More Awesome Than You!

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?

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...:).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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*

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.

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!  :)

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? ;)

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.

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.

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.

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...:).

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.

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

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.

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.

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 8) 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...  ;D

DC

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.

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.

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

Call me stupid but what the heck is OCD?

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

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

My main neighborhood is a custom one called Ariya, with about 36 playable sims in 9 base neighborhood houses and 2 uni houses. I also have a variety of goofing off type neighborhoods where I experiment with various things. Haven't messed with the game made families, since I'm paranoid.

I keep all the information I need about sims in their character files. For example, I keep all my families in sync, timewise, by noting in the household description how many days (marked off at 6 o'clock, sim time) I played with them. In Ariya, I've been playing the whole neighborhood (and keeping track) for nearly 37 sim days, although many of the households split off from the original four sometime after I started recording. I keep track of that by recording the day when the household split, then any subsequent days that have been played. For example, 25+11 means that when I split off that household, it was day 25, and I've played 11 days since then.

"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."

 ;)  So glad to know I'm not alone.  I put each household, dorm, frat etc on a card in a rolodex.  I play 4 Sim days in each house, 2 semesters in each college lot with aging left on.  New households get a new card and dead ones go to the shredder.  I'm playing about 40 households and go in order to keep them aging together.  Dear God... I think I need stronger meds.   :-\

I've been playing the same family in Pleasantview, going on the third generation now.  Some YA's are in college, some are married in different homes and a couple of YA's just graduated and moved back into the "original" family home to care for their elder parents and younger sister.  So, I have a variety of different families (and places) to play, yet they are all related - that's how I like to play my game.

As of today: 
Eight houses in Pleasantview, one downtown.
Elders: 6
Adults: 16
YAs (in Uni) 16
Teens: 8
Kids: 10
Toddlers: 2
Infants: one set of twins

Plus one nanny who gets moved around as needed.

Am thinking of enforcing birth control until the patch comes out and we're assured that our software won't erupt into an explosion of Sims pixels zooming off to  cyberheaven (or hell) when we hit the magic character file number.

I have never really played the pre-made towns.  The only one I kept was Pleasantville, but I don't use it.  I just keep it so there isn't an empty spot on the start-up neighborhood screen.

Right now I have two towns I actually play.  One town is for a more 'normal' Sims atmostphere (called Bay City) and one for the weird/odd storylines (Sunnydale).  In each town I usually have about 8 active families.  Everyone has met each other, but only certain families will actually hang out with other families.   
I try to age them together the best I can, so that childhood friends can go to college together, but it doesn't always happen that way - especially when I find myself spending more time with one family than another. I actually have a little sims notebook with the family names and details so that I can keep a summary of things.  ::) 
I do wish that they would tweak the photo album feature...in Sims 1 (if I remember correctly) a text box would automatically appear after you take a picture so that you can write a description of the picture right then and there.  In Sims 2, I take a lot of pictures and they start to pile up and I don't always get around to working on the album.
One thing I would like to see in the future is to have a feature where you can put together a tiny photo album of your favorite photos when your sim becomes an elder...and after they die, those pictures would appear as sort of a tribute slideshow of their life.  (Awww!)
LOL - I get a little attached to some of my Sims and have a hard time watching them get old and die. 

I play with aging off mostly until everyone in their age group is ready to move on to the next life stage together.  Some households I have specific plans for them and with others, I just let them do as they please.  I try to add variety to the gameplay, so that I don't get bored too quickly.   

I play sereral diffrent neighbourhoods, and I always like to keep the generations intact. I don't like seeing nieces and nephews end up older then their aunts and uncles and that stuff. Mind it still happens because I get sloppy.

i play the whole neighbourhood, Strangetown. every family. every person. except for poor Ajay Loner, i've played EVERYONE. but i'll incorporate him soon. let him marry someone i hate, maybe..

i do keep a to-do list, because every family has its own story. i do rounds, and make sure that every thing i want to achieve is achieved, and everyone grows at the same pace. no elixirs are allowed on my lots :D

i usually let my sims marry townies and npcs, cuz i wanna see what other sims the game will creat, but i dun wanna mass-kill them, too much character files leading to a BFBVFS.

am having so much fun! :D

and yes, i developed major OCD since i first started the game ;)

I'm really impressed with the organization, documentation and general diagnosible OCD present in this thread.  It seems as if most people who are playing lots of Sims, as I do, have a system for keeping track, which I don't.

I've tried making lists but as I despise paperwork (you should see my desk at work), I fall behind quickly and then give up.

It would be a big improvement to the Sims if the game made it easier to keep track, itself, don't you think?  I hate the neighborhood interface as the way for entering the Sims households.   I've organized my homes according to value, so I have a general clue where to look for each family based on what I remember about their wealth...but with so many households with the same last name (and growing), I have to do a lot of mousing over to find where I want to go.

Wouldn't it be great to have a summary screen that showed all of your families and the last (real time) played date?   I really like the idea a poster had, earlier in the thread, of keeping notes in the family story...hadn't thought of that!

I try to keep track of my stories progressions in the photo albums, but I also think they are awkward.  I snap a lot of pictures but only caption a handful, always meaning to go back...and the set up isn't easy to keep track of a Sim's story as she/he jumps households through life.  It's my plan to keep stories outside of the Sims, grabbing the pictures from the main file, but I never get aroundtuit.  (I also haven't put my RL kids baby pictures in photo albums, either....)

The Sims 1 had some kind of family tracking thing, can't remember exactly what it was, but I found it very handy before I had to turn it off to stop my game from crashing.  You could browse through your families.....I believe it might have been called a family browser or something. 

I need a family browser!  (I also need a secretary, a driver and a live in maid....)

haha, i use microsoft notepad. just had to read thru it before i start playing and add stuff in after i've done playing. oh i and forgot to mention i normally play 6 hrs per family before switching to another family

I play my Bayfield family almost exclusively. I'm less interested in creating generation after generation than I am seeing this one family through whatever I can throw at it. So my main sims, brothers Joe and Gary Bayfield, have been in play for over a year, now. Real time.

