House rules for Open For Business

[Gus Smedstad]

OFB has a lot of problems as-is.  However, this has always been an ongoing problem with The Sims, and my solution in the past has been to impose some restrictions on how I play to make it more fun.  Some of these may be valuable to you even if you're finding aspects of it hard, because they force some structure into the game.

I treat a business on a community lot like a regular career.  The owner can only go to work at between 8-10 AM, Monday through Friday.  He must close shop by no later than 8pm, and definitely can't use things like coffee or the Energizer to spill the session into a second day.  When he gets home, he's tired and hungry, but not too tired.  I send him to bed and he's generally awake again by about 5, so it becomes something like a regular job.  This also gives him time for family matters, skilling, fulfilling Wants and the like, just like a regular career.

If you like, you can shift that so it's Wednesday through Sunday, or something similar.  I've known small retail businesses like the local used book store or game store that have operated that way, because they have few employees and they want time off, but they can't afford to be closed on the weekend.  Often places like that don't open until 11, but keep late hours.

Sims can't work two careers.  If they have a community lot business, they must quit their regular job.  Usually the office hours force this anyway, but it's actually pretty easy to hold down some night jobs like Mad Scientist while running a community lot business under these rules.

I don't restock things "by hand" by deleting "out of stock" markers and placing replacements.  Even though it's actually frequently less work to do this if you're crafting expensive items.  Crafted items have to go into inventory, and then restocked.

I sell a variety of items, not just high-priced, big ticket items.  This isn't good strategy, but it makes for a more interesting and "realistic" store.

I'm experimenting with not managing employee breaks.  I'll call them in at the start of the day, then let them take their own breaks.  I don't send them home early, and I don't force them back to work when they're on break, though I'm not above firing or laying off employees who slack too much.  I'm not sure this will work out, since employees are pretty expensive, and stupid about how they deal with break time.  You have to keep them at least one notch Overpaid to keep them from quitting.  I get the impression that Overpaid salaries are a good idea anyway, if only because you avoid Underpaid when they gain a badge.

 - Gus

[J. M. Pescado]

Well, currently in the works, and it may come relatively quickly, is "In Soviet Russia, you do not take break, break takes YOU!". Rather than let them do their stupid ambling around doing nothing on their breaks, which doesn't actually get the break taken, the BREAK TAKES THEM!

[veilchen]

Can't come quickly enough JM. See, silly me actually thought that the employees might do replenishing stuff while on break. What was I thinking? I need to quit expecting logical actions from silly pixel people. Micromanaging the store-owners (playable sims) is work enough, but having to direct the employees to recharge on break (so to speak) is a bit much. Still, a very interesting ep for a change.

[Mirelly]

I like Gus' idea of a structure to making the best of the OFB's limitations. My own modus operenum is pretty similar except that I use a different time-management strategy to manage sims returning from a hard day's work at the store. Because they are back home again even before maid has arrived I usually send them to take a leak and then a bubble bath cos it costs nothing and takes a fair while to green up 3 critical needs. After that I'll have them meditate to freeze further needs decay until around 5-6pm.

I also set their working hours at 9am to as late as they can last without flaking out ... realistically this means that business hours end around 8pm for moderately active sims. Unlike Gus, though, my stores open on Saturdays. This means that any teens in the family can come to work and gain business skills (as well as ... or instead of, having an official after school job -- in my sort of family you work for love not cash  ). Likewise a couple of weekdays are designated "early closing" days and the business owner will be roused from meditation at 1pm to interact with other family members

[JenW]

I like those restrictions, Gus. I think I'll try out your work hours, I played about a week of a business last night and my poor florist was exhausted after a long day at the shop when she returned home at 9am But she had several customers browsing and I was reluctant to shoo them out when she'd only had one or two purchases.

[J. M. Pescado]

in my sort of family you work for love not cash  ).

In my sort of family, you work for the love of cash.

[LordHellscream]

Well, currently in the works, and it may come relatively quickly, is "In Soviet Russia, you do not take break, break takes YOU!". Rather than let them do their stupid ambling around doing nothing on their breaks, which doesn't actually get the break taken, the BREAK TAKES THEM!

