit my Cooper family (with cat) in Glimmerbrook. If I want to play my scientist sim I visit my Roberts couple in Oasis Springs. Etc etc.

If I am going to switch households any time, then I do it at 6 am as I find that the best time for me - sims are usually rested upon loading their house and I can get them ready for the days work. If you have any sims at uni, do not switch until a term is ended or they will likely have failed when you go back to them.

Edit: forgot, one more thing: if your sim is developing a relationship with someone and you want to keep that relationship when you rotate away, make sure they at least have 'friends' status, because 'acquaintances' are usually culled from the relationship panel.
wehaveobsessions
New Spectator
6 years ago
( @calaprfy , @elanorbreton , @LiELF , @ripentogether , @Daephene )

Thank you so much for your tips everyone- I am LIVING for them! ?

I decided to start first by setting up the world(s) for the save which is entailing adding extra venues, filling empty lots and restyling others entirely. The great thing about owning all the packs is ENDLESS POSSIBILITIES with building- I’m going to try incorporate venues I haven’t touched during my usual play. I might even try solve the Strangerville Mystery this time around at some point.... HMM...

One of the reasons why I wanted to start a rotational save was to get back to the OG townies and try keep their families to their aesthetic roots a bit more as the town no doubt ages eventually as when I played my Legacy save I forgot about them all and they all died off and married randomly through MCC. ?

I’m really loving the idea of setting up an excel for the families I’m going to start with- and keep tabs on some crucial information about them to see how the save progresses over time.

The biggest issue I’m going to have is with ageing- because I almost always play with it on for everything. I’m just worried that I’m going to miss out on a lot with the neighbourhood if I keep it up for this save, especially if I end up having quite a large group of households I’m working across.

Maybe I’ll be able to figure out some kind of compromise...? Who knows! If anyone has ideas how to workaround this let me know. ?
elliebreton
Legend
6 years ago
"LehmanLegacy;c-17457189" wrote:
The biggest issue I’m going to have is with ageing- because I almost always play with it on for everything. I’m just worried that I’m going to miss out on a lot with the neighbourhood if I keep it up for this save, especially if I end up having quite a large group of households I’m working across.

Maybe I’ll be able to figure out some kind of compromise...? Who knows! If anyone has ideas how to workaround this let me know. ?

If you don't fancy just using age active household, what I have done in the past is turn ageing off altogether and then turn it on for 1 sim week every year so that the whole worlds age at the same rate. You could do something along those lines.