How many Sims are you playing?

[windy_moon]

I'm curious.  I feel the responsibility to play everybody in my neighborhood, except NPCs.  (Truth be told, I feel a little guilty about them, too, such empty lives  )  I nuked or moved in my townies sometime back, so everybody who walks down the street has their own story which is intertwined with all of the other stories, and they are all in play.

One thing or another, I'm up to about 85 Sims I'm playing...some much more than others, but everybody has a story.  Gets exhausting, but I'm compelled.

I'm fascinated by the way other people play their games.  My brain would explode if I tried to handle multiple neighborhoods.  I admire the discipline of people who handle one family through many generations.  I really admire the discipline of people who play their Sims in even amounts, 1 Sim day at a time.

I guess I should throw my definition of "playing" into the pot, too, since I'd bet people look at that differently.  For me, playing means they have at least a base to their own story.  They may or may not be employed, but they have relationships with other Sims and a home that's been set up for them.  (Not just an empty house with a phone.)

I can go human weeks and weeks without playing certain Sims but they are still "in play".  The Dreamers are nagging at me because I haven't played them in ages and Dirk has fallen well behind his contemporaries in aging...and Darren still needs to fulfill his dream of making a living off of his art.

Funny how I make a hobby with a To Do List that is guilt producing! 

How many Sims do you play?

[gali]

I play in Pleasantview 4 pre-made families: Mortimer Goth - resurrected and married again to an elder CAS sim; Brandy Broke (Newbie now) - married to a CAS sim, and have 2 more kids; Cassandra Goth - married to a CAS sim and have a baby; the Pleasants - with a new baby boy.

All the teens of these families are at the college now. Just graduated Dustin - married to a CAS YA.

Globally, I pass among 11 lots - staying 2-3 days in each lot.

I deleted (hate to kill) the Dreamers, Don, and the Caliente sisters - don't like them, and don't want to feel guilty not playing them....

[skandelouslala]

One of my custom 'hoods is insane.  I've decided to take a break from them for a while and play some Maxis 'hoods that I haven't touched since reinstall after purchasing Uni when it first came out.  The custom 'hood easily has 60-70 active sims.  Needless to say this next generation is going to go through some population control when I do start playing it again.  I unfortuantly have an addiction to my sims having babies and lately a lot of those sims have been popping out twins.

[Torkle]

Right now, I'm doing a little genetic experiment neighborhood with just three family lines.  Each couple will have two kids - one boy and one girl.  If I can plan things just right, then there will be just 4 new kids in each generation perpetually, with one family line skipping each generation.  I'm curious to see just how far back the inbreeding algorithm looks when determining family relationships.

[reggikko]

Right now I am playing my Legacy family (4 Sims) and that's it. They are in a neighborhood without any other playable characters at the moment. I've never played Pleasantview or Veronaville. Since my restart, I haven't played anyone in Strangetown.

I have 2 projects in mind, though, and I have been working on preparations for those stories. One is top secret and involves a certain Angry Baby. ;-) The other is going to be a neighborhood where everyone has a story. The Curious brothers will be there, along with a version of the Goths. Right now, the characters and neighborhood are in the planning stages. I have 2 houses done and I've set up the shopping district. That's it.

I get overwhelmed if I try to play too many at the same time. But I'm going to try in my new neighborhood to put families on a rotation schedule, play everyone evenly and see where it takes me.

[buddha pest]

I've got 85 playable sims in Pleasantview and 68 in Strangetown, not including babies on the way. Those are the only two neighborhoods I really play, and all the families in both are up to around generation 4. (I'm not sure how many "base" families I started with, but there's huge extended families and insanely complicated family trees in Pleasantview in particular.)

I'm not really anal about the amount of time spent in each house, but everybody's basically in sync by default because I get bored and rotate.

From what I've heard, it's not that uncommon to have hundreds of playable sims in a neighborhood. But it sounds downright horrifying if you ask me, and as the generations go on, I tend to practice stricter and stricter population control. I'm trying for some negative population growth this generation. It'd be nice to get down to around 40 or 50-some playables, but it has to be done via strategic marrying and one child per couple since I can't bear to let one single sim go without an heir. But it's hard to pair up two sims that are already in play because I keep finding out people are cousins via some illegitimate crap that happened two generations ago that I forgot about.