Funny new twist, though; Joe and Bella Goth have 3 kids together, one adult and 2 teens. They are so purdy that I recently decided that Joe and Bella should have more. I wanted a son, since they have 2 daughters and only one son. Bella kept having girls. I got frustrated with repeatedly quitting without saving, so I took drastic measures. I decided Joe and Bella needed to move into a smaller household, so they could have multiple births. That way I could pick the baby I wanted. I didn't want to worry about setting up a new household, though, so I thought it would be quicker to just move them in with an existing family. A very small one. And Don Lothario fit the bill. Joe and Bella invaded the Lothario household and had a few sets if multiple births, as girls far outnumbered the boys. Out of 11 children, I chose 2 boys. I didn't really know what to do with the others, I couldn't bear to kill them and I didn't want to send them off to the adoption pool, so I had Don adopt them. I almost peed my pants from laughing at this situation! Poor Don was just sitting on his couch watching tv, and didn't even know what hit him. Bam! Romeo Don now has 6 daughters and 3 sons! I had to laugh at how all the kids would line up in his queue, and how he was reading to the children one story after another after another. Don't know when he'll be able to fit in any romance in this household!

(http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y62/Brynne14/Sims2%20blog/Donscrew.jpg)(http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y62/Brynne14/Sims2%20blog/Lothariofamily.jpg)

wow! what did you do to fit more than 8 sims in the household? cool!

I myself like to play no more than 6 families. it's awfull long to play lots of sims. i don't like. I have this neighborhood called "Planeta Terra" (earth panet in portuguese) with like 30 playable sims, and it takes so long for them to evolve!!!

I only have this much sims because my sister kept creating sims in CAS and after a few sim days she would just create another family, or another neighborhood and leave the old ones to fend for themselves. ha!

I used to play on a slower pc, and i couldn't play anymore, it was getting on my nerves the time it took to load and teh constant lagging in the game. Now i have 3200+ PC with 1GB memory and Radeon x600 256 video board, and now i can play! the cinematics are so cool. i like the one when sims goes to University.

Anyway, even with this good pc, it still takes a lot of time for them to evolve, so i try to keep little number of controllable sims, and i never quit without saving because reliving days is something for Tru Davis, not for me. I hardly pause the game, and am constantly using speed 2. I'm also heavily considering trashing this neighborhood and starting a new one. I don't want those many sims! but i don't want to give up on some gorgeous sims i have there! hehe

Inge's teleporter shrub and the Insiminator. I don't usually use the insiminator, but until a few quirky things in the game are modded it'll suffice.

I feel like a dork for asking this, but how did you get all those hairstyles for the toddlers?  I know you can change clothes now with the Changing Table, but I thought you couldn't change hairstyles until they became children.

It's more than a little freaky seeing that many Sim face icons up the left side of the screen.  I'm surprised the game can handle it.

 - Gus

I got the toddler hairstyles from MTS2, mostly, but I got a few from other sites as well. I use JM's clothing tool to change their appearance once they become selectable.

Oops. You weren't asking where I got all those toddler hairstyles. I just noticed that most of them are styles that came with the game, anyway.

in my prosperity challenge hood I started with  4 families the Amings,the Walkers,the middleips and the loveall family . well the middleips family disappeared due to pc glitch so the Sabre family replaced them. Dustin Aming a Cas elser moved out of the family home and married townie Brandi Letorneau. they have six kids and 2 grandchildren . however from his oldest son Steve and Daughter in law Kris He has 10 grandchildren and 12 great grandchildren so 1 sim has a total of 32 family members and according to simpe has 5 days before the grim reaper comes for him which will make him 77 at the time of death in 5 days. which I call years . the loveall family started with a single dad,grandpa,and a female child and a female toddler. Grandpa is dead and has been since the toddler had her teen birthday, Finch the single Dad married college townie Jane Stacks and they have 3 kids together. his daughters he started with are both married and he has 3 grandkids making his family size 10 sims  . the walkers started out as 2 brothers and 1 toddler female that belonged to the younger brother. the younger brother married Melissa fancey and has 3 kids with her Elias Walkers family size  7 sims his oldest is married and has a baby.Lance the older brother adopted while he was single and then married Lucy Hanby the maid total family size 5 sims he and Lucy have 2 boys.the sabre Family has  7 members total nieghborhood population =61 sims in 20 Houses and growing as Uni has 3 YA's currently enrolled and 3 waiting

OK - I feel dumb for asking this but.....
I downloaded the clothing tool but... is this an object like a dresser or a mirror? Where does it show-up in buy mode?

Thanks.

It's in miscellaneous, and it looks like a stack of clothes.

It's under miscellaneous > miscellaneous IIRC. It acts as the clothing rack, dresser and mirror all in one. It goes through all the different outfit types first to browse and buy and then to plan and when it's done it goes to the mirror mode so you can change appearance. If you use it on a residential lot, you will pay a 50% premium (a 200 outfit will cost 300 etc) for shopping at home.

There's a bit of weirdness with browsing and buying toddler outfits as the body doesn't show up, but if you change to another age, then change back to toddler, it should. The item does have the bonus of acting like a toddler mirror and letting you plan their hairstyles too because Maxis very annoyingly after all this time STILL has not made a way to do that without resorting to hacks. They even added new toddler hat hairs to NL, but didn't give us any way to get them.  ::)

*edit Brynne beat me to it. ;)

nyah nyah :D

The toddler outfits also will show up if you click to the opposite sex and then back. Don't know why.

Thanks -
After seeing Brynne's pictures with all those cute toddler hairstyles I just had to get them for my toddlers!

i was laughing so hard seeing Don Lothario surrounded by 9 kids!!

me too, after seeing them, i just couldn't resist downloading them! off i go now!

I love it!
I created a home with one adult and 7 toddlers for the heck of it and found it very creepy how they would follow her around like a little pack of wolves. I eventually just gave her a locked room to escape because to be honest, she only gave a damn about one of them and would ignore the multiple toddlers' "asks" to interact with the one (who oddly enough she didn't even have a high relationship with)

You could call my style of game play event driven. I play each household up to a certain life event then move on to the next one until that event happens there and so on, keeping each household more or less at the same event or milestone. The events are generally move out, get engaged, get married/partnered/move in, have baby(ies) and teach toddler(s) talk/walk/potty, children grow into teens, teens go to University, young adults move back into neighbourhood and the cycle continues. I found this method works the best for me for keeping everyone in that neighbourbood aging roughly at the same time and I have found in life that peers generally do these things roughly about the same times in their life. Of course there are always exceptions. I don't keep detailed notes about what is going on in the neighbourhood but I do update the story for that neighbourhood with the last household that I was playing and play the households going down the streets left to right. There are some households that I do like playing more then others because of the story I have planned for them or for the personality that I have projected onto them so they do get a little extra play time (aka aging off).

I have not played the Sims 2 in quite awhile so I am starting off with a fresh neighbourhood and I moved in 20 single Sims and they have all been dating and about 1/3 of them have gotten married so far.     