OMG i love you!

[Sagana]

I'm fascinated and amused by your rules, because your playstyle is so different than mine. I opened the thread expecting rules for making the game difficult (like no aspiration rewards and so on) as I use those too and don't allow myself to just make it easier. And I'd love to hear your other base rules for play for other EPs and all (curious and the cat).

I don't use the energizer to keep them selling things longer and like that (unless I really want to just finish getting something set up and have to go to work the next day so I don't have time myself to really wait on it.) I try not to use anything that makes it easier. If I get a hack to deal with an issue or for an rp purpose, I try to ignore any easier parts of it. And I prefer home businesses because time passes - but it just doesn't work for everything, so I end up with community ones. I'm not sure how I'm going to deal with the out-of-sync stuff - depends on the situation, I guess. I haven't worked out my own house rules for this EP yet really.

But I could never abide by the kind of structure you're using. I roleplay. I guess I do it naturally because even sims I don't really intend to play end up with personalities and stories and all and then I have to play them. I had 4 in-game born sim brothers, all graduated from Uni and with wives and families, before I got OFB. And I'd picked up four Maxis sims and married them for two couples with children of their own (waste of the marriage pool to marry Maxis sims to each other, but it just worked out that way. As I said, after they ended up with personalities and life goals, I had to see how it comes out for them :)

Since I love OFB and all the ideas of it, all 6 of them had to start some sort of business. So I've got 6 businesses right now (and ideas for tons of others) and I run them some based on the way RL people I know run theirs (I know some interesting people :) and some based on stories or movies or whatever and some just based on how I think they would do it. But they're all completely different. The same rules won't work for any of them and overly scheduled businesses don't fit most of them at all.

Alcander and his wife are running a small toy store/candy shop. They could open a specific time and all, but it doesn't fit their personalities well. They're pleasure sims and basically only want to play with the toys and the kids. They get distracted by the shiny stuff and by the young customers and tend to go off to show how a jack-in-the-box works and end up jumping on couches as an example. They even forget to close their store and make the other customers mad. They don't care. They're not capable of getting up early in the morning, but they don't have to. Their store hours aren't terribly regular but are better than some of the others. They take weekends off to play with their own kids.

Jordan is one of the townies I ended up playing. She's running a beauty salon in her living room to make extra money and keep life interesting while she stays home with the kids. She wants to beautify the neighborhood but so far is making rather a mess of it :) She opens in the afternoons after hubby is at work and the kids are at school and she's finished her housework. She usually closes when her family gets home, but sometimes takes evening appts if hubby and kids are being especially accommodating or a customer really seems to need it. She also takes weekends off to take care of her family. She will probably also do Avon/Mary Kaye parties and things like that.

Isaakios is a romance sim with lots of creativity. He's opened an artist supply store and also sells his own paintings, mostly of people he has or wants to woo hoo with. He opens the store when he wants to meet someone new or isn't painting anything and needs a new series or the like. He closes when he finds someone he wants to paint or invite to the couch in the back or both. He cares nothing about what day of the week it is and probably doesn't even know.

Mayhew (popularity) and Roxie (romance) are another Maxis couple. They're aging hippie types. Mayhew was in a car crash and got a settlement so they followed their dream and opened a Florist/New Age store with the funds. (Otherwise they'd never have been able to afford it). They open whenever they feel like it and close up whenever there's something more interesting to do. They sell mostly to their friends and use the store area also to hold lectures on crystal power or candle-making or herbs and hold little events/rituals, drumming with their friends or whatever. They also sometimes have orgies in the back and end up adding to their brood of (not terribly good-looking, Roxie has that pointy pointy face) kids that they more or less ignore but make sure are fed and clothed. They have no idea what time it is, much less what day it is. The few real customers they have tend to get annoyed that they're never open when you'd expect. Naturally they got a bad review, but some of their friends got together and ran a better one in the Pagan Times so they're doing ok anyway.

