How do you play "legacy" style?

"telmarina;d-987350" wrote:
Do you play with aging on or off (age whenever you feel)?
What lifespan you use: small, normal or long?
Do you rotate with the offspring?
Who do you choose to be your heir?
Do you set goals for lifestages?
Do you have a theme/set of goals for each generation?
Do you only play challenges?
Let me know your personal "rules"...

I play with aging on, and normal-based lifespans, but with customized numbers of days per life stage via MCCC. I started out rotating with offspring (assuming you mean the spares, not heirs), but that eventually became more unwieldy than I was comfortable keeping up with. Now I release most of them into the wild, as it were, but I drop in occasionally to play some of them on an irregular basis.

I have a minimum list of requirements (with a points system of my own devising) that all progeny must meet to qualify as a potential heir, but the 1st-born gets an automatic bonus toward that. The eldest will still need to meet or exceed other goals and requirements, though, as a sibling might very well earn enough points in the long run to take the title. I don't set particular life-stage goals other than the usual ones concerning aspirations, school grades, and so on.

I should note that even with my points system I've found myself surprised at times by unexpected circumstances. For example, I had one heir-apparent fall in love with an heir from another legacy family, so I had to make new rules to deal with such things. It simply hadn't occurred to me before then, lol. Rather than forbid it, I chose to allow all heirs and heirs-apparent the option to "abdicate" in such cases, providing that they leave the ancestral home and relinquish their former title and any extra privileges attached to that. They aren't disowned/disinherited, though.

As for themes, I don't do formalized goals based on them, but I do tend to let the personalities and skills of my potential heirs guide my form of gameplay for each generation. My preferred style of legacy play is actually much more casual than I may have made it sound here.

I play my legacy with normal life span and aging on. I do occasionally cause a death for storytelling purposes.

I tend to choose a favorite offspring based on appearance or traits or just play the eldest. I will check in with the other offspring and try to make sure my favored offspring interacts with their extended family, but they are not my main focus. I use mods to make sure the played and unplayed sim lives stay interesting. :D

I roll various challenges into my generations to give myself rules and goals, but I'm also very lenient on those goals... use them more as inspiration. I'm currently on generation Earth Tones of the Extended Not So Berry Challenge with my 29th generation of my legacy. I will also let randomized traits or random occurrences in the game guide me on a story. For example, early in my legacy one of the children died from a dryer fire. His little brother grew up with an irrational fear of fire and never ate hot food.

My only hard and fast rule is to not take it too seriously. It's just a game.

I am playing my current legacy with the rule set at simslegacychallenge.com, with a couple of tweaks here and there. I like that set of challenges and limitations. That's part of why I like normal life span and aging on, too. I am not using the score-keeping features as keeping score wouldn't be fun for me and I'm not competing against anyone.

I decided at the beginning that inheritance would be trait-based (the Exemplar option in the rules), so whoever has Loves Outdoors and is the eldest is the heir, and the others either move out or continue to share the lot. If no one loves the outdoors, then it's just the eldest, and they have to either put up with living in a giant garden with semi-outdoor structures or else totally renovate the lot :)

Old tabletop RPG player here-- I tend to try to get skills, career level and aspirations to fit the strengths and weaknesses and interests of each character, rather than just trying to max everything for everybody. Normal lifespan with aging on is a good check for that. I don't want to be playing the same supersims over and over again for 10 generations, I want them to vary and struggle sometimes and I also want to be able to explore different sides of the game with different sims.

I don't know if I'll play strictly with this ruleset again, after finishing the current challenge. You can't play it rotationally, which makes things easier for a newer player, but cuts out a number of interesting options for game play. Being on one lot for 10 generations has its pros and cons: it can get boring but it's also a nice built-in motive to do some building every generation or two to keep things interesting and to customize the place for each generation's unique qualities.

The simslegacychallenge.com trait generator is cool-- it takes the traits of both parents into account when generating child traits, but there's still some randomness. I really like this because it chooses things for me that I might not ever think of, but it isn't purely random and makes it feel as if genetics play a role in personality too. I'll probably keep on using the trait generator in future games.

I've been playing for one season/sim-week at a time, then taking a little time to sort through screenshots and make a post about that season. The events of that season, both planned and unplanned, help me think of where I want to take the story in the next season. I don't usually imagine more than one season ahead although once in a while I get an idea.

"telmarina;d-987350" wrote:
Do you play with aging on or off (age whenever you feel)?
What lifespan you use: small, normal or long?
Do you rotate with the offspring?
Who do you choose to be your heir?
Do you set goals for lifestages?
Do you have a theme/set of goals for each generation?
Do you only play challenges?
Let me know your personal "rules"...