What was really funny was how Don would get exhausted and nap on the sofa and all the toddlers would hang around him waiting for him to get up. I have so many pictures from the Don family- the whole thing was hysterical. I must say, he's very good with the children. He was always playing with a toddler, bathing a toddler, reading to a toddler, feeding a toddler, playing with a toddler, bathing a toddler, reading to a toddler, feeding a toddler, playing with a toddler, bathing a toddler, reading to a toddler, feeding a toddler...

It's also interesting that Don left Cassandra at the altar, but is now the adopted father of 9 of her half-siblings. Revenge of the Goths. Cassandra doesn't know that, though. I broke all the toddlers' family ties to the Goths.

Hello - this is my first post on this forum...  ;D Anyway, I'm designing a database to be used to keep track of my Sims... I don't have nearly as many Sims as most of you do but still I found myself losing track of who was what and where... naturally the database is turning out to be a little more complicated than I expected.  And I made a vow that I can't play any more Sims 2 until I've made good progress on the database, so I'm having major Sims withdrawals.

Anyway if others are interested, I plan to make it available when it's done...

I'm going through my sim photos trying to organize them for the storybook, and I keep finding pics I want to share! This situation just has me rolling on the floor. Another chuckle or two for you guys...
(http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y62/Brynne14/Sims2%20blog/donreading.jpg)(http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y62/Brynne14/Sims2%20blog/doncircle.jpg)(http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y62/Brynne14/Sims2%20blog/donherd.jpg)

That is absolutely freakin' hilarious Brynne (not to mention, a little creepy as well). ;D

I know, it's something about the Don Juan sex-fiend suddenly becoming the unwitting daddy to a whole herd of kids...Payback is hell, Don!

I'd be interested, I thought about designing one myself, but can't drag myself away from playing long enough. :/ (oh and welcome :))

Brynne, I have just played a house with 2 toddlers and 2 babies - SOD THAT! And you did 7?!? You're mad!  :P

Actually, I did 11! Don's 9 toddlers and then their two sibling toddlers that Joe kept. Notice all the extra sims hanging around in those pics? They were family recruits to help out  :D.

I also only played them for a day. Joe has the two he adopted at his house now (they're teens, now). But poor Don still has 9 toddlers roaming around his bachelor pad, and I ain't going back there for a while!

At one point I thought it would be fun to create a kind of "foster home" for some of those poor kids in the adoption pool. I created a sim and then had her adopt 7 of them (4 toddlers, 3 children). The house drove me batty, pause, click, pause, click, rinse lather, repeat. Everyone's aspiration level was in the toilet, the original "foster mom" barely knew or had a relationship with most of the kids...what a nightmare. "Unfortunately" this was in my first custom neighborhood that I ended up having to delete due to constant bugginess so I never did see much progression in the house, too much work.  ::)

11 babies?! I have to say, you're my idol now, Brynne haha! the best i did was 3 mothers and 5 kids in the house. you can't imagine how happy i was when someone finally grew into a child! now i don't havta worry bout ya! haha!

actually I dont mind  toddlers .I think their cute and I love their little voices .I just wish toddlers could interact with one another.I just got a toddler trained with out smart milk or the thinking cap all inone sim day leaving the toddler time to play and be read to and more time to interact with his parents. not that the gane allows for much real life interaction with toddlers. the toddler is now a child and has a baby brother, his older brother just left for Uni and Mom is pregnant again. to work on hers and Dad's LTW to marry off six kids and Grandpa's to have six grandkids for my prosperity challenge. mom has yet to get a job but Dad is an intern .Grandpa moved out to his own place next door to make room for all these grandkids he wants.the upside of no job and back to back pregnancy's for mom is her cooling skill is nearly maxed out along with her cleaning skill. she reads  books to skill inbetween sleeping,waatching tv,etc.....

Brynne -
You're my hero now. I saw the picture with all the toddlers and thought that was too cute. So, I tried to do something similiar. When I got to the 5th toddler, I had to throw in the towel. I think I micromanage them too much and couldn't keep up with queuing their actions and keeping them out of the toilet.

Okay, you guys, I have to admit I had a little help. I used the "please yourself 2" plant from simlogical to keep everyone's hunger in the green. So no bottles to worry about. Still, all the bathing...I don't know if you noticed, but in one of the pics you can see a bathtub outside. There were actually 3 tubs outside, and one inside. There were also many potty chairs, cribs, and changing tables scattered throughout Don's not so big house, also spreading out into the yard.  In real life, I doubt you could get away with that, as we have something called "weather"...

Brynne, I gotta tell you, this has to be the single funniest thing I've ever seen anyone do with a Maxis sim.  I've visited this thread 10 times to just laugh at the pictures.

I keep threatening my Don Lothario with a similar fate.   ;)  Right now, his house is a way station for the romance women to scratch an itch, but....you never know, Don!

*evil laugh*

I think this is the funniest thing I have done to my sims, as well! And I put my sims in some pretty weird situations. It's just so funny thinking back when I first had Joe and a very pregnant Bella enter Don's lot. Don was just minding his own business watching tv, alone...had no idea what was about to happen. "Creme la tiche!" I have so many pictures, because it was just non-stop hilarity!

totally Hysterical ;D

According to this article (http://www.simshost.com/chronicle/chronicle-20050408.html) (haven't tried it myself), toddlers can interact with each other, via the toy box.  (Have to remember to try it with Jen and Jan Danvers next time I play that house again.)

DC

Toddlers can also interact with one another playing with the dollhouse and (if I remember correctly) the toddler skill objects, too. I usually stick my twins together on the dollhouse to get their relationship into the positives since one always seems to hate the other when they're born.

thanks if I ever have twins again I will have to try this.no twins post nightlife at all

I tried to get the toddlers to interact with each other by clicking on the toybox, the dollhouse, anything toddler-related. No dice. Is this supposed to be an autonomous thing, maybe?

I don't know how many,  but I have a house on every lot but two in strangtown and each house has 6 to 8  people living in it,  and I have about 25 students in college.    Too many !!!    :D

It's definitely not autonomous since my Sims have had their free will priviledges revoked. It's been a couple of weeks since I've had two toddlers in the same house together, but I'm pretty sure I had one go and play with the toy and then have the second one "join". As I recall, the dollhouse especially has weird pathing issues and I had to move it pretty much into the middle of the room (away from walls or other objects) for them both to be able to use it otherwise the join action would fail.

EDIT: Sorry about that, I was wrong about the toddler skill objects - only children and older can join a toddler who is playing with one. Toddlers also can't play with the toybox unless someone takes the toys out of the box for them and even then, the toys can't be shared. They can play together on the dollhouse through the "join" option, though. I had to take a screenie of it because I think it's so adorable. :)

[attachment deleted by admin]

Winding all the way back to my first post....