[schmoopee]

I only play my custom hood, Shubieville. I play the hood with no aging, money, skilling, motive, job or friend-making cheats, because I like the challenge.

I killed off all the townies pre-uni & have no regen. I've let the dormies live because they don't stroll by or get brought home from work and they're great for racking up the friend count without being too annoying. But I don't play them. I haven't killed off all the downtownies yet - I'm just doing it bit by bit when people bring them home from school/work. *evil cackle*

So, in Shubieville - I started with 6 houses, each containing 2 adults and 4 kids. That's 24 kids. I paired up the kids to make 12 couples. 6 couples stayed in one of the original six houses, and then I put in 6 new houses for the other couples. Each couple had 4 kids again, so now I had 48 kids in the next gen. I paired them up to make 24 couples. 12 of them stayed in the existing houses, and I put 12 more new houses in.

That is where I am right now - playing a hood with 24 houses in rotation. Each family had 3 kids, so now I have 72 kids. I'm going to pair them up and only let them have 2 kids I think. *lol* The hood is getting out of hand. It's taking me forever to get through a rotation. I've named all the kids in each house alphabetically, so house #1 has kids that start with A, house #2 has kids that start with B, etc. Since the beginning of September and I've had to go back to school  I've only managed to just play to the D household as of last night. *lol*

[SJActress]

In Pleasantview, I play the Brokes the most.  I've never managed to get Brandi married...no one likes her!  But I wanted her to have kids, so she's been adopting.  She now has nine children (a few have grown up and moved out).  Here's the clinker:  they're ALL boys.  I have tried like hell for her to adopt/birth a girl, to no avail.  No one will sleep with her, and the damn adoption service just keeps sending boys...sigh.

In Strangetown, I play my CAS sim, Pete Syko.  He wears a kilt and makeup.  He recently became a vampire and moved in with Contessa "something" downtown.  He's constantly in aspiration failure!

I try to avoid Veronaville.  I hate Shakespeare and love Moliere.  I feel like I'm cheating Moliere to enter that neighborhood!

I, of course, play more than just these Sims occasionally, but these are my favorites.

[draranha]

I've never played with Maxis' hoods. I've been playing with my custom hood since the begining and now I have 166 sims alive living in 50 houses!!! I even have their names printed in a sheet of paper so I don't loose track of who is who or who loves/marries who.
You can imagine how long it takes to load the hood and each household... I believe it's time to begin another one although it is hard for me to abandon all of my lovelly families. I've been with them for more then a year now! 

[Vren Lyet]

Well, I started the game in Strangetown...that's many months ago...

Now, I'm playing my own neighbourhood with an attached University and a Downtown.
In the beginning I had three families. After months of playing, the first Sims of the sixth generation were just born.
So far I've counted 159 Sims, 53 of which are dead now leaving 103 active (and three yet unborn) in 28 lots.
I play chronologically and have played 87 days since I started counting which was about when the first Sims of the fourth generation were born.

Here comes the really weird part:
I even wrote a PHP application to keep track of my little Sim Village using a webbrowser. That's exactly why I know those numbers mentioned above.

How creepy is that?

[AllenABQ]

I have about 35 playable sims at the moment.  And these are spread amongst 10-12 families or so.  I rarely get the NPCs to move in.  Townies are a slightly different case because I custom make them as I see fit -- I don't like the fugly ones generated by the game.  I actually also have a class on non-involved playable sims that I shove off into remote houses and never play but keep their ages updated to keep pace with the ones I do play.  These sims pretty much act like townies, except many are related to my own sims and are just ones that I've found to be not terribly interesting to play.   Keeping them like so allows me to get them re-involved should my story lines change.

[gali]

In Pleasantview, I play the Brokes the most.  I've never managed to get Brandi married...no one likes her!  But I wanted her to have kids, so she's been adopting.  She now has nine children (a few have grown up and moved out).  Here's the clinker:  they're ALL boys.  I have tried like hell for her to adopt/birth a girl, to no avail.  No one will sleep with her, and the damn adoption service just keeps sending boys...sigh.

What are you talking about?

Brandy is the most wanted female by Pleasantview males! I bought her a sexy outfit, changed her hair to red short haircut, and added a heavy makeup - and she is gorgeous! Daniel Pleasant fell in love with her at the first sight, lol. Darren wanted to flirt with her, and even Mortie.... Not to mention the townies males....

