Being on both the aro and ace spectrums myself, I like the idea of playing sims who are like me. For example, the sim version of one of my characters is, or rather should be, asexual but panromantic. I'd love to play her that way, but I can easily see things getting annoying: rolling woohoo wants and maybe even woohooing autonomously with her romantic partners (I use ACR).

So my question is: Does anyone play asexual and/or aromantic sims? If so, how do you play them? I'd love to hear your ideas and suggestions. Feel free to showcase your aro/ace spectrum sims here too, if you want!

Sims with 0 gender preference http://modthesims.info/d/82198 You will get no woohoo wants or any other form of romantic action (that indicates they have a gender preference triggered)

It's true until spring kicks in. At spring sims will start roll wants for date someone.

I'm afraid that the default code links romance to sex so tightly that they may be inextricable. Good luck with that.

Skye Weiss of Widespot and Cliff Notes, Sara Bellum, and Hugh Knowe of Land Grant University were deliberately set up so that the player would be able to choose to play them on the ace spectrum, but they're only sitting on the default Maxi's starting point of the binary system and giving or receiving one flirt will be enough to change any of them. I think the only way to prevent that is to use SimPE or some other editing tool to drag attraction to both the allowed genders way down into "disgust" territory, which will make a romantic asexual, or any asexual who is not grossed out by the idea of sex, difficult to play.

Nervous starts out slightly disgusted by both men and women (which is, oddly, often interpreted as making him gay!), and like my own characters this at least makes it possible to play him as ace, just by not letting anyone engage in romantic interactions with him. His Family aspiration, though, encourages him to want things like hugs and slow dances long before he has any viable partners, and though hugs can be unromantic, slow dances really can't be!

I do not have ACR.

The only sim I'm actually playing as ace is a landlord named Gordon who generated in the GS Uberhood where I'm playing a challenge. At one point early in the challenge, when my Romance protagonist's trash can was getting kicked over two and three times a day, I gave him dialog in which he expressed his gladness at being asexual, seeing what being sexually active leads to! Gordon is an excellent landlord and moreover is toddler-obsessed, playing peek-a-boo endlessly with the protagonist's succession of babies. Late in the challenge, one of his tenants, Gaia, autonomously made friends with him and they started being so attentive to each other that I finally caved and had Gaiai's Romance-aspirationed housemate check him out, reasoning that it was in-character for her and I could always make him ace again with an offsetting checkout from one of his male tenants. The moment he felt that shift, though, he seized Gaia's hand and kissed it and the two of them started on the low-level flirts like there was no tomorrow. So I decided he was demisexual and moved him in. He and Gaia are so far only engaging in low-level flirts and snuggling - lots of snuggling - and his real motivation, clearly, is that he wants to graduate three children from college, and he is also being far more active in raising the Romance roomie's toddler than she is. I'm far too close to the end of the challenge to make a commitment to getting him his LTW, but I figure if I wanted to, I could do it, and keep adjusting his attraction downward a bit periodically with the gender-preference kite, to keep him from turning into just another heterosexual.

Another dodge would be to give him (or any other asexual-spectrum sim) turn-ons for features that are conditional, like cologne and stink, or that I never use, such as plantsims or zombies, and a turn-off for something overwhelmingly common in both sexes, though that's a little harder to choose. I have a standard rule that interprets woohoo wants as representing physiological states of arousal, and find that if turn-ons are not present it can be difficult to generate that want, even on a date, unless the couple is an established one that has a habit of sexual activity. One of my favorite couples started out as one bolt, with the man hitting both the woman's turn-ons and his own being for cologne and jewelry, and though he was clearly crazy in love - constantly, and especially on dates, rolling wants to talk to, play with, dance with, and otherwise interact with her and only her - he could not get to a woohoo want at all until I had her put on some earrings and spritz on some cologne. She has a lot of cologne, but now that they're elders and have the habit, he doesn't need it any more. They're double-bolters these days, and I suspect he could manage without the earrings. In the early days though, he needed a little help, and I can probably ensure that Gordon remains only interested in Gaia if I manage this feature carefully enough.

Anyway that dodge won't work if you're not using the woohoo wants in the same way I am; but with turn-ons that are rare you should at least be troubled less by asexual characters randomly noticing that this or that character is hot.

Not with a gender preference set to 0 they shouldn't. There should be no kind of romantic want or action unless another sim flirts with them setting a preference. A sim set at 0 can't even scope a room.

They can't scope a room, but they can roll wants to flirt and get a first kiss.

Thanks! I'll definitely have to try this out some time.