 ::)

So, when I was growing up, my mother said to me, over and over..."You never finish anything you start!"  I can't decide if the Sims is the best friend or worst enemy of someone with a completion disorder.

Even though I have a huge number of open plot lines in the main 'hood, I spent the weekend taking Dirk Dreamer and 3 teen NPC's through University.  I've recently installed Uni, so this is just my second time through, and the first time I've ever played the teen NPC's.

Oh my, that was fun.  Uni itself was tedious, but the characters were a perfect match to become thick as theives buddies.  I had Dirk, Alon Livingston, Amy Jones (who turns out beautiful with the right makeover) and Michelle I-forget-her-last-name.   A weekend's worth of work, two romances, a big graduation party and now....sigh....four more characters sitting in the neighborhood bin who need homes and to move on with their lives.  Just what I needed, MORE plot lines.

I'm going to bed!  (After I watch Desperate Housewives on DVR)

Had to break for Desperate Housewives as well, lol.
Briefly going to the toddler subject again, toddlers can get toys out of the toybox themselves once they can walk. They climb into it, practically, and it is really cute. I have pics, somewhere, of course, but they're scattered everywhere while I'm trying to get my storybooks together.

haha, well i can't say i mind them too much. but with 3 pregnant moms and 8 toddlers and babies, especially the toddlers who constantly need to be let out of the crib and put back in the crib...the babies weren't better. feeding them is just plain headache. once i finish with this one, i gotta get another one, and with the wailing toddlers, my mouse was clicking furiously..

I was so surprised and thrilled when I discovered this a while back that I actually give toddlers one day of 'skill free' relationship building time now.
The key is that the toddlers must have learned to talk. If you want to 'force' a test, teach 2 toddlers to talk, reduce their fun and social as low as you can and plunk them together with toys. You'll notice them chatting away as they play, (those overachievers talking about work and math are the funniest)
If they can walk, they can fetch their own toys from the toybox, if not, someone else will have to do it for them.
They will only 'talk' in pairs though, so even numbers are handy and kids can 'join' in too.

This is true, toddlers do interact. However, sometimes you have to get one of the toddlers to stop playing and then start again before they will start babbling to each other. I find it works best if the toddlers have all their basic skills (walk talk potty) and you keep the adults or teens busy so they dont constantly interfere. I have had twins be best friends once they hit childhood. I havent had to have either of the toddler's fun or social low to do this, just the basic skills and the toy box.

Wow, I play the game totally differently than it seems like a lot of you do. I'm very obsessive and very easily distracted - totally incapable of keeping databases or keeping the aging right on different houses or anything like that.

I get an idea, make a sim (or 2 or many), put them in their houses and get obsessed with them and don't stop playing them until I get distracted by something else (building, downloading or making things) or another idea or something (work, food, sleep, other fun and obligation breaks don't count). I can't imagine only doing 6 sim hours - she wouldn't have found a perfect match, he wouldn't have gotten a job and a bunch of promotions, the baby wouldn't be born (I almost never stop the game for anything in between the lullabye and the birth), the toddler wouldn't have learned to talk - I just can't leave them *now* ;)

When I get distracted, I just stop playing them and get obsessed with the new sim or thing. I've had a good number of sims in different neighborhoods, and I do get attached to them - some of them I remember fondly. For awhile I played a single mother who looked vaguely 20sish and her son, Random. She was my first sim to die and every time I see another one wearing that hat, I think it's her. I got distracted making 20-30ish clothes for them (and a paperboy if I remember correctly) and  I dunno what happened to Random. I know he was a teen and I *think* I lost the house in the mess installing Uni was for me - but might have lost track of him before that.

My son wanted to play with a bunch of animal skins that he dl'd and created a neighborhood called Animatown. So I made Jeremy Danvers and his foster son Clayton and Elena Michaels and her foster family (2 households) to be werewolves. These are characters from the book _Bitten_ by Kelly Armstrong and I managed to keep them more or less on track agewise (Clay is somewhat older than Elena - she was in college and he was a visiting prof) tho I played with aging off a lot. Werewolves don't age, do they? Elena ended up with a sister (the foster family's real child) and they killed off her nasty fosterdad and she moved in with Clay and Jeremy. Jeremy got abducted and had a were-alien baby and Elena had quads - a litter of puppies. This was pre-Uni, so they didn't meet at college, and I know this one got lost in the reinstall. My son recreated it, but I didn't make the families again.

For Uni, I created a neighborhood Ethni City, with a bunch of multicultural sims and got obsessed with India - created my beautiful Indian coworker and friend and her husband, and a 2nd couple that were also some friends. Added some other downloaded cultures and my son added Chinese, Japanese and French. I believe we have a Thai section as well. I meant to do Italy but got distracted and haven't got back to it yet. I got way distracted building their houses and making clothes and looking for objects and didn't really play them that much. My friend sim and her husband had twin daughters and her friend and husband had a son.

I managed to get them sent off to Uni - "Watsamata U" with all the buildings and the like based on Rocky and Bullwinkle names (tho they're actually mostly stolen from the 3 Universities that came with - renamed and redecorated some.) I also didn't delete the other three when I'd finished stealing the buildings so my neighborhood (which I'm currently playing) is probably in danger of being eaten by too many iterations bugs - it has 4 attached Universities (tho only 1 has ever been played and the others don't have dorms or buildings in them, so maybe it's ok.)

Anyway, shortly after they got to campus, I got distracted again and created all the sims to live in "A Doll's House" (the graphic novel) by Neil Gaiman. I played them for awhile and got tired of Uni and quit playing... mostly because I was obsessed with the characters and wanted to play just them (not switch back to the neighborhood or even other sims) but was bored with the Uni stuff.

In an interlude - before NL came out, I got interested in building again and made a new neighborhood where I built houses and created some sims to live in them and was enjoying playing them. I never bothered to attach a Uni and it hasn't been touched since NL came out and I got distracted with that.

NL appeared and I was major distracted by that. I decided the Gaiman sims were perfect for vampirization (especially the Spider Ladies), so I picked up Ethni City, dropped them all out of college and dumped them all (after playing around a bit) into the House of the Fallen Trees. There's Hal (who owns the house technically), the Spider Ladies (2 of them), Gilbert, Barbie and Ken (who immediately got pregnant and had twins - my first NL birth) so 8 in the house. They explored DT, became vampires, got over being vampires and I just generally had a good time playing that many at once. After awhile Gilbert moved out, as it was appropriate and made room for the Spider Ladies (they have names - Zelda and Chantal) to adopt a child, so they did.... she's still a toddler...

