Am I The Only Person Who Does This?

[lauratje86]

Basically, I'm currently playing a kind of megahood - the neighbourhood story goes that there was an earthquake and fire in Pleasantview (which was a shopping district to my main 'hood) so all the surviving sims from there moved to the main 'hood, Velden Hills. Velden Hills was already populated with all the sims from the sim bin (i.e. the Newsons, the Ottomases, the Goodies, the Picasos, Cyd Roseland etc).

But then I decided that I wanted a few sims from Strangetown, Bluewater Village and Veronaville. So I attached those 'hoods as shopping districts, using Talia's cleaned up versions.

I will only be moving a few sims to Velden Hills, and not all at once. Some sims will attend the university, where they may meet sims from Velden Hills, but then move back to their original subhood homes. A few sims will possibly move from Velden Hills to the subhoods, especially if they've met a SO at university who was originally from one of the subhoods. Or if it fits into the story that they move away for some other reason. I didn't want the sims living in the subhoods to never age or progress in their lives, as it would be weird if a sim moved to Velden Hills and their family and friends from back home never aged.

I don't want to play them, though, so I'll be using the Simblender to move them through their lives in a cheaty kind of way, aging them up, getting them married and making them have kids to continue the subhoods. I just spent several hours working out the timelines for Strangetown and Bluewater Village.... I attached them as Word files in case anyone wants to see how I laid it out. I intend to follow them as I play - before I start each new rotation I will carry out all the things scheduled for that Yearday.

For example, before my next rotation I will: Age Andromeda, Cassiopeia and Jasmine to toddlers in Strangetown, and age Patrick (Ramirez) to a toddler, Madrigal (Tinker) to a child, get Lisa pregnant with Checo's baby and Florence & Checo's 1st child and Wanda & Stephen's 3rd child will be born.

I also plan to move Romeo and Juliette to Velden Hills at some point as "runaway teens", with her pregnant with his baby, but I will just age and kill their family at appropriate times to keep their family tree looking sensible; I'm not interested in the rest of the subhood.

Does anyone else play like this? It doesn't have to be with sims in subhoods - maybe you just play certain households in your main 'hood but occasionally age up sims in unplayed households so they're not "immortal"? Or am I the only one doing this?

[Gcgb53191]

I play in a rotation so I play every family/sim in my neighborhood. Although I do have two couples at Sim State that I havent touched in a while because I thought I had way too many sims to play with. Anyone I dont have an interest playing (family bin sims) are turned into townies or killed in a 'freak accident' :D

[annoainthere]

Honestly it all depends on how bored I get over the rotations I play. Sometimes I will age up the more boring families to make room... or kill them off.

To expand on my previous sentence, I use a strict rotation to get to play each family, but sometimes it will take to long or the family being played are excruciatingly boring, so I age them up or decide which member to put to their final resting place. Maybe they'll get lucky and come back from the grave... or unlucky...

If I end up with elders milling on around the edges they get moved into the local retirement village, for that last minute jive before bogeying with Grimmy.

Mostly though I like to stick to generations to keep the family trees nice and neat. It's getting harder the further along I'm getting in the generations, so there will be some deaths... and sims who forgo offspring.

[sushigal007]

I'm attempting to play each family at least once. I may combine some families if they bore me too much, but I'm going to resist killing or townifying them.

[maxon]

Make a plan and then move the entire neighbourhood forward by increments - yes, I do that BUT - and it's a big but - I like to see everything play out so I will play all the houses in strict rotation.

[Issie]

I play in strict rotation too. I thought about adding most the towns together but I always start a project and end up workng on it more rather than playing it :)

I'm getting ready to start a new neighbourhood this weekend with a new theme and I'm super excited!

[HaunterMooneyes]

I have strict rotations, but I only like to play one child from each family. I keep the heir in his/her family's house, and if I can't marry their siblings into other families, I'll put said siblings on their own lot and age them up periodically. Eventually I let them die of old age so that their brother or sister's family tree is accurate. So: yes and no!

[Fivey]

I don't have a strict rotation, since I will easily get bored. When I get bored, and I can't go to a different home, bad things happen.

I try to keep generations on the same age though.

[jamini94]

I just recently got out of the habit of playing basically one household, which was my favorite child's family. Now I try and move all the children into their own households and play all the families. I have a really loose rotation, in which I play the households in a certain order, but I don't have a set amount of time I spend in each household. I usually just play the household until a significant event happens (usually birthdays or other things like moving, promotions, renovations, etc.), then I move on. It makes the game a lot more fun, but then I have those occasional households that get really boring, so I usually search for a challenge whose rules I follow very loosely.

[lil_princess_of_evil]

I play in strict rotation with all sims in the neighborhood/subhoods: 4 days per household. The only exception at times is for college where sometimes I'll move a filler sim in the house just to occupy a house that isn't being used really. If I have boring families, I'll usually just break them up or kill them off or stop them from breeding so that the family line ends.

[M.M.A.A.]

As Fivey said, I, too, am trying to keep generations on the same age. I add families whenever necessary by combining townies with the same last name and proper hair (and eye) color into a family. The order of families in Rotations can sometimes change in order to keep things neat and my rotations last for two days, each supposedly ending at 12 midnight.

[Babahara]

I play the same way :) There was a terrain crisis in all Maxis hoods in my story (well, my game just stopped working), and all sims got moved into a new hood. But I moved all of them, all playables from all Maxis hoods and some townies that I liked. Then I added sims from uni subhoods, Sim Life Stories, and plan to add more.

But I'm trying to play all of them in rotation. It helps greatly that I turned most of the playable sims into townies :)

[julmoo]

When I forget to "roll the pacifier" before my Sim gives birth I just grill the baby xD
But other than that I try to keep my families neatly in sync.

[omglo]

Sort of. I age people who I don't play, but who are related to or acquainted with the Sims I do play, to keep everyone in the right age group. I don't go so far as to get them married and let them have children unless there's a specific reason to.

[SingleClawDesigns]

That's an interesting way of looking at it, but what about townies? Personally after going through all the work of aging other families appropriately I would hate to think that the tinkers third child will still be seeing an adult goopy or jason menon running around town for ages.

The way I play a megahood is I play one family and have something very important happen with them and another playable family enabling me to then move onto that family to keep up the story and go from there. Kind of the same thing in a soap opera, some couples get lots more screen time then others but by weeks end others are usually brought around because of some big drama sucking hole they get pulled into.

But really I've found that with sims u have to let go of ultra reality a bit or the ocd stress of it makes it unplayable.