She is Aries, and very compatible with Taurus - so I made a Taurus CAS male, named Bobi Newbie (to change her family name to her previous - she is a daughter of Betty and Bob Newbie). They are the most loving couple, and I get the woohoo clip only for them - the simulator is very fond of them.

I play in Pleasantview for third time, and always she is the most popular female there.... You don't try to change her appereance - may be that's the reason you don't succeed with her. And, never marry her to one of the natives - always to a CAS sim.

[vecki]

I mainly play in Pleasantview and my Legacy Neighbourhood, Aridia (home of the Le Gasseys and the Trojans).

I tried last night to work out where I'm up to with all the families, but there is a lot of interbreeding (eg Don has children with Cassandra and Nina, Nina has a daughter by Komei Tellerman, Cassandra has children with Darren Dreamer... thankfully she's about to become an elder so has lost all the have a baby wants, Daniel has 4 boys with Kaylynn in addition to Angela and Lilith with Mary-Sue)

Brandi married a CAS sim, Matt Riffraff (who had two girls of his own, Kayla and Layla), and proceeded to have another 3 children with him, Bridget, Bart and Beatrice.  Teen Bridget has just fallen for Hector Goth (Cass and Don's boy) so I working on catching her up agewise (I tend to send them off about half way through teendom) so they can go to college together.

Don's moved back home after breaking up with Cass and found a young lady named Allison Lothario living there, in an effort to give him back his previous family name.

Dina has two boys from Mortimer, Simon & Benjamin.  Simon's falling for Theresa Townie, a CAS sim living downtown, while Benjamin got abducted by aliens (they're still teens)

The Oldies died while living with Mary-Sue.  Very sad.

I've ignored the Burbs a bit, but hope to get back into them.  Lucy's off at college and engaged to Beau Broke, and John and Jennifer have a second daughter Tiffani.  John wants another baby but I think Jennifer would reach through the screen and kill me.

[gali]

Lol, vecaroo - you have a big "mish-mash" there - do you remember who is who's?....

My Pleasantview sims are changed to be with knowledge aspiration - no cheating, and no "bustards".... They all are faithful; from time to time they wish to appreciate another sim, but no wish of flirt or such. You should see the "knowledge" Daniel Pleasant - got rid of Kaylyin, and fallen in mad love with Mary-Sue - doesn't want to look at other female.... All his thoughts and wishes are about Mary-Sue, which is a quite "chick", with new clothes and appereance....

[aqualectrix]

Current count is ~88, although it looks like I'm heading into a death-rich period, which will hopefully take care of most of the shipped-with-game sims left in the neighborhood.  I play in 2-day stretches per house, with 2 uni semesters = 2 neighborhood days.  23 houses, four of which are dorms.  I think the neighborhood's into gen 4 or so.

It's manageable right now, but as I've got 21 children right now I'm thinking I may have been a bit silly with my "to heck with population control, I like simspawn!" decision.

I keep index cards, flagged by age and paperclipped together by household.  Helps keep track of vital statistics and play-order.  It's nice to see that other people are obsessively keeping track of their sims too.  Or maybe just worrying.

[cwieberdink]

I play my own family -- my grandchildren are now ready to get married, but I haven't aged a day.  LOL.  I just had another baby in fact.  I guess it's time to start aging myself and my hubby.  My daughters were boring so I put them into the bachelorette challenge which was a blast.  I also have a "legacy" neighborhood but I got bored with them and am just playing them normal now.  I play some of the families in strangetown but usually for testing purposes.

C

[vecki]

haha gali - I had Daniel run back to Mary-Sue as Kaylynn's baby making was getting way out of control!  They've happily remarried and Daniel seems to want nothing more than Angela and/or Lilith to just keep pumping out those grandchildren for him.  Currently we have Diana and Jeffrey Pleasant from Angela (who both look like little Dustin clones - it's downright eerie) and Darla Dreamer from Lilith (a good mix between Lilith and Dirk's genes).

I keep starting lists of where everybody's up to, but it's all but impossible with the number of affairs which have led to children (mainly just to keep a family name going, like Nina having Don's kids so we could keep some Caliente's around, until she then met and married Komei, who of course straight away wanted a baby, and got Tina), and the occasional alien abduction, so I end up with entries repeating themselves all over the place. lol.