And... I went and saw the movie Serenity and got distracted. So I spent a long time creating all the Firefly characters (not very well, I'm not good at making sims, but I did the best I could) and turned them into their parents so they could be born in game. Most of them, I just made the created sim male and female and set their personalities to what I thought was fun. I made Zoe's mom a single parent, Simon and River's father is a criminal money sim and their mother's a society b*tch, and Inara's mother is a dumpy housewife who ignores the kids and her father leaves them for a beautiful romance sim. A few of them aren't in game yet (Wash, Sepherd Book) - Mal was just born.

But I got distracted with Kaylee's family. Her father should have been a farmer, but I couldn't really do that and support them, nor could he teach her mechanics that way - so I made him a country dr. and her mother stayed at home and had 6 kids (I *barely* got them in without elixer or turning aging off - I dunno how people have so many in a normal adult sim lifespan, 'cept twins and we didn't get any). Kaylee has 1 sister and 4 brothers - Stella, Delbert, Eldad, Kaylee, Derbie and Rufus. Rufus just turned toddler and Stella went to college (with 1 day left before she aged).

So I followed Stella to Uni. She met a guy she's crazy about, and I played him and his brother a bit so they'd be older than her (they're all 1st semester sophs right now, but the brothers are just slightly ahead in the semester), and they all moved into a house together - 'ready set up for Stella's brothers and sisters to follow her to school. 'cept I haven't touched the family since, so I keep telling myself I'll quit when she gets through her sophomore year and go back and play Delbert until he goes to college, so they'll stay the right distance apart. And then when Kaylee is ready for college (she just transitioned to teen), I'll have to go back and actually bring up the rest of the Firefly crew so they're older than she is.

So, I currently have - 2 families in the neighborhood (Ethni City) with 4 sims, 2 houses with 9 sims (and an abandoned countess who moved in and got deserted if she counts) in Downtown Ethni City based on the Gaiman and 5 Firefly-based houses with 18 total sims, some have been played a lot and some just put in houses, 3 Ethni City kids that went to college and got abandoned and I don't even remember who they all are, and one house from the Firefly crew at Uni with 3 sims in it that I'm playing (and hoping to have a 4th when the other brother finds a gf). I count 37 in the neighborhood I actually play - but I'm only really *playing* 3 of them :)

It seems I can manage 2 households and keep them together-ish in ages, and I love having lots of sims in the same house. I don't have any problem with grandma and granddad, parents and lots of kids in the same house either (I've done this and left them out up above somewhere) nor playing the same house until ingame born sims die and new ones are born and grow old (or move them to a bigger house, just the same sims). But I don't switch around well.

I love the toddler mirror (or whatever other ones) and will allow money cheats to buy one as I can't stand not being able to fix up the toddlers. Same with shop at home options. I *really* want my sims to wear the clothes I make or download for them.

Our styles aren't that different, other than a couple of points.

1) You've got way more creativity, imagination and energy than I do!  :o
2)  My loose ends scream at me to be tied up...even if I'm so mightily distracted by the next shiny baubble that what I do mostly is create even more loose ends

The part of your post that I relate to is getting an idea and just running with that until it runs out of steam.  The idea might be mine or it might (more likely) be originated by Sims. (I know, they are pixels, they don't really have ideas but it sure seems as if they do.)

If the plot is good enough, I very well might play a Sim house for a Sim week or more, straight thru, without visiting another house.  OR, the plot may involve several different Sim households, in which case I might play them alternately for a Sim week or more.  I won't go to the bathroom with a pregnant Sim on my computer, much less switch out of the house!

Distraction, though, can set in at any time.  All I need is a glimmer of a shiny new juicy story, and I'm off and running.  Playing this way, with liberal use of Elixir and almost no Sim deaths means there are a lot of Sims tapping their feet, waiting for me to get back to them.

(And I can't stand my aging getting out of sync, generationally I mean, not actual number of days.  Can't stand that... the more Sims I get, the bigger a *itch that is!  )

Same here. I'm also a perfectionist so I've reinstalled and/or restarted neighbourhoods from scratch at least 30 times since I bought the base game in September 2004. In fact, I did a reinstall for the NL patch just last week (Edit: I know it's not necessary but I do it anyway). :-[

I think I started out creating me and my husband, got frustrated and moved on when I accidentally named our last child "Baby Boy" (before I figured out how to change names). Thereafter I mainly played and restarted Pleasantville, though I did enjoy a brief stint with Strangetown. I think I quit just as I had graduated all the player sims from La Fiesta Tech. Recently played a vampire for awhile but got bored because she didn't want children and you can only go clubbing so many times before it gets old. I kept wishing for a mod that would allow vampires to drain and kill their enemies.

Started again today with a new legacy family, deletedallcharacters and carefully selected/renamed new townies and NPCs. I'm trying to just go with the flow and enjoy myself because my last legacy family involved a script for the entire 10 generations, with the first 2 alone taking up five pages. Got boring and overwhelming because things would always deviate from the script and, well, we can't have that, can we? The last straw was when the vanishing memories bug showed up in the 2nd generation's uni-educated wife.

I think my play style sounds a lot like sagana's. I can easily clock in 8 hours a day, barring work, and mainly stick with one family the whole time (I really hate playing and aging other families to keep them in step with the main one). Then I get frustrated with, say, a lack of clothing options and go on a downloading spree for another 8 hours. I also tend to go on theme kicks--there was the Victorian England neighbourhood, the British-Asian neighbourhood, the ultra-hip gay neighbourhood, the hillbilly neighbourhood, etc. But I never stay with them long enough to fully enjoy the tons of work I intially put into them.

I also stay up really late during the first few days of play... Is it 2 am already?

LOL I doubt that seriously - most of my ideas come from books or stories or something and then the sims run with them (I agree they have ideas of their own ;) That's why I usually try to do secondary characters or start them as children or something. They can end up whatever way they want without me getting annoyed they aren't staying "in character" or frustrated by something that can't be done in the sims (I can't imagine trying to do Buffy when you can't stake vampires. That would annoy me.)

