Rotational Play - Documenting Your Game

I remember your posts back in The Sims 3 days - always so creative! 

I agree completely regarding the new forums, I much prefer the older format.

This is incredible work Simmerville - 800 sims...wowza!! I love you much detail you capture, I truly wish there was a singular application where simmers could document everything in one place - screenshots, storylines, individual profiles, family trees etc. 

Thanks for sharing simsimsere - this looks like a good resource, I might give it a go. I'm desperate for something.

I use Notion! I have a gallery database where I track all of my sims, their pictures through their lives, their parents/children/siblings/partners, jobs, education, etc. I like it because I can write blurbs, updates & plans on each page of the database, as well as sort the gallery by family/age/world/etc. It works really well for me!

Notion sounds interesting. Would you mind showing how it looks for you the way you use it? I think I've been using wordpress way too long to switch, but got curious anyway 🙃 This thread could be a great resource for anyone looking for info.

Sure, here you go! Admittedly, I mentioned a gallery database but when I went to check my rotational gameplay family database, I tend to use the table view more (as it's easier to fill out info that way). Still, I included an image of the table & the gallery & a look at one of the individual pages with some notes. 

One thing that I really like about Notion, is that you can filter which database properties you want to see when looking at the database. So, for instance, you see tons (but not all) of the properties in the table database view. However, when I click over to gallery, I have it set to only show pictures & names. If I want more information, I go back to the table view or I click on their picture to bring up their database page (I showed the page for one sim down below). So if my table view looks overwhelming, it's just because I have it set to show me all that info at once. You can turn off categories you don't care to see!

This system may seem a little intense but I've found it works best with my brain's need to document everything. And there's tons of stuff I want to revise about this system, like more things I want to track & some things I want to prune, but I've been hyperfocusing on TS2 lately, so I haven't come back to it yet lol. (I do something similar for TS2 as well!)

I take a ton of screenshots and have a folder for each family (and their descendants as they get their own families) where I keep the screenshots organized. For storylines, I work old school with a notebook as I play. I do have a blog, but I'm terrible at keeping it updated because it takes so long to edit the pictures and write the text, etc when I'd rather be playing. But I try. 😄

I save all my screenshot and transfer them to USB's with dates and lables. Like photo albums...remember?...not digital. Hundreds and hundreds of pictures. Someday it will be fun to look at all of them when this game is no longer being funded. 🫢😏🙂

Thank you miklc  It actually gets a bit to much for a rotation. I mostly remember all names and where they reside, but it happens that I run into someone looking familiar but not quite sure wh they are, typically when someone grew up recently. But yes, it would be nice if the game had some sort of an integrated records system for keeping track on a larger population, including stats and overviews for anything from what careers are not well covered to what N.A.P.s are active in all the hoods. Would be quite easy to program as all info already exist.

I am the same crocobaura .  I feel like I remember enough along with the information provided by the game that I have never felt the need to document, but I have to say I am very impressed by the systems and methods everyone has come up with on here to keep track!