Now I've just decided to start an MS Access database!!

(EDIT: yes I did start up that database, and learnt that I don't know all of my sims names!  One toddler I identify as 'monkey features' - maybe, had I known that was what she was going to look like, that would have actually been her name - a couple other babies I know as 'that new baby in such and such house', my 'Townie' family of mother, father and teen (I can only remember teen Theresa's name out of those - they're fairly new)

All up, counting those I remember and those who I know exist but can't remember names, jobs, aspirations etc, I have 90+ sims in Pleasantview, and 13 (that's it???) in Aridia, the Legacy neighbourhood.)

No wonder it's taken me so long to get through the second generation of Pleasantview!  Serious population control is on the way in the next generation.

[Darkstormyeve]

I'm pleased this thread was started as I came away from a weekend of Sims2 NL play feeling a little over whelmed. Too many families to control.

I took the boy and girl greek houses and married each one off. Thats 4 boys - Joshua Ruben, Castor Nova, Kevin Beare and Ashley Pitts. The girls - Heather Huffington, Tiffany Sampson and Brittany Upsnott.

Castor is with a townie called Ally.
Kevin is with a townie called Calista - pregnant.
Ashley is with Heather + one child Alyssa
Tiffany is with a CAS sim Hunter -  pregnant.
Brittany is with redhead maid Steven Dallas.

Thats it. I dislike Joshua so stuck him on an empty lot with a phone.

I am finding it really hard to play all these sims and keep time or age sync. I am eager to stick to one family but now that I have started them all, I don't want children of my "chosen" family making friends with sims I know shoud be 200years old!

They are all in Vernoville. I like the style of housing.

Soooo, I am thinking, against all perfect sense and I know my computer could blow up but I am tempted to move one favourite family to a custom hood. That way they lose all memory of their past life and I can start new with them.

[dmchess]

I'm impressed by the variety of answers!  I play only my own neighborhood with its attached SSU (I tried Pleasantville the first day I played the game, but I didn't save any of the lots after playing them, so it's still sitting there untouched.)  Haven't counted the controllables lately, so let's see...

My first CAS Sim, Ransom Zoom, moved in and married Marisa Bendet, and they had a daughter Georgia and a son Hermes; the daughter's on another lot now, so here we'll just count Ransom and Marisa and Hermes: 3.

My second CAS Sim, Sally Raptor (Romance), has had two daughters (also Romance).  One moved out to go to college, and the other hasn't quite moved in Kennedy Cox yet, so on this lot we'll just count Sally and Eleanor: 2 (total 5).

Sally's younger daughter Gina went off to college and came back and has just gotten pregnant by Dawson Day, although she didn't move him in.  So counting just Gina (and not the fetus, heh heh), that's 1 more (6).

Sally's daughter Eleanor moved in Kaylynn Langerak awhile back, and then Kaylynn moved out, fell in love with and eventually married Benjamin Long, and they had twins.  So that's 4 more living in the Langerak mansion (Kaylynn got to Celebrity Chef, and Benjamin's bringing in the bucks in the Science track now, so they're well off).  Total 10.

Eleanor later moved in Brandi LeTourneau, who then moved out and opened a boarding house on the edge of town.  Brandi in turn moved in Sandy Bruty.  Also living there at the moment are Taylor Almassizadeh (a gownie graduated from SSU, made controllable by Gina Raptor while she was in school), and Peran Nolstovski, a Sim I downloaded from a friend.  So that's four more: 14.

My third and fourth CAS Sims were John and Jean Danvers.  I won't give their entire family history here but currently they're living with their daughter Jane, Jane's wife Georgia Zoom Danvers, Jane and Georgia's adopted son Justin, and their twins (thanks to the TOLAD) Jan and Jen.  John, Jean, Jane, Georgia, Justin, Jan and Jen are seven more: 21.

At SSU Candice Ng is living in the house that Gina Raptor originally rented off campus (and passed along to Taylor, who passed it to Candice).  Randy London (former teen townie) is living in one dorm, and Joan Danvers (John and Jean's younger daughter) is in another.  And I've been playing the pre-built "Bright" house enough that I'll count them also (Jane Stacks is sleeping with Martin, and Allegra with Castor Nova, although he still lives in the frat house and I've never controlled him).  So that's six more: 27.