And yeah, distraction comes anytime (tho pregnant sims are a mighty strong pull). I don't mind the generational stuff so much tho - I really don't mind with the townies, tho I know it bothers others to have the same sim friends with 3 generations of those. I just set up justifications for it in my mind - well that's not *really* the same girl, that girl died tragically and the parents had another and gave her the same name and she's kind of unhappy trying to live in her sister's shadow... or that boy is really the nephew of the one my older sim knew and the parents loved their brother soooo much they named their firstborn after him but when he dropped out and moved to Alaska to find himself, they got kind of annoyed so he has a new different nickname. Or something :)


Yes! Exactly! I'm playing along and my sim transitions to child and I suddenly realize I don't have any "country-style" (or whatever I'm doing) clothes for a male child, and next though I know I've spent a week downloading. And I'm also looking up and downloading designs or patterns or clothes that aren't made yet and thinking, "well I'll just make this one and that one" as I can't find them anywhere. And then I never do, so I have folders full of examples all over my harddrive :) Half of them will be named "can't resist" as I got distracted by some neat furniture that fit the idea and they don't have anything at all to do with little boy's clothes and most of them would require new meshes and I don't even have a 3d program of any kind, let alone know how to use it :)

I think the journey is actually the fun part anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter if I never really "arrive".


Yup, yup - this too. I keep telling myself (and my husband) I'm not going to be tired at work tomorrow, I'm going to bed. In just half an hour, 15 more min. just a bit. And then it's waaaaay toooo late :)

I'm playing over ten families at the moment.  Most of my families consist of 2-4 sims.  I usualy play 2-3 families a sesion. I've played more than ten families at times. My new focus is to get past the secoond genoration.

Brynne, your pictures are funny as hell and they remind me of the new sims comercial I saw earlier tonight.

I'm with you there.

I actually play each household four sim days at a time, which allows for plenty of birthdays, dates, promotions, etc., in any one round of playing my families. So there's plenty of change going on in my neighborhood all the time.  It also gives me time to set up larger events or continue interesting lines of play when I switch to another household where there is cross-over involvement.

I don't know about anyone else, but all of my neighborhoods always ME in them.  A CAS made sim self, alter ego, reicarnation, whatever you want to call it.  Because really, I see no point to this game if you're not going to have yourself somewhere in there mixing it up with the other sims.

And in case you were wondering, that's him in my avatar.

I'll usually find myself a nice townie or an availiable pre-made sim that doesn't have any attachments to any other sims, have them settle down and establish a family of about two or three kids before I start playing the other families in an effort to mix the family bloodlines with the second generation.  Ever since Uni came out I've grown a strong attachment to Stella Terrano, and usually have my sim fall in love with her and get them married.  I don't know, I guess I have a thing for exotic women.  And being a space alien is about as exotic as you can get.

I play Pleasentview mostly.  But I've been playing Strangetown more and more lately.  Sometime in the near future I'll force myself to play Veronaville.  I would start my own custom neighborhood.  But I like the pre-made neighborhoods, and I guess I'm just too lazy and/or uncreative enough to start a neighborhood from scratch.

I also let a little infidelity happen in controled situations.  Because it happens in real life more than we'd like to admit.  But I make sure the guilty party gets caught and that they pay the price.  It usually happens in the form of groveling and appologizing profusely.  Or if I deem it fit, a total break up.

Speaking of which, I've never seen a break up be a good memory untill NL came out.  Reading "Boy, am I glad I dropped that loser." in the memory caption gave me a good laugh.   :)

Hehehe, I had wondered if that avatar was suppose to be you, Trepie.  I actually have never made a "ME" to play in any of my neighborhoods but hmmm..maybe I will. I had been very much looking forward to NL but ironically since I bought it I have had very little time to play; a half hour here, 45 minutes there, which as anyone knows, seems to not be any time at all.
I used to play Pleasantview most often but I have been feeling overwhelmed by how many families I have there so I haven't been playing it as much. I've been playing Strangetown and my own custom 'hood more often. I'm not very good at thinking out "storylines" so I am finding that I get bored quickly. I need to start coming up with some plots and shake things up. I tend to get stuck in a rut of having my sims skilling, going to work/school, meeting a significant other, having babies, ad nauseum. Reading other people's posts on MATY has given me some inspiration to start trying some new ideas.

I've been enjoying this thread immensely.  I love discussions on how people actually play the game.  They seem few and far between.

First I guess I should say I usually get bored with games VERY quickly.  I played Sims 2 daily from its release date in September 2004 until December 2004.  I spent most of my play time on my Legacy family (which never even got past three generations) and updating my website with a Big Brother-ish Sim "game" called The Nut House (http://www.soveryposh.com/x/sims/categories/C209/).  I became so fed up with The Nut House, updating my site and answering questions that I abandoned it and the entire Sims 2 game before it ever finished.

I didn't play again until University was released.  I have no idea how long I played University, but it couldn't have been more than a month or so.  It was at that time I created myself for the first time in TS2. I also created my husband and we had some ugly ass children.  That was a little weird and I doubt I'll ever repeat the experience.

I've always WANTED to be the type of player who filled a neighborhood with multiple playable families and rich storylines.  I've never really had the attention span for it.  Like sagana, when I played, I played one family for hours at a time.  It was difficult to play multiple families in one neighborhood and have them interact with one another in any way because no one's age would ever be in synch.  I usually became bored with the family after three generations (I've NEVER gotten past three generations) and moved on to another one.

I started playing University again from a fresh reinstall a few weeks before Nightlife came out to prep myself for it.  I created my very first custom neighborhood and filled it with decorations and houses and created a few families to move in.  I still focused on just one family though and found myself slipping back to my old ways.

Prior to this, I didn't have a whole lot of custom content aside from clothes and had no use for hacks.  In the newest awakening of my Sims 2 obsession, however I started installing custom content like MAD.  I also started installing objects and hacks which I previously stayed away from.  (I prefer hacks which enhance the game, not cheat around it.  I have debug mode for cheating.)  This enhanced my gameplay quite a bit.  The custom content I love the most are things that make a Sim house look more like a real one.  Toilet paper, closets with clothing racks and shelves, clutter in the bathroom, etc.  I learned a little about SimPE and got the clean file installer to organize my downloads.  I read a post by someone here and it inspired me to create another custom neighborhood whose residents either always had their greatest want fulfilled, or their greatest fear.  I'd never played to the Sims' wants and fears before, only to my own.

I started with four CAS sims: Samantha Sands (family), Cynthia Mallard (knowledge), Sabrina Tate (romance) and Debra Walsh (fortune).  I moved all of them into the same house and started playing them with the simple goal to only do what they wanted to do.  (If they need a skill point for a promotion, they're not getting it unless they want to gain a skill point).

Samantha met Jordan, a knowledge townie and they fell in love.  I actually wanted Samantha to get together with a different townie, but they just didn't click.  When Samantha and Jordan got married, Sabrina and Cynthia moved out into another house and I started a rotation. 

