A Game of Sims Rules
Following on from this post, I shall now attempt to compile all the rules for this challenge I've been formulating and playing.
Essentially:
- The neighbourhood into which your founding sims move has a certain level of resources that allow it to sustain a certain number of sims. Where there are too few sims, the abundance of resources encourages them to breed more (or for others to move in); where there are too many sims, the lack of resources will unfortunately cause sims to die until the population is back at a sustainable level.
- Family lines are very important to your sims (in my game they are dynasties with family shields and mottos and everything) so they are anxious to ensure that their family continues and survives, and preferably becomes the best and strongest.
Practically/Suggestions:
- While I used the Pleasantview adult townies (Goopy GilsCarbo, Sandy Bruty, etc) as my founding sims (and of which there were 17), if you don't have a premade set to use, you might want to dictate your starting number by faces for variation, either having one sim of each face shape, or perhaps blending two faces for every sim to give every face shape a chance. In my game only playables can be married, so if you do the same you probably want to start with a fair few sims to avoid issues with everyone becoming related too quickly - I have nine dynasties so hopefully that should be good enough to get families to second cousins before remarrying in.
- Once you have however many sims you want to start with, decide your neighbourhood's max number (and possibly the ideal number - things are comfortable at ideal, max isn't great it's just that people aren't yet dying from it). You may wish to revise this as time goes on, and I have been considering the possibility of perhaps randomising it up or down based on something like whether there was a good or bad harvest, etc, but the simplest version is just to have one number and stick by it strictly. The important thing is that, if you change it at all, don't do it just because you're scared a sim you like might die. That's half the point. *Is fretting about upcoming overpopulation herself*
- The way I started was to create the sims individually and move each of them into a trailer (as in the trailer lots that came with Apartment Life) while they earnt some money and scouted out their spouses, but feel free to do it in other ways.
- My theme is also somewhat Games of Thrones-ish, with medieval-y social ideas (Houses/dynasties, family shields and mottos, male preference with inheritance (women can inherit and there can be matrilineal marriage, but men preferred), illegitimacy being a bit of a negative), but with the normal modern-ish stuff the game comes with. I find it a fun way to play, but it's optional, although I would still recommend some kind of importance to inheritance and heirs and (numerous) spares, or after a while your sims would cotton onto the truth and start up some kind of one or two child policy (which is a way to play for another time ;) ).
- I allowed university, though again it's optional, but it can add another dimension to it. The universities (or university singular, if you want) also have a limit to how many people they can have at any one time: 5 each in my case, and they charge for it. SSU is kinda basic but fairly nearby so it costs 16k per student, LFT is similar but much further away and costs 24k, and ALT is prestigious so it costs 32k, though all of these amounts may be reduced by how much money the teen in question has earnt in scholarships by the time they have to leave (and, as sims get richer and/or demand increases, the uni fees may increase too). In order to keep my students in line with the main neighbourhood, I send teens to college at 9 days to adult (since I always age people up at 1 day to the next stage) and have one day in the main neighbourhood = 1 semester, so teens must leave (if they are going to) at that point. The way I've been playing, the university charge is taken before the teen leaves, by buying a load of expensive art to the amount required and sticking that in the teen's inventory (if you have a better method, feel free to use it).
- Roleplay. What I mean by this is: be aware of what your sims ought (not) to know when you're making decisions on their behalf. eg: I am approaching a situation where there is going to be overpopulation if the number of people returning from university is not matched by other people going to it, so it is very tempting to send teens to replace them. Except their sim families don't know that, they can't easily afford university and the teens in question don't desperately need it, so their families would likely decide that they'd be better off saving the money for a bigger house or whatever. Unless the teen dies in the meantime - but they don't know that (yet). They might eventually realise, but be realistic, it'd probably take a few deaths before they would figure it out and believe it enough to work off that idea.
Yes, death gets its own section.
- Create a list of all your sims, if only to keep track of how many you have: Excel is very useful for this if you have it. By my method, when somebody has to die, I get up a random number generator, stick in the relevant numbers and the sim whose number comes up dies. However...
- Sims can appear on the potential death list more than once if certain things happen to them. Illnesses, electrocution, getting set on fire, etc... I keep a tally of those events, and for every one of them a sim has they appear on the list another time (eg Joe Carr is on there three times: once because he exists, twice because he got struck by lightning, and a third time because he got sick from work). In practical terms this may not make that much of a difference due to how many people there are (from a 1/36 chance to something like 1/15?), but it might be enough.
- In my game anyone could die, including all age groups, but if you can't bear to apply it to babies, toddlers and children (or at least not at those ages) then that's okay, though it could make the challenge a lot easier (perhaps to balance it out, offer fewer university places or something?). Also, lest anyone think I'm cruel, one might happen to spy rather familiar-looking adopted babies and toddlers (and perhaps children) in my legacy after this ;)
- The death should happen the same day as the overpopulation starts, but does not have to be the same time. So, for example, if a baby was born at 10am that pushed the population over the limit, but an elder was due to die a natural death that evening anyway, you wouldn't have to kill someone else off just to make up that time (unless you really want to?)
So yeah. People will die, houses will probably die out, genetics will definitely die out (and eventually everyone will probably look the same and there'll be like half the number of houses), but I'm quite curious as to which ones they'll be at least!
I daresay there are things I haven't thought of or have momentarily forgotten, but it's bedtime for me, so leave any questions and I'll elaborate when I return tomorrow.