And that's probably about it.  Deepest apologies to any of my Sims that I forgot to mention...  

DC

[Diala]

I don't play any of the Maxis neighborhoods. None of them seemed interesting to me. However, I play one custom neighborhood (I have another custom neighborhood, which is a test neighborhood), with about 31 playable Sims... which kind of amazes me, since I could've swore I had more... not to mention that a lot of them are going to be elders, and hence are soon going to croak.

Perhaps that is why it is so easy for me to play them all while keeping them relatively the same age. I also don't marry townies or dormies. None of them appeal to me that much.

[DrBeast]

Maxis 'hoods...hmm...I vaguely remember starting out my Sims 2 endeavors in Strangetown. I then moved on to Pleasantview (or is it ville?). Then I found myself a nice pirate outfit and took to the high seas for a couple of months (aka got hooked on Pirates!). When I had quenched my thirst for loot and women, the University expansion pack had been out for some time, meaning that most mods and hacks had been retrofitted for it. So I got a copy and started a custom neighborhood with everything (except the Uni area) built from scratch. For some weird reason I was spared of the townies (sure enough, notownieregen was there, but I don't remember nuking the 'hood before beginning, as I didn't want to lose the pre-made playable sims at Uni), so I began the tedious task of manning the neighborhood. Which means graduating sims from Uni. Now, dormies were plentiful, as were ss members, so by black wind, fire and steel (uh, sort of!) they dropped dead, one by one...only to discovered in horror that after a point they came back under the evil disguise of ss members! Luckily, JM had worked out a nosshack by then, so I promptly installed and went on a new killing spree, creating some custom dormies along the way with the help of Inge's teleporter painting (these dormies promptly became ss members as well). Right now I'm almost done with the population of the hood. Five families, all four-member, are ready to graduate, and three more await them in the core neighborhood. I never played with the pre-made playable sims (i.e. the greek house members and the Peanut Street inhabitants) though I let them live, as well as four maxis-made ss members I kinda liked. It'll be interesting to see what will become of them now that the Uni years are coming to an end.

[SciBirg]

One question: Do people with OCD naturally gravitate towards The Sims or do people playing the Sims naturally develop OCD?

[DrBeast]

One question: Do people with OCD naturally gravitate towards The Sims or do people playing the Sims naturally develop OCD?

Call me stupid but what the heck is OCD?

[SciBirg]

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. I guess you can call it "control freakism"...
And oh yeah, I have more than a tad of it myself.

[Gus Smedstad]

When I first started playing, I played Pleasantville, but generally preferred to play my own Sims to the premade ones.  I eventually did play a few of the premade households, like Brandi Broke and the Pleasants.  I never played Strangetown or Veronaville because I disliked all the households I saw there without exception.  After a while I started getting too confused by the number of active households and what they wanted, so I started over with a custom neighborhood.

With the new neighborhood, I started with a single Sim and followed his descendants.  In general I tried to keep them time-synced, in that I'd generally play a household until a kid transitioned to teenager or a teenager went to college, and then I'd rotate to the next one.   Generation 2 (the original Sim's kids with one of the townies) had 3 Sims, and Generation 3 had 14.  Generation 4 is something like 40+ Sims.  A couple of the Generation 4 Sims have moved in together and had children, since inbreeding is now an option, but I've pretty much lost track of what's going on and haven't been playing them.  Generation 2 is all dead from old age, as is the original Sim's wife, though the original Sim is still around because he's the only one allowed to drink the Elixer of Life.  I think that may have been a mistake, he's not at all interesting to play, he's just kind of there as the immortal that just about everyone knows.  I did pair him off with one of the generation 4 Sims (incest is best!) but I just don't feel like playing that household at all.

I'm experiencing the same problem I had before.  Even though time sync isn't completely screwed up like it was in Pleasantville, 16 or so households is really more than I'm comfortable tracking, and playing that many has kind of killed the attachment I get when I'm just playing a couple of households.  I'm somewhat tempted to nuke it and start again, except that I don't want to deal with the same set of townies again.  I sort of want to take all my existing Sims and change them into townies for a new neighborhood or something.

 - Gus