Demetrius (family sim) has never wanted to do anything but cook. He got to be celebrity chef and now has opened his own bakery. He loves breakfast foods so he goes in at 3 or 4 in the morning to bake doughnuts and sometimes omlettes and the like as well. His business will probably morph into a cafe and then bed and breakfast although right now he's running it all by himself. He's the most scheduled and actually determined to make a go of the business. He opens very early and closes after lunch. He tends to work every day he can, but will take a day off now and then to recuperate.

Galen (knowledge) and his wife Marla are mad scientist types. They've opened a robot shop in their home, which looks rather like a factory. I haven't got to play them much yet, so I'm not really sure how they're going to set it all up and work out, but I imagine they'll mostly build robots and might occasionally open the store to sell some of them when they have too many. They're still holding their regular careers and just building robots in the evening.

I doubt anyone will really want to read all this, but I rather enjoyed typing it anyway. It kind of clarified what I'm doing with some of them :) Anyway, point being while I want the game to stay as difficult as possible for me, I need rules that don't interfere with the role-play stories :) And goals that work with them - those secondary goals and the achievement of them are really what makes the game fun for me.

[Gus Smedstad]

The "business hours" rules are intended to deal with the time-warp effect of community lots.  If you don't at least restrict your Sim to opening his community lot no more than once a day, the game is easier.  If you have a Servo, it's completely out of control.  I took my first Servo from no crafting skills to a Gold robotics badge in one business session that lasted several days.

A home business doesn't need any kind of rules for hours of operation, since it takes real time to operate it.  I haven't tried one yet, so I don't know how I'll like it.  Even though I strongly dislike the time disconnect problem with community lot businesses, I do like the feel and the fact that other Sims can visit it.

I do have a fair number of other house rules, but they're not OFB-specific.

- I don't use aspiration rewards other than the smart milk.
- I don't pursue actions to advance a Sim's career unless they have a corresponding Want (typical of Fortune sims) or their aspiration bar is already at maximum.
- I never issue commands to toddlers.  If they choose to play with the skill-enhancing toys, that's their decision.  If they play with the toilet, my Sims have to deal with it.
- Sometimes I avoid selecting toddlers, so my Sims have to guess if now is a good time for potty training, or to put a cranky toddler to bed.  Obviously Smart Milk is dangerous with this rule unless the toddler is platinum, which shows up in his thumbnail.  Whether I play with this rule depends on my mood.
- If I send a Sim on a date, I'll open the date's Wants display, but close my Sim's Wants panel.  After all, a "Dream Date" should be judged by whether the date had a good time, not whether my Sim got to woohoo his brains out even though she wasn't interested.  Doing a date with just my own Sim's wants open by the date's closed is too easy.
- I won't issue any romantic command except "Flirt | Check Sim Out" unless the Sim has a Want for it.  That particularly includes WooHoo.
- I won't issue "try for baby" unless the Sim wants a baby AND woo-hoo.  I do use the risky woo-hoo mod to complicate the lives of non-Family sims.
- At University, I won't issue any study command unless the Sim wants it.  I'll issue skilling commands for class because if I waited for Wants, only Knowledge sims would graduate from college.
- I use the No20KHandouts mod.  New university graduates are really broke.  They typically move back home and move back out with a share of the family cash, which is usually less than $20k.
- Because I find playing elders really boring, I'll sometimes have a graduate move home and start playing him from there, which gives my elders an opportunity to grow old and die.

 - Gus

[Renatus]

Sagana, I enjoyed reading about your sims. I naturally think in story so it pleases me to hear that other people are roleplaying their sims as a matter of course as well.

[akatonbo]

It's actually the aspiration level of the adult who makes the smart milk that's important. I don't think the toddler's aspiration affects it at all, whereas I know for certain that an adult who's not in gold or platinum will half the time make a red bottle (which, if I recall correctly, will make the toddler puke).

