What is the easiest way to play rotational gameplay?
I'm wanting to play 5 households, in a rotational gameplay style. I do use the MCCC mod as well. What is the easiest way to play rotational gameplay?
Forum Discussion
I struggled to do this before but now with Seasons I do one full year on each family with the intention of ageing the family up at the end of the year (all ageing is turned off). I leave the adults for two years and will probably do the same for elders. I change the length of the seasons depending on which family it is. If it's a family I really love or I have a lot planned for their story, I'll have longer seasons. If it's a family where I just need to have them do smaller things because they are a part of another sim's story, or maybe their kids will be important later on, then I'll just have one week per season. I am playing a lot of families in this save, almost all the premades, so I am doing it in batches of who is related to each other through story, then I'll move onto another batch. Although, if I get bored with the current batch, I may go to another at the end of the year so that I don't interrupt anything. Since I'm ageing them up manually, it doesn't really matter either way. So for example, I'm currently playing the Bjergsens (max seasons length), the Landgraabs (min season length), the Villareals (middle season length) and the Munches (min season length), because these families are all linked together in my story. But after I finish playing the Landgraabs (still need to play the Villareals and the Munches), I'm going to try another unrelated family because I'm getting a little bored of this particular story (I get bored easily). I want everyone's ages to make sense before totally moving on with my timeline, though, so I will definitely come back to this batch and make sure everyone across the worlds will be at the correct ages before kickstarting a family's next phase. I want to be able to appropriately pair off the child and teen sims when they get older. Hope that makes sense.
At the beginning of each year, I change all the holidays to match that family. So when I was playing the Bjergsens, I imagined that they were Swedish. I gave them European themed holidays, including Midsummer and Midsummer's Eve. I have given the Landgraab's American themed holidays. (I don't think about how far away America is from Europe when coming up with my stories though lol. There just aren't enough premade teens for that!) I also have part of the summer (or the entire season if it's only a week long) off for the sims so that they can do fun summer things like being lazy at the pool or going on holiday.
I start in Autumn, because most of the households I'm focusing on have kids and the school year starts in September. It makes the most sense for me personally!
I have these goals set out for each family and if they don't complete them before the year is up, then I move on with the story anyway and work that into it. So if you have a child who is supposed to be a complete overachiever but they don't make it? Maybe they have weird feelings about that in their teens, which might affect the story you give them. I think the seasons helps me stick to this because without them, I would just continue playing. But now it makes sense to age them up at the end because otherwise I'll end up going over into another year!
I use MCCC to help with keeping the relationships I've gained but have been culled, and to manually cull unnecessary ones. I will use it for the families I really don't care for to age them up at the end of each cycle and boost them in their careers. For example, I don't care for the Specter family but I will age them up so that Alexander Goth can date and marry Olivia later. I'll also use it for killing sims when I want them to die for story purposes because I don't really enjoy killing sims off, so I'll just do it in one action and pretend it was from something else lol. I keep track of the main things that happen in an excel file just to make sure I remember what's going on since I'll probably forget once I finally get back to the Bjergsens. I switch to the next family right after midnight when it's Autumn again.
So far this method is working out really well for me and feels the most organic, so for me this is the "easiest" way of playing rotationally because it keeps me interested since each family experience is unique! My main problem with rotational play is that I could never stay focused and grew bored since there was no real feeling of time progressing.
At the beginning of each year, I change all the holidays to match that family. So when I was playing the Bjergsens, I imagined that they were Swedish. I gave them European themed holidays, including Midsummer and Midsummer's Eve. I have given the Landgraab's American themed holidays. (I don't think about how far away America is from Europe when coming up with my stories though lol. There just aren't enough premade teens for that!) I also have part of the summer (or the entire season if it's only a week long) off for the sims so that they can do fun summer things like being lazy at the pool or going on holiday.
I start in Autumn, because most of the households I'm focusing on have kids and the school year starts in September. It makes the most sense for me personally!
I have these goals set out for each family and if they don't complete them before the year is up, then I move on with the story anyway and work that into it. So if you have a child who is supposed to be a complete overachiever but they don't make it? Maybe they have weird feelings about that in their teens, which might affect the story you give them. I think the seasons helps me stick to this because without them, I would just continue playing. But now it makes sense to age them up at the end because otherwise I'll end up going over into another year!
I use MCCC to help with keeping the relationships I've gained but have been culled, and to manually cull unnecessary ones. I will use it for the families I really don't care for to age them up at the end of each cycle and boost them in their careers. For example, I don't care for the Specter family but I will age them up so that Alexander Goth can date and marry Olivia later. I'll also use it for killing sims when I want them to die for story purposes because I don't really enjoy killing sims off, so I'll just do it in one action and pretend it was from something else lol. I keep track of the main things that happen in an excel file just to make sure I remember what's going on since I'll probably forget once I finally get back to the Bjergsens. I switch to the next family right after midnight when it's Autumn again.
So far this method is working out really well for me and feels the most organic, so for me this is the "easiest" way of playing rotationally because it keeps me interested since each family experience is unique! My main problem with rotational play is that I could never stay focused and grew bored since there was no real feeling of time progressing.
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