Out of curiosity, does it work the same way if gender preference is set to a negative number for both genders? In a vanilla game, it's really easy for a gender preference of 0 to end up changing (making the sim gay or straight, or bi more rarely). Even just being checked out by someone seems to add a small amount of gender preference, in my experience. I know I could go and reset an aroace sim's preference back to zero every time, but that would get tedious. A really high negative number might help keep a sim from losing their asexuality and aromanticism to a single flirt (after all, that's really not how things work IRL). Alternatively, are there mods out there that change how gender preference is gained?

Setting to 0 doesn't work well as Maxis considers that 'default' and is giddy to change it to something else at the first opportunity. You can use SimPE or the tool joandsarah linked to set both gender preferences to a negative number (my self-Sim is -500 for both).

My version of Pascal Curious is asexual and romantic, and never rolled any kind of romance wants for ages, even in spring. I don't know why not - possibly, with lots to learn and three alien sons to bring up, he had lots of other things to think about? At any rate, they never appeared. Then he became an elder, and "woohoo" appeared briefly, before disappearing again into his usual list of wants to skill/ teach the kids stuff/ gain Science enthusiasm etc. I interpreted that as a brief burst of curiosity about it, brought on by suddenly feeling old, that disappeared once he thought about it properly and decided he just wasn't interested.

I'm trying to remember exactly how I did the technical part of it. It didn't involve SimPE, though I did use the ACR adjuster and... maaaaybe SimBlender? I set gender preference to 0/0 and used the ACR adjuster to set autonomy to none. I can't recall if I set anything else. I do remember that it worked out very well. My sim neither initiated nor received any autonomous romantic actions. Nor do I recall them having any romantic wants. This was a female sim who never had a first kiss, though I do believe she had gotten set a preference before I zeroed it (I have ACR set to auto-select a preference on aging to teen). A second, male sim also got a similar treatment. I don't remember if I zeroed his preference, but I definitely put him on None for autonomy. Not only did I feel it fit his character to not engage in such actions until he was older, the poor boy triple-bolted with something like 20 women! If I hadn't kept a tight lid on things, he probably wouldn't have made it through university

Than maybe I have it lower than a 0, all I know is it removes gender preference. I don't have trouble with sims trying to change it. Yes they may a roll want for a first kiss but I have not seen a flirt want. Since resting is as easy as one click if something should happen they are easy to set right again. I would also use the memory manipulator in game to remove the memory of whatever happened.

Yes, they can still roll wants to flirt and get a first kiss.

For instance, Dr. Adam Splitter in Emerald Heights. He has a negative attraction to both; males and females, -2.5 of each.
And he still rolled a want to flirt and have woohoo. So even if the sim is asexual, there's still a chance that they roll such wants and Adam's a Knowledge sim, not a Romance sim!

I suspect in the case of Knowledge virgins like Splitter and Skye Weiss, they're rolling these wants because they're old and running out of things they haven't tried before. Knowledge sims are endlessly curious! So these wants don't have to upset perception of them as asexual in the absence of other signs, and I suspect they'd still roll them if they were set to -100 for both available genders.

The Pascal in my regular Maxis Strangetown was never happy with anyone he paired up with. It always just seemed he was going with the motions. Plus his wife cheated on him extensively. Maybe I sensed that in him and allowed her to stray to Lazlo, who was very affectionate. She ended up in a happy marriage to someone else and he ended up married to the widow Beaker just so they could adopt a child together. His whole focus did seem to be children

However, in my Megahood he is with Nervous and they DO seem happy. So maybe it was just all me and I'm a mean person

I have a sim that I see as aromantic, and he's a romance sim, haha. He has a secondary aspiration tho. Really he's one of my favorites sims to play; I see him as a really calm sim who just wants to spend time with those he cares about. Yeah, it's true; if you make them go to dates it's really difficult to make them have a romantic want, but I interpret this as him just wanting to share time with other sims (wants go to more social things, like play darts, pool, things like that). And his dates always go smooth. In fact it's interesting when I see him rolling wants to fall in love with specific sims...
Though I wouldn't dare to make a lot of asexual or aromantic sims, they're enjoyable when they're a minority in my game. Is like a moment of calm with all the drama going on in my games.

Someone in this thread really dislikes aro/ace people. Having said that, I consider myself to be a romantic asexual. Never tried playing this out in the game, though. I have ACR and I like my sims pairing themselves off too much. Maybe one day, if a sim seems aro/ace to me.

