I don't care if their worlds are chocked full of aliens, peasants, nobility, street walkers, nymphs, thugs, monks, elves, hoodlums, sex maniacs or unidentifiable creatures, I love seeing how other gamers put together their hoods and how they play them.
Kinda hate to admit it, but I play a rather conservative game.
I've tried playing differently, attempting a more abstract or ethereal game but I always gravitate back to a Sim world that's set in current time, populated with your average Joe kinda folks and a lifestyle basically spent by way of gettin up every morning to go to work/school.
I don't have TONS of drama in my hoods.
I detest rampant promiscuity and won't allow any of my Sims to be professional criminals. If I have a Sim roll an LTW to be a Criminal Mastermind I slap them straight into the military or law enforcement. I have no respect for law breakers in real life so I'm certainly not going to condone illegal activity in my hoods.
Sounds rather boring doesn't it?
And yeah, it can be,..at times.
Even I get stumped on how to spice things up occasionally.
Most of my Sims are Family/Knowledge or Knowledge/Family.
Romance Sims annoy the heck out of me but I can tolerate the Romance aspiration if it's secondary to Family. Fortune is cool as a secondary. Popularity is tedious in the sense that Popularity Sims come off so darn needy to me, always wanting everyone to like them and caring about little else. Plus I can't stand that everyone they come in contact with has a thought bubble over their head with their face plastered in it.
That newborn noo-boo you see in the pix there is NOT thinking about her mother, but is thinking about her mother's Popularity Sim room-mate!
Pleasure Sims are cool and I will add that as a secondary aspiration occasionally. Love how they always roll wants to be lazy, like change into their PJ's or go soak in the bubble bath. They are certainly easy to please.
And Grilled Cheese?
Totally ridiculous.
Period.
I do respect everyone's right to play their Sims whatever way they choose.
I've know some gamers that create Sims to kill them off for entertainment, which is quite common actually. It's not anything I would do but then I'm sure there's a lot of stuff I do with my Sims that others wouldn't dream of doing.
That's the best part about TS2, we can make the game be anything we want it to be. And with CC, oh man, the ideas are endless!!
CC is another future post, (I am so hopelessly addicted to it!)
We all have our own unique Sim Mojo -
that passion which fuels are drive to play! It's what keeps us coming back over and over again, dreaming up new ways to govern the lives of our beloved Sims.
For some it might be the many structured challenges out there, for others it's the challenge of their own strict rotations. Some won't cheat one little bit while others cheat at every turn. Some only play a small number of families while others experience population explosions that almost bork their game.
I find it all downright fascinating!
My Sim Mojo are my families -
the challenge for me is letting them have as many darned kids as they want and making sure they all skill up, be straight A students and maintain close bonds with family and friends. That's what it's all about for me. I don't adhere to a ultra-strict rotation and for most of the years I've Simmed, my game format is what I call, "flying by the seat of my Sim pants"!
Will admit though, playing in such an undisciplined manner ended up creating grossly over populated hoods for me with families NOT aging up in any kind of conformed or logical way. Pretty sad when a kid elders up long before their parents or when one of my poor little Sim kids sits in the hood watching all his playmates graduate college, get married, have kids, have grandchildren and then elder up, (and even DIE of old age!)
I finally made a commitment to get a decent rotation going and to stick with it!!
So far, so good,...
I'm not into the Challenges much -
I took on one Asylum Challenge where you couldn't do anything for the patients, not even click on them. It didn't bother me so much that they were peeing their pants and passing out head first in their bowls of chili, but when they cried and cried because of their aspiration woes, I just couldn't handle it.
So, killing off Sims doesn't play into my "play" very often. If I feel the need to rid my hood of a certain Sim I will call on the flies to do the deed. It's quick and that's all that matters to me -
that they leave the hood without any lingering agony. And those that I have "rubbed out" of my game were not very well liked by others anyway so they didn't leave behind any devastation for others.
I won't promote violence but my Sims have shared in more than a few feisty scraps. Although I'm fairly certain the stray dogs/wolves roaming my hoods have taken part in more street fights than any of my Sims have.
Fighting, arguing, hating, feuding, back-biting and generally treating other Sims like total shit isn't what my game evolves around. My Mojo is to keep them happy, yet at the same time, in their own Sim way, be motivated to earn that happiness. In other words, I don't Motherlode them up to the point they have everything their little heart desires. I don't cheat their grades up in college, I don't cheat in any aspect that takes away the challenge of them accomplishing something on their own. I am a cheater though, oh yes, a BIG FAT cheater in many ways,..
and that's a whole other post I plan on writing by next week.
So when it comes to our Sim Mojo, everyone's is vastly different from the other.
And that's the pure magic of the Sims -
it opens up so many different kinds of worlds for us. We can mold our world and our Sims into just about anything we want. And if we get sick of playing our hoods the same way over and over we can always twist things around, try something new or take on some kind of Challenge out there on the net.
So call me a snooze for playing such boring, conservative, goal orientated, family-happy Sims but that's what floats my boat and it's all that really matters.
If our hoods are but a window to the soul then I guess my soul is over-flowing with an unnatural desire to live every moment content, creatively industrious and with blissful smile spread across my face.
Works for me!