Sabrina spent all of her time going on dates and has woo-hoo'd with the majority of the adult men in the neighborhood, plus a few elder men she wasn't too crazy about, but woo-hoo'd with anyway to satisfy the craving.  Cynthia discovered she had a strong attraction to Sabrina's ex-boyfriend Tyler, a fortune townie and they started dating.  This didn't sit well with Sabrina and she became furious with both Tyler and Cynthia.  Cynthia knew her dear old friend would get over it eventually and she and Tyler were married at a private ceremony.  (This whole ordeal made me fall in LOVE with the new furious state - I don't get why people say the state lasts too long. Sabrina has had PLENTY of people furious with her and most of her boyfriends forgive her after a couple apologies and a few Sim days' time.  Sabrina was mad at Cynthia and Tyler for a few days, but they're best friends now)

Back at the Sands house, Samantha quickly popped out two baby girls with one pregnancy after another.  Cassandra and Tayla.  Debra Walsh the fortune sim fell in love with Sabrina.  Sabrina is more into guys, but she gave in to Debra's desires because woo-hoo is woo-hoo any way you slice it!  Debra was clogging up the Sands house and I didn't want her heart to be broken by Sabrina, so I moved her to the family bin (which I've decided is actually Sim City - a mega metropolis about a two hour drive noth) where she still remains.

Cynthia and Tyler had one child, Matthew.  Neither of them ever wanted to have a baby again, so one child is all they'll ever get.

I don't know how many family Sims I can play in this neighborhood because Samantha's desires for babies never subsided.  I allowed her to become pregnant one more time because she wanted it and because I really wanted a boy for that family.  I decided that despite Samantha's wishes, this would probably be her last pregnancy.  Imagine my surprise when she produced TWINS!  Alex and Tiffany became the newest addition to the Sands family.  Of course, Samantha immediately wanted another baby.  It was at this time I set a rule that after four births, the Sim has to roll the baby want for three consecutive mornings in order to be given another child. 

I won't go on with their story as this post is far too long already and for that I apologize.

My point (if indeed I ever had one) is that I think with this neighborhood I can finally start playing the way I've always WANTED to play.  And who knows, maybe I'll be able to get past a third generation!  Nightlife makes it very easy to rotate houses since you just have to click on the lot to load it.  I usually play only one Sim day per house and then rotate to the next one (this neighborhood has three playable houses at this point).  I stop at 4am since Sims are usually asleep at that time and it's close enough to the following morning so I don't have to spend too many precious seconds fast forwarding after loading the lot to start playing.  Sometimes I play two Sim days per rotation, but I generally don't like people to age too much or too much to happen between rotations.  I notice that's when I start getting bored with the whole idea.  When I've finished my Simming session (I play for about an hour and a half every morning before work and usually about two hours a day on weekends) I go back to the neighborhood and document the real life date and the day of the week the houses are at so I'll know where to start next.  Rotation also helps in that I have one house in this neighborhood (a new CAS family) that I don't really care for.  Taking them in small doses isn't really so bad and bides some time until they either get their own storyline or I get so bored of them I abolish them to Sim City.

I keep all the houses in synch with one another not only by age, but also by day of the week.  I'm not sure how that's going to work when I start sending kids off to college though since I'm planning on playing through one college year for one Sim day.  They'll probably have to be out of synch for college.  I'm not sure about moving them back into the neighborhood either.  One idea was to have them move back into their old house until Sunday after 6pm and then let them move out on their own if they'd like.  I'll see how much that delays them starting a family.  Any known cheats to change the day of the week on the clock? 

Any Sim not going to college will spend four glorious "years" in Sim City to keep them exactly synched up to everyone else. 

And finally, to, um, actually answer the question posed, I'm currently playing 14 sims across three houses.

Yay, older thread. Oh well, I shall answer anyway. ^^

I have one neighborhood which, despite rounds of me accidentally deleting skins and Sims, still hasn't corrupted and exploded in a big ball of firey goodness yet. *grin* I started with the main characters of a video game, fourteen of them, as toddlers, and created parents for them. Some two parents, some with one, and about... oh, ten or eleven houses total.

Well, the parents married and had kids... me allowing my favorite Family Sim to have his ten kids and twenty grandkids didn't help... and now there's hundreds of them. Those original toddlers are finally approaching their elderhood (one of their parents is still alive and kicking as a permaplat elder, too) and I use them as the measuring bar. So far I think there MAY be a single Sim in the fourth generation, most are second and third now.

I do tend to play some houses more than others thanks to the plots but I generally try to keep them even in terms of aging, so I can't play one of my favorite houses until the older sibling reaches elderhood because the second sibling is about to and she's supposed to be younger!

Without being able to look at the game, right now I have around twenty houses, each with 2-8 Sims in them. I've culled the herd a bit, killing off clones and hack-twins and now I'm limiting the population to mostly only kids conceived through Risky WooHoo, unless it's a couple I really want to see a kid from. *grin*

Oh, yeah. This is the only neighborhood I've had since I got the game when it first came out. I'm tempted to start a legacy challenge or something in a new one, though, to see if I can play one family that long.

To finally answer the original question:
I have 78 sims that I actually play plus a further 13 sims who are playable but I have little or no interest in.

That's spread across 3 Neighbourhoods + 2 Universities. I play with aging off or lots of Elixir of Life. Not very interested in the multi-generational side of things - the only third-generation sims I have are the Oldie family that came with the game.

I've only ever played Pleasantview since I got the game.  But due to the number of sims I play and how I play them, I'm only just starting to give birth to the 4th generation of my oldest families.  I like the generational thing.  When a sim is getting close to death, I'm usually ready for them to move on.

Of course I also tinker a LOT with Pleasantview.  I imagine it'll go up in a big fiery ball as well sometime, but I can live with that.  Once that happens I likely build a completely custom neighborhood and populate it with new sims and be much more selective about generating the first townies, NPCs and such.  Of course I also clone copies of all my favorite sims made in CAS or born in the game.  So if I do lose Pleasantview eventually, I might just recreate a select few in the new neighborhood and pretend they moved to a whole new city.