1. Aging is On when I'm playing the legacy household. During rotations it's off so I don't miss birthdays or age-locked aspirations/skills.
2. I use a modified Long lifespan since the regular Long lifespan isn't enough time for me. My legacy households tend to be filled with 3+ children, and I enjoy large households.
3. I only rotate through my main families' heirs and let the siblings do whatever they want
4. Eldest child or whichever child comes out to be a mix of both parents. I don't like having same-facey heirs since I'm interested in the genetics system.
5. Goals I have for heirs are that they have to max all their toddler/child skills and start gaining teenage/adult skills while they're children. Most of my heirs are musically bound, so almost all of them play piano or sing and max those skills before they age into a teen. They also end up with at least lv5 in other adult skills before they age up.
6. No real set goal or theme for each gen, just either using them to explore each pack I get or have them min/max things before they die
7. Nope, sometimes I just let the game run and check on it later lmao
8. The only one that comes to mind is if I'm playing a household that isn't my legacy house, the toddlers/children are only allowed to age up when they max their skills. I can't use cheats in my legacy households either, but manipulating bugs/glitches or any means of obtaining extra funds is free game. My whole legacy is just full of criminals at this point
For other households, money cheats are ok, but skilling cheats aren't. Kinda makes the game boring if I cheat skills imo

1. Aging on, always.
2. My go to is Normal, my favorite is Short.
3. Rotational gameplay is so TS2. Thanks to MCCC my worlds feel lively enough without my meddling.
4. I play favorites :V
5. My toddlers have either 5 skill levels in one or 3 skill levels in each, my children have at least one aspiration down and teen have at least one character value maxed. Not doing so feels like such a loss and the fact that NPCs don't gain any of these on their own upsets me.
6. Offspring will have one trait from each parent and one trait of their own or have a "family trait" that's passed down through all the generations while the other two are their own, unless I'm doing a challenge.
7. Not at all. I like them, but there are only so many out there that fit my taste.
Let me know your personal "rules"...
8. I don't use cheats other than resetsim and bb.moveobjects , TS4 is ridiculously easy I just don't see the need. Especially with spellcasters, which I often make.

This was nice, thanks for asking!

"telmarina;d-987350" wrote:
Do you play with aging on or off (age whenever you feel)?
What lifespan you use: small, normal or long?
Do you rotate with the offspring?
Who do you choose to be your heir?
Do you set goals for lifestages?
Do you have a theme/set of goals for each generation?
Do you only play challenges?
Let me know your personal "rules"...

1) I always play with aging on. Even when I'm only playing in a quick test save to check out new mechanics from DLC or a new mod I'm trying.

2) Long life. I used to play on normal, but I didn't like feeling rushed to wedge everything in there.

3) I only follow the heir. The others get set up in appropriate houses then released to the whims of MCCC. I might check in on them from time to time, but only for a sim day or so.

4) It varies, but in my current save it's the eldest daughter who is a spellcaster. In my last save, it was the child whose autonomy intrigued me the most.

5&6) Kinda sorta, not really per life stage. At least, not beyond the usual "Max out toddlers, get children through all four aspirations" that I think is probably fairly normal for playing on long life. Per generation, I don't really have a theme or a set of goals, but I do come up with each generation's story - usually but not always while the heir sim is a child. Once their story is finished, I'll usually let them run more or less autonomously while I move on to the next generation's story.

7) I have never played an official legacy challenge by the rules because I've yet to find one that I find works well with my playstyle as is. The closest I got was a personal variation on Building Newcrest that I wound up abandoning when the CC doors and Windows broke. I may try that one again soon. I did try to make my own once, but I couldn't settle on anything "concrete" enough to have someone else try it. I may take another stab at that again too.

8) Rules vary by whatever I'm trying to do at the time. In my first one, I was trying to get as many career unlocks as possible in the house, but each sim was only allowed 3 jobs and no repeats (other than to follow the other branch). But that was before University came out. My current one doesn't really have any, other than no more moving or major rebuilds of the house.

Keep in mind that my furthest Sims 4 legacy is on generation 4, including the founder. I mostly build.


Do you play with aging on or off (age whenever you feel)?
On, for played households. Occasionally I'll turn it off for a day or two if there's something I want to happen and there's a birthday close.

What lifespan you use: small, normal or long?
On my original legacy, I think normal? Could be long, I don't play it often. Most of my saves, just normal.

Do you rotate with the offspring?
No. I don't like my Sims leaving. I want them all together. They stay in the house as long as possible, and if they leave, they don't have children. When they get old, I must move them back in so I can have their gravestones. My current adult generation shall have only one child so that I don't even have to move any siblings out.

Who do you choose to be your heir?
If there's more than one, the oldest.

Do you set goals for lifestages?
My original legacy is to eventually marry into every pre-made family and have both sides of every career. Each generation and their spouse gets one half of the same career to complete before they die of old age.

Do you have a theme/set of goals for each generation?
As stated above, there's a career goal for each generation.

Do you only play challenges?
No. A lot of the challenges I saw asked for score-keeping. I just want some unpredictable virtual dolls. Sims 4 sims are pretty predictable though, which is why my original legacy is only on generation 4. I build, mostly.

Let me know your personal "rules"...
I'm kind of thinking I need to go back and get rid of my 4th generation. I forgot the bit about marrying into pre-made families and married a Sim I made myself. Whoops. To be fair though, she's awfully cute.