Your Recipe for a Great Game...

- Start with one or two sims, sometimes 3 if I want the child sim to be the focal sim. Expand to "heir and spare" for playing generationally.
- One active household, though I'll check in on others if needed
- Live wherever the story feels best
- All are connected, but there are "knots" of worlds where I'm more likely to travel to from the main one.
- Occults. All day, every day.
- Mostly Spellcasters, sometimes Werewolves or Aliens. Almost never Vampires.
- Normal Lifespan, or Long with manual age ups early on or when they've acheived their "goal" for that lifestage. (I can barely handle infants on normal life span. No way I'm going through that on long. Once they get to Toddler I can chill.)
- Normal skill progression.
- Two week seasons, with a "standard array" of Winterfest, New Year's, Love day (always coordinating with the winter or spring Romance Festival), Summerfest (usually coordinating with the summer Humor and Hijinks festival) sometimes Summer GeekCon, Fright Fest and Harvest Day.
- Currently running Vanilla, but MCCC and UI cheats are usually in the mix. Other mods as the story requests.
- Don't usually money cheat, but will do FreeRealestate when it's time to move.
- Always have a storyline of some sort. Maybe a goal, maybe a sequence of events, but some sort of story plan - including plans for the game to throw a curve ball.

- No one sim households
- Three households to start with, more sims and households to get added during play
- Starting households are most likely scattered over several worlds already in the beginning
- I always create clusters of connecting worlds, but which ones connect depends on the save
- Occult Play, but a sim's loyalties towards their peer group (culture, career, mob) are usually stronger than to others of their occult type
- Usually androids (custom), often spellcasters and werewolves, rarely vampires and aliens
- Aging off, manual aging and timeskips as needed
- Normal skill progression, sims YA and older get either a couple of skillpoints or helpful traits for free
- Manually changing seasons, holidays to be set as needed a couple of days before
- My regular mods plus a special folder with mods cc for this specific save
- Yes to cheats for the player, no for the sims
- A clear goal to reach, either "play x years" or "achieve this specific ingame goal", not every household has access to all careers/objects/means of income, households often compete for the goal

-A variable amount of sims, from 1 to 8
- 16 active households, which amounts to playing each for 1 week per sim year
- 16 different worlds (excludes MP, FH, DSV, BC, TT, MM)
- I don't really play unconnected worlds, just go where I like
- Current game has no occults yet but will gain them during play
- I occasionally play all occults, but I like spellcasters more than the others
- Lifespan = normal, ageing on for active household only (played 1 week per house) and I turn ageing on for NPCs for 1 week per year
- No Skill Difficulty Adjustment
- Length of Seasons: 4 weeks per season, holidays are Easter, Summer Bank Holiday, Halloween, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Years Eve
- No Mods at the moment
- No Money Cheats or any other cheats, apart from MOO for decor only
- NAPS off, fame off to start but certain chosen sims can gain fame, sadly dust off (can't stand the constant sniffing)

Most important considerations are to have as much variety as possible with sim numbers, ages, pets, traits, jobs, locations, hobbies & interests etc so that I have varied fun and I can experience as much of the packs as possible.

- one or two sims at the start, expand the family to 4 or 5 later on
- one active household at a time but continue in the same save if I switch so I can encounter my own sims
- live in whatever world suits the vibe of the story
- all worlds are connected
- occult gameplay is essential
- any occult combination is possible, though vampires are rare
- lifespan : aging off or custom (about 2x normal) no correlation with real years
- seasons : 2 weeks with moon phase of 8 days
- holidays : love day, Easter, summer holidays, Halloween, all saints day, Christmas eve, Christmas and new years eve
- a few select mods but no big game overhaul mod
- cheats : some cheats allowed for story purposes. As long as the cheats don't give money, skills, aspiration points,... Those have to be earned
- weather effects off: no freeze to death
- NAP off: too much chaos
- fame off (not my cup of tea)

Note : this is my very personal favourite recipe. But everyone has different tastes. So not saying this is the recipe for everyone.

-More than 2 Sims
-More active Households
-Active Household(s) in each world
-All worlds connect
-Realistic
-Normal lifespan with slightly prolonged adult lifespan (modded)
-Skill difficulty adjustment based on moods and preferences (modded)
-A week per Season (Spring Cleaning, Easter, Summer Holiday, Halloween and Remembrance Day as custom holidays, the rest only slightly adjusted)
-Multiple Mods, but no Script Mods and no CAS/Build&Buy CC (for Performance reasons)
-No Money Cheat, Just loans
-Changing Household after every Sims week
-Randomize traits
-No quit without saving