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.