How do you play The Sims 4?

I usually play rotations that include mostly YAs, but I have their family members and friends of other ages there too for variety. I like focusing on relationships and making things as dramatic as I can without getting too soap opera-ish. I make up backstories as I go along and add sims as I see fit.
My main save is an example of this, and pretty much every sim I post about on here is from that save (including the sim in my avi).

My other saves are legacies, playing with premade sims, or just doing whatever comes to mind. Recently I've been playing Vlad Straud's backstory (ft. the vampire sims from the Maxis gallery). I made him human and played out him being turned (by Elle DeVampiro, who he eventually betrayed) up to him becoming the Grand Master we know and love.

Most of the time I will start off with a teen or single young adult and go from there. But there other times I like to go even younger. What I sometimes like doing is creating a toddler, and then save them in my library. This way I don't have to create an adult. After that, I will take the child straight from my library, and move them in with a sim or family of my choosing. I don't connect the family ties, but play this child as an orphan.

I usually go from teenager onwards, it allows you to get skills in play early, if you are a writer, you get an immediate bump in income after saving those books and reach a certain level in writing to sell the books to a publisher.

on occasion i might go from a toddler and get all skills to 3 and gain a happiness trait from it, advance as many skills as possible in child phase, including charisma and logic, make sure school grades are A with the tick. then do the same again in teenager and write books. This game has a habit of getting your characters interacting with each other when in the same room, it will slow down progress considerably. so i usually make the effort to create a seperate room that only your sim can access or move the teenager out and start up elsewhere.

I usually have a backstory in my head before making a sim/family or even save game with numerous families. It can be original (as much as things like that are really original) or it can be inspired by a character or cast of characters I've run across through books, tv, movies, other games including past sims games or even other sources. The characters can be nearly any age but are usually young adults. These also have to be characters that I think I can actually play out in the sims game or at least be okay with how I'll actually live out their lives. Mods sometimes come into play also because some things I never expect to see in the sims mostly due to ratings so if a mod has it and it works well enough to suit me I can tell more stories with those.

My go to example for the forums is I have a Stardew Valley save. I've created nearly every character that appears in that game and they all have a life that is inspired by that game but conformed to what is possible in this game. So I'll give them jobs as close to what I think they might have. I'll dress them as I think they would dress. I'll look for or build or tweak houses that I see them residing in. I'll work toward the relationships I see them having and the goals they might (or might not) have.

Then I play in other ways. Sometimes I just play deviantly for a short session, sometimes I want to try out a new aspiration or something else from a new pack or even an old pack that I never got around to trying out so I make a character just to do that. I also sometimes try to do player made challenges or the ones I come up with or bend the rules for to guild my own play a bit. Sometimes I just want to test out how many ghost types I can make... or other things like that to amuse me and see what's possible.

Lately I took inspiration from the newest premades in IL... and now I have a rotational save game that is just about the all the premades that came with game.

I don't have a shortage of ways to play.

I don't always start a new game this way - but this is usually how I do it.

- Come up with a basic background and story line for my Sim.
- Create a young adult Sim on normal life span (no gender, trait or aspiration preference although certain traits are never picked).
- Bulldoze most if not all community lots and download one from the gallery.
- Delete pre made Sims from the neighborhoods.
- Download some 'townie' Sims from the gallery (young adults, teens and kids).
- Move Sim into a house (sometimes I build and sometimes I download the house).
- Find a career for the Sim and start building some skills (based on the story line I've created).
- Have them live there life, eventually meet a spouse and have kids.
- Have a family - normally somewhere between 1-5 kids depending on the Sims and their story line.
- Usually randomly pick the kids traits using Pinstars random trait generator. This way it is kind of like passing traits down to the kids.
- Once the kids have grown up - pick one of the kids and continue on.

I usually do this until I get bored of the family and then start a new save file. Usually play for a few generations at least. Also - sometimes I play rotationally - just depends what I feel like.

I create two sims. A female and a male. I play the female and have her meet and fall in love with her preordained soulmate. :) They get married and start raising a family. I only play this family and all of the other sims in my neighborhoods are basically background sims that I never play. My game play style is goal oriented and to that end I usually have the parents complete all careers and aspirations. Once the kids age up I move them out and into their own homes. While there is a lot of contact with their siblings and other relatives I rarely play the offspring except to have them marry and start their own families. I play with aging off.