Thats what I did when I lost a custom hood in a post patch nightmare that has since bee resolved. and then lost the recreation due to a corruted saved sims filed.I am now playng in the recreated hood wth the sim families I recreated  that I really liked from the hood I created. with a whole new family that moved in  courtesy of Brynne.with Brynnes Family the neighborhood has really expanded the storyline and the amount of sims in the hood. the family she sent me consisted of 8 sims and since they moved in 3 of the eight have married and the result is additional in game babies and marriages to other sims and a divorce not to mention lots of cheating going on. my original families have expanded in size as well.I am really curious to see how many generations will end up in each family before the neighbor hood gets so corrupt it cant be played any more. as of right now there has been zero intermarriage all of my sims    have married totally  non blood related sims. occasionally I go into CAS and create  a new sim If I need a potential mate for one of my sims. however I have created sims for certain sims I had in mind only to have a marriage to a totally different sim occur.for example I created a female adult sim for The Brother of Brynne's pixelated hottie Justin and instead of this sim who was created several days ago ending up with Justin's Brother she and Justin Met and Started Dating  and the chemistry was electric betwwen the two of them so I went with it and Justin and My CAS sim are now newlyweds.  the first gwnration of born in the game sims is growing quickly because of a sudden  surge of twins. I am not usings a hack for Twins. I decided that the amount of babies a sim has at one time  ie one or two will remain random

I was talking about this the other day with my sister. We worked out she has around 100 playable Sims in Pleasantview, most of them CAS or CAS descendants. Her Maxis teens  (Lilith, Angela, Dustin, Dirk) are now elders.

I have less than that because I spend half my time with my Legacy neighbourhood (Victorian themed, no residents apart from legacy family & descendants, plus the orphan children my founder's younger son has adopted. My plan is to gradually update all the clothing/interiors through different periods.) But then I also feel compelled to play with all the pre-made Uni Sims, so I probably play around 60 in Pleasantview. I have my favourites, of course, but if I haven't been to see anyone in a while I'll force myself to spend time with them.

I just reinstalled for NL, but before that I had been playing a Bottom Up Challenge Hood almost exclusively since UNI came out.

I probably was up to somewhere between 125 and 150 sims in that hood, which was into the 3rd generation.

What are the rules for that?  I just recently started an I'm Surrounded By Idiots challenge.

 - Gus

Oh look, it's this thread again!  Good thread.

Tried it, and it worked great:

(http://www.davidchess.com/pictures/sims2_a/Jan_Jen_math.jpg)
"Hey Jan, what's the formula for laminar flow over a boat keel, again?"
They could both talk at this point, but neither could walk; their Grampa John got the toys out for them.

Aren't they cuuuuuuuute?   *8)

DC

It is indeed bizzare to see toddlers talking algebra.

 - Gus

I'm not OCD, I've got Co-Dependent Personality Disorder.   ;D ::)  So I, like, WORRY about my Simmies, and try very hard to make them happy.  LOL LOL  And I understand that Co-Dependents also have some Control-Freak tendencies. 

Anway, I started my neighborhood with 30 uni students.  By the time I got them all graduated, and got NL, I was sick of over half of them.  So, I moved them into the lot bin.  I play 5 families regularly and 3 more sometimes when I'm bored.  Right now, I'm managing 34 sims, give or take a few I might have miscounted. 

Why not make them into townies? If I get a bit loose with births - my Geek family had five children - I usually only plan to follow the storyline of one chosen sim - the heir I guess a lot of legacy players call it. I'll take all the sims through Uni & skill them as normal, then back in the main n'hood I make them into townies using Inge's teleport plus bush. That way they can marry back into a storyline if I want them to, I know their genetics and they usually make better looking townies than the Maxis ones. Plus I still get to see them wandering around without having to worry about them.

I am the exact same way...only worse..there are many times when I won't quit a household between lullabye and transition into childhood.

Must...see...what...child...will...look like! hehe

I play a lot of my games in fast forward mode as well...I dunno how many other people do that.

I know when my fiance occassionaly tinkers with TS2 he plays in normal speed and I'll walk by and be like "You can speed that up you know"  and he'll see no reason to and likes to see the little interactions..while I'm zooming through life spans. 

Ditto that. My husband also plays in normal speed whilst I'm going at fast or ultra. I always start out with the intention of going slow, enjoying the little details of a sim's life, but it's usually when they're skilling for a promotion that the fast playing starts. Then I'm zipping through pregnancies, dates, university, until the game is almost always on ultra speed. And that's when I stop playing because it's so boring. The objective has become "get as rich and skilled as possible, as soon as possible" and that's not fun for me. I sabatoge my own enjoyment. :-\

I'm finding myself not speeding up the game as much now as I did with the console Sims and TS1. I hardly ever played in regular mode, then. For some reason, except for the times mentioned before like skilling and sometimes during pregnancies, I'll keep the game at normal speed. And it's hard to spot bizarre little things worth taking pictures of in fast mode.


dmChess, that picture is so funny! I have one like that with the toddler playing with the rabbit head, and the toddler has the equation bubble and all the adults joining him around him are talking about factories and stuff. Worst baby toy ever! What ever happened to "The cow says mooooooooooo"? lol 

Yeah, in the original Sims I almost always played at speed 2, but in TS2 I'm at normal speed except when absolutely everyone on the lot is either skilling, meditating, or asleep.  Ultra makes me nervous even when everyone's asleep (heck, someone's off-lot lover might get up and do something funny on the way out and I'd miss taking a picture of it!).  So I'm the same that way.


*8)  I keep forgetting I want to try having grownups join when kids are playing with kid toys (although I understand that it can be fatal for non-controllable adults!).  The toddler toys definitely seem to lead to unexpectedly intellectual conversations.

On the other hand the only children's book anyone in my neighborhood seems to have is the one about the teddy bear.

(http://www.davidchess.com/pictures/sims2_a/Gina_reads_to_Gabriel.jpg)
Gina to Gabriel: "And then the Teddy Bear said..."

(http://www.davidchess.com/pictures/sims2_a/Hallway_reading.jpg)
Georgia to Jen: "And then the Teddy Bear said...";
Jan (background, thinking): "Not the #$*^@ Teddy Bear story again!"

They need to get "Wind in the Willows" or something else with some real content...

(And on the "how many Sims are you playing?" question, I've now moved in Kennedy Cox and he's on his way to Chief of Staff (if his LTW was in the Medical career, what was he doing as a Business Tycoon anyway; these Sims don't know their own minds!), and Gina's had her baby, and Kaylynn Langerak's pregnant again.  And since I still can't bring myself to let anyone die there's going to be a serious overpopulation problem with time!  I'll have to build a big Retirement Home or something...)

DC
[Lots more pictures (http://www.davidchess.com/words/SimsStories.html)]

My sims seem to love hearing potty stories.

The Kennedy who married my Simone Le Gassey had a LTW of earn 100,000, and he became a General a few days after marrying into the family.  I think he's earned about 75,000 and is just a few days from death.  :(