Essentially:
- The neighbourhood into which your founding sims move has a certain level of resources that allow it to sustain a certain number of sims. Where there are too few sims, the abundance of resources encourages them to breed more (or for others to move in); where there are too many sims, the lack of resources will unfortunately cause sims to die until the population is back at a sustainable level.
- Family lines are very important to your sims (in my game they are dynasties with family shields and mottos and everything) so they are anxious to ensure that their family continues and survives, and preferably becomes the best and strongest.
Practically/Suggestions:
- While I used the Pleasantview adult townies (Goopy GilsCarbo, Sandy Bruty, etc) as my founding sims (and of which there were 17), if you don't have a premade set to use, you might want to dictate your starting number by faces for variation, either having one sim of each face shape, or perhaps blending two faces for every sim to give every face shape a chance. In my game only playables can be married, so if you do the same you probably want to start with a fair few sims to avoid issues with everyone becoming related too quickly - I have nine dynasties so hopefully that should be good enough to get families to second cousins before remarrying in.
- Once you have however many sims you want to start with, decide your neighbourhood's max number (and possibly the ideal number - things are comfortable at ideal, max isn't great it's just that people aren't yet dying from it). You may wish to revise this as time goes on, and I have been considering the possibility of perhaps randomising it up or down based on something like whether there was a good or bad harvest, etc, but the simplest version is just to have one number and stick by it strictly. The important thing is that, if you change it at all, don't do it just because you're scared a sim you like might die. That's half the point. *Is fretting about upcoming overpopulation herself*
- The way I started was to create the sims individually and move each of them into a trailer (as in the trailer lots that came with Apartment Life) while they earnt some money and scouted out their spouses, but feel free to do it in other ways.
- My theme is also somewhat Games of Thrones-ish, with medieval-y social ideas (Houses/dynasties, family shields and mottos, male preference with inheritance (women can inherit and there can be matrilineal marriage, but men preferred), illegitimacy being a bit of a negative), but with the normal modern-ish stuff the game comes with. I find it a fun way to play, but it's optional, although I would still recommend some kind of importance to inheritance and heirs and (numerous) spares, or after a while your sims would cotton onto the truth and start up some kind of one or two child policy (which is a way to play for another time ;) ).
- I allowed university, though again it's optional, but it can add another dimension to it. The universities (or university singular, if you want) also have a limit to how many people they can have at any one time: 5 each in my case, and they charge for it. SSU is kinda basic but fairly nearby so it costs 16k per student, LFT is similar but much further away and costs 24k, and ALT is prestigious so it costs 32k, though all of these amounts may be reduced by how much money the teen in question has earnt in scholarships by the time they have to leave (and, as sims get richer and/or demand increases, the uni fees may increase too). In order to keep my students in line with the main neighbourhood, I send teens to college at 9 days to adult (since I always age people up at 1 day to the next stage) and have one day in the main neighbourhood = 1 semester, so teens must leave (if they are going to) at that point. The way I've been playing, the university charge is taken before the teen leaves, by buying a load of expensive art to the amount required and sticking that in the teen's inventory (if you have a better method, feel free to use it).
- Roleplay. What I mean by this is: be aware of what your sims ought (not) to know when you're making decisions on their behalf. eg: I am approaching a situation where there is going to be overpopulation if the number of people returning from university is not matched by other people going to it, so it is very tempting to send teens to replace them. Except their sim families don't know that, they can't easily afford university and the teens in question don't desperately need it, so their families would likely decide that they'd be better off saving the money for a bigger house or whatever. Unless the teen dies in the meantime - but they don't know that (yet). They might eventually realise, but be realistic, it'd probably take a few deaths before they would figure it out and believe it enough to work off that idea.
Yes, death gets its own section.
- Create a list of all your sims, if only to keep track of how many you have: Excel is very useful for this if you have it. By my method, when somebody has to die, I get up a random number generator, stick in the relevant numbers and the sim whose number comes up dies. However...
- Sims can appear on the potential death list more than once if certain things happen to them. Illnesses, electrocution, getting set on fire, etc... I keep a tally of those events, and for every one of them a sim has they appear on the list another time (eg Joe Carr is on there three times: once because he exists, twice because he got struck by lightning, and a third time because he got sick from work). In practical terms this may not make that much of a difference due to how many people there are (from a 1/36 chance to something like 1/15?), but it might be enough.
- In my game anyone could die, including all age groups, but if you can't bear to apply it to babies, toddlers and children (or at least not at those ages) then that's okay, though it could make the challenge a lot easier (perhaps to balance it out, offer fewer university places or something?). Also, lest anyone think I'm cruel, one might happen to spy rather familiar-looking adopted babies and toddlers (and perhaps children) in my legacy after this ;)
- The death should happen the same day as the overpopulation starts, but does not have to be the same time. So, for example, if a baby was born at 10am that pushed the population over the limit, but an elder was due to die a natural death that evening anyway, you wouldn't have to kill someone else off just to make up that time (unless you really want to?)
So yeah. People will die, houses will probably die out, genetics will definitely die out (and eventually everyone will probably look the same and there'll be like half the number of houses), but I'm quite curious as to which ones they'll be at least!
I daresay there are things I haven't thought of or have momentarily forgotten, but it's bedtime for me, so leave any questions and I'll elaborate when I return tomorrow.