I have a few different standard ways I play.

1) START WITH SINGLE SIM. Create a teen or young adult female and start building their friends through townies and premades, find a partner, advance in career, start a family. I'm too controlling to just play that sim, though, even though that's my initial intention, so I end up playing some of the other sims in her circle so that their lives can intersect with hers in a more realistic way. For example, one of her friends will throw a party and invite her, so then I have to go set up the party. Or I'll get two of the people in her friend group together romantically. Stuff like that. I end up playing multiple households, but she's still the main focus.

2) CHANGE AGES TO MATCH MY SIM. This was one of my favorite ways to play. I wanted to play a young adult female who moves from the small town of Willow Creek to the big city of San Myshuno, but it bugged me that my sims start with no friends and no parents to attend their wedding. So I gave her a family and started playing her one age group lower from what I wanted in my main storyline. I made her a teen in Willow Creek. Then I aged all the kids in Willow Creek to teen so that she'd have a peer group. Once she aged up, some of her friends also moved to San Myshuno and some stayed in the same neighborhood, like they would in real life, and she would come back to Willow Creek sometimes for visits with family and friends, or her high school friends would occasionally come visit her. It was nice to start the "young woman moves to the big city" storyline with my sim having a backstory and social relationships already in place.

3) WHOLE WORLD. Create a whole world of my own sims in a different era (what I'm doing now--1800s).

4) NON-STANDARD COMMUNITY LOTS. This goes with all other styles of playing, but I like to create different lots, often generic, for my sims to interact in. Some lots I've created are corporate offices, schools, after-school centers, a place for Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, an art store, a multi-store shopping center on a single lot, a masonic lodge, a church, and the one I'm currently working on--a bank.

Oh and I always cheat to provide them with housing I think is appropriate to their personality and financial status. Sometimes making a home look poor actually takes a lot of money, so I rarely try to build up money for housing or decor.

Oh yeah and I forgot this little trick...

5) PHOTOS OF LIVES THAT NEVER HAPPENED. I'll start a family with parents that are already married and take wedding photos to hang on the wall as soon as their placed, usually setting up an empty room in the house with wedding props. Sometimes I'll change their hair so that it looks like a younger/different version of their current selves. I'll start my kids off as toddlers and take photos of them, then immediately age them up to child. That way, the sims in the family seem like they have a past as soon as they're brought into the game.

This is my first time playing this way I usually play a single sim and get bored pretty quickly have a baby with a random and then stop playing.

During isolation I decided to download it again with a lot of expansion packs as they were half price so this is my story so far


I thought I'd try something different now..first how cool is the gallery I used lots from different people and redone the whole neighbourhood's with brand new restaurants/nightclubs bars (I get good use out of all of them and change it up sometimes) and houses..I also moved a load of well known singers and rappers into del sol valley.

I always play aging off and then when I want a sim to age up because I have plans for them I give them a birthday party...

I created a single sim Beyonce she has worked her way up the acting and then music career all the while getting famous she made it to global superstar pretty quickly, and now she is top of the music career and has won some awards at the star accolades. I then decided to let her have 2 kids with a fellow celeb she had two boys...one is a young adult now I aged him from toddler using normal aging span and meanwhile beyonce also aged into an adult. She also now has a child who too was aged up in normal span..and attends school...so anyway I want to play a generation game now with the different sim generations from this family so at the moment her eldest son is studying a language and lit degree at uni almost finished his last term...which has taken me 5 sim weeks because of how I played it. He is then going to move out of dorms and into uni housing off campus, because I want him to get another degree in psychology so I can go ahead and pursue the detective career and have a head start. He also has a boyfriend who I plan to marry him too on a beach somewhere in salani I made a mint venue...just not yet..so as i said hes in his last term of his first degree so let's see where that takes me...I think I'm all out played with beyonce now until I want her to become an elder and eventually die (I just cant bring myself to kill beyonce) aha. And I know when I get reach my goals with her son, I have the other sim son to go ahead and sim with and any generations they bring into the game.