When the game crashes after a long session, or a more serious malfunction that requires restoring the hood from a backup, do you try to have your Sims do the same things again? Or something completely different?

What are some interesting events that you lost out on thanks to a game malfunction?

Honestly, most of the time is crashing when building. I had made an incredible house, decorated and all, fit exactly for the Sim family, and then the lovely pop up of "The application has crashed. The application will now terminate" sneaks up on me. I usually give up and create something new for a house except if it was really nice. I'll try to remember how it was and make a rough recreation of it.
If it crashes and it was in the middle of gameplay, I will try to do the same things, especially if I do have plans for the household. Sometimes I want to do something else if the malfunction has made me rethink what to do with the family and I thought that the previous gameplay was a bit boring.

Public Service Announcement: Remember to save! XD

Seriously! I always forget! Say it crashes once, and I lost a perfect lot, and I realize it's my fault!

I have never had to resort to a back up.
If it crashes and I have lost a day well more fool me for not saving sooner. I load up another house in the rotation if that happens and wait some days before going back to the crashed home. Hopefully I will have forgotten what happened there due to my poor memory lol.

I try to avoid such incidents. :-P

But usually - if I have to - I'll do it back how I did the first time. It's usually build mode when it crashes, and usually because I deleted a wall that had a window/door on it. I don't generally get normal game play crashes though.

I've never had to restore a backup, thankfully, but when my game crashes while I'm playing, I go play a different household or do something else besides the sims, because if I go straight back to the lot, I'll feel sad and frustrated about the progress I lost (mainly story-wise). Then, when I go back into the lot in a day or two, I won't feel so bad, as I'll have probably forgotten where I left off and I'll just continue playing wherever my sims are , and if things turn out the same or completely different, that's okay.

It keeps me sane.

On my old computer I had my game go full-on pink soup immediately after entering, after working fine for several years... so I kind of panicked and used a backup. Still not sure what had happened, but didn't want to risk anything, and didn't have too much time to problemsolve. It was a fairly recent backup, and my story hood, so no big changes.

I've had my game crash plenty of times after a hefty setup while photoshooting. I've learned to set everything up (buy clothes I need, dress the sims, do permanent scene changes, etc.) then save, and then mess about - if the game crashes or pink-flashes or anything like that, it's much easier to reset, because the game is already in a good place to start.

I can't quite remember any instances, but I've had the game crash at points where I hadn't saved. What I do with it depends what I was doing at the time.

How I deal with lost progress depends on what was going on at the time of crash/loss - I've never had a crash that needed a backup, just lost some time after my last save. If nothing major had happened, I just speed play through the household to get what I had already done completed again - weed that garden, or earn a skill point type tasks. If I lose a wedding or birthday party, I rarely repeat the full party unless the sims have a want for it. I try to save after major events but have had play sessions where I failed to do that and lost things like weddings or births. For those I just play as I normally would, so sometimes things follow roughly the same path as the first run and other times they go off in a whole new direction. I've had sims take different jobs or roll slightly different wants so the events in the week change. Then the randomness of the game has a chance to make a new impact, too. Once I lost about half a week for one family - I don't remember what had happened in the first playthrough other than the birth of one baby, but the replacement involved a fire and the birth of quads. The random events made the house much more interesting on the repeat. I normally save at least once per sim day now.

I backup after I finish setting up a new 'hood, when adding new mods (even if I tested them elsewhere), before playing with any external tools, at the end of every full rotation (season), and at least every other real world month. The only times I remember using a backup were after I'd been using lot adjuster or hood replace, and since I'd made the backups immediately before making changes, I didn't lose any play progress.

I also usually get them during building, though have had them during gameplay.

I normally just play from the time I reload without necessarily trying to go for the same outcome.

I had my first crash during gameplay for months today. It came when my Sims were leaving the Veronaville Swim Centre, which is actually my oldest self-made lot in my game; it was made in my first fortnight as a Simmer, but it's seen a lot of changes over the years.

I was playing two teenage boys who are destined to become townies. (Usual excuse -- I just made them in CAS to "roll the pacifier", but when looked at them, I wanted them in my game.) I had just made them in CAS at the start of the session. I wanted them in my game so I exported them in SimPE, and then cloned them in Body Shop. I then used CAS to them giveback the characters, and outfits they'd had the first time, at least as well as I could remember them. (Fortunately I'd made a backup before starting to play.) This time I made an adult female Sim to go with them, to save me the work of changing an adult into a teen, and buying all their outfits again. I then tried to replay their first day again, but of course it was quite different to the first time. They saw fewer walk-byes, and only one neighbour was in the Welcome Wagon both times. And I don't think I'll send them to the Swim Centre this time -- that would be tempting fate!