That's just the phantom disagreer, Duvelina. I doubt that person likes any kind of people much. But y'know, if more people restricted their bad temper to indiscriminately hitting "disagree" on newsgroups, instead of more strenuous expressions of spite, we'd all be better off.

Eh, some people don't believe aro/aces exist. My friend doesn't believe they exist but he's a fair bit more conservative than me. I sometimes bug him by asking what exactly I'm supposed to be then.

Anyways, back on topic: I've mentioned my self-Sim being aro/ace. Did this with a combination of sending both gender preferences to negative (so she'd never roll wants to flirt/kiss/etc and reject any) and turning off all ACR autonomy. It went pretty well, actually; she wrote several novels, had six dogs (WHY? I'M A CAT PERSON!!), opened a bookstore, and had thirty or so best friends (she invited over a different family every day to join her for lunch). Kind of a minor celebrity in Hazelton.

....Though when I first loaded her up, thanks to Squinge's any LTW hack, she had "Have 20 Lovers" as a LTW. And before I figured out how ACR and gender preferences worked, I found her on the roof of the apartment building making out with my Chell sim. That was weird.

I can't think of any other aro/aces off-hand, aside from my Gravekeeper sim (who, thanks to a agreement with the Grim Reaper, is essentially immortal).

I once had a sim who I thought might be aro/ace, but after college he started rolling wants for kisses and dates and I obliged. His wife was one of the few sims he actually had chemistry with, so he might have been demi.
But since I'm aro/ace myself, I wanted to give it another try. So my new sim, who manages the foster home is aro/ace. Thanks to this thread I figured out how to give her negative gender preference and turned off the ACR autonomy. So far it's working great. She had a wish for a first kiss at first which is probably due to her secondary family aspiration, but it rolled away and now she has mostly popularity wishes. Since she's taking care of triplets at the moment, she doesn't get many wishes fullfilled anyway.

Doing the Epic Pleasantview challange right now and currently have one aromantic and asexual sim in my neighbourhood; Delilah Goth, the oldest daughter of Alexander and Lilith.

Dunno why I decided she was aro/ace, it's actually detrimental to winning the challenge, but I just looked at her as a toddler even and thought "I think she's asexual..." and I'm not gonna force her into a relationship just to produce children. It's nice to have sims sometimes that don't fit the nuclear family, I guess.

I myself am demi-sexual.

I do; my sim Crab Neighbour is aromantic and asexual and I have never done any romantic interactions with him. He hasn't shown any interest either, except for rolling a dating-wish a few times when entering a public lot, but they've always disappeared when he returned home so I haven't paid them any mind. I can't see him ever falling in love or being attracted to anyone. Then there's Violin Sulsul, she's a pleasure teenager but has never had any wish of dating or getting a first kiss or anything like that and I think she might be as well.

Aromantic asexual sims are doable in the game, have played a couple like that. However, even with noinstantloves installed, I've never managed to have a sexual aromantic sim. For me, that would be one who shows bolts and woohoos other sims but never ever gets a pink or red heart. Never tried to do romantic asexual sims.

That's a pretty interesting subject. It's always hard to play asexual spectrum sims. I have got a simself and she is demisexual. Not aro but demiro. In the sims 3 I can easily manage to play without getting the cold traits ,but in the sims 2 my only solution I have found out is to open SimPE and change the romance into none it only works for asexuality and that suits fine demisexuality too .For aromance I don't know I am sorry, perhaps with mods.I myself never really seached for because I ignored myself until recently.
I think we are too much abandonned in the sims 2.I myself don't know how can I will play myself in this game.

Yeah. Sadly, TS2 was made in a time when there was less ace and aro (and LGBTQIA+ in general) visibility, so ace and aro sims aren't easy to play and mostly require mods.

TS4 has the same issues, unfortunately. They have included different gender options, which is awesome, though not entirely complete (no selecting pronouns besides she or him for nonbinary sims, for example). I started a household with a femme transman, and being able to do something like that in a vanilla game was really cool. But then, he was also supposed to be aroace, but there aren't any options to make a sim that way. For the most part, he got non-romantic whims, but he occasionally got whims to flirt and such. It's basically the same situation as in TS2. Of course, TS4 is on-going, so they could yet patch something like that in, but I'm not holding my breath. Anyway, I mostly prefer TS2 gameplay to TS4 gameplay.

I did have him open a club for aroaces (no romantic interactions or woohoo allowed. Socializing was in, as was playing video games because that's the leader's favorite thing to do). There's only a married lady in it so far, but the two are really close friends. Heh, he hasn't even met her husband or children yet. I'll have to see if they can visit some time.