[anelca]

interesting how people play their game
i have one home business, toys and flowers, which is fine for total (sim)real-time play. that family does have a downtown business as its a Maxis one but i rarely send them there. no-one has a job outside
 the other 2 families i'm playing have neighbourhood businesses. i play them as long as feel like keeping them there, 24/7 for days on end. Merolas painting comes in very handy. as does the mini fridge for snacks. customers like it as well
i do it like this because i work strange hours in RL so just keep at it, with no strategy whatsoever, while i have a chance
i also do it like this when i want to test something out. get it done thoroughly over a period of time without having to keep going in and out of a lot to keep to some schedule.
i'm not really a schedule kinda girl so not sure i could stand to play like that. i never have storylines or plots or anything

i have a few days off coming up and can't wait to experiment a bit more with my own made lots, sims and so forth, rather than suffering the maxis premades

[Sagana]

Thanks for the extended list Gus. Some of those I do, but some I hadn't thought of and will have to try out. I particularly like the "only the date sims" open :) And I think I'm directing my toddlers too much - I let them choose which toys or skilltoys they want by themselves (I have lots of toys, but the skill ones are still very attractive so they end up with a good number of skills anyway) but I potty train them and teach them to walk quickly and keep them out of the toilet because dirty diapers on a baby irritate *me* :) I should let my sims be slobs if they want. I love risky woohoo and no 20k - haven't put hacks back in yet tho. But then I don't have any Uni aged sims yet either... I'm going to have to figure out what to do about Uni before too long. It still bores me, and I don't want to cheat through it and don't want to skip - I like having the careers and want slots... dunno.

I don't have the problem about opening more than once a day - yet anyway. Most of my sims aren't even opening the stores every day. I don't mind if they open, go home and have a nap and lunch, and then open again in the evening tho if they get on a roll. Especially as they might do something else for the next couple of days and not open the shop again for a bit. And I don't have any servos. Galen and Marla might end up with some... dunno yet. But no one else is even interested in having robts, except maybe toys for the kids.

I love the home lots. I don't really like taking my sims shopping anyway, and the playables and non alike show up well as customers. I like having the time all the same. I might turn all the businesses into home ones so I don't have to deal with time issues at all after a bit (and as I figure out how to have all the options on the home lots. I've got bookcases, podiums and the stove from a collection, but I think there's still some sell stuff missing.)

Elders should be more fun as they can have businesses. I don't have any elders just now either tho (my CAS couple died and is busy haunting Demetrius and making him miserable and everyone else is still middle-aged). Will see how it goes as they age.

Thanks Renatus :) I'd love to hear what your doing with yours as well if you feel like sharing.

Yeah, the toddler's aspiration doesn't matter with the smart milk. Toddlers are immune to trouble really - they just spit up a bit if the milk they drink isn't good and that's it.

PS - I wish we could buy residential lots the same way community ones work, so I could have a separate residential lot where time passes but for the feel of a separate business. Anyone tried buying a 2nd community lot, rezoning it residential and keeping it that way - so the same sim "owns" 2 residential lots... can you do that?

[shanpooter]

Hi all.  I've been lurking around here for months and months, but just thought I'd pop in on this and tell a bit about how I play my UNI sims.

... I'm going to have to figure out what to do about Uni before too long. It still bores me, and I don't want to cheat through it and don't want to skip - I like having the careers and want slots... dunno.

I feel the same as you do about Uni.  I like the benefits of having a degree and meeting some new friends, but it takes waaaaaay to long to get through.  I let my sims work on a "learn at your own pace" basis.  They never get an extension of the 72 simhours, but if they get their grade bar at least half way up (sometimes not, depending on story) I use twojeffs college adjuster to set the hours to final.  It is usually about half the time it would normally take, and it doesn't seem like cheating since I am actually giving them less time to work on their grades.  If I let them go the full three days every sim would have a GPA of 4.0 without even trying.  Plus I would get bored.  I don't think that it's very realistic to have every sim graduate with honors.  Only a small percentage of sims graduate cum laude, and some dumass sims actually manage to flunk out.  And I only allow myself to use "influence to..." do schoolwork on other playable characters.  Feels less like cheating that way.

As far as OFB goes, I am still just playing around with it but once I start actually playing my CAS sims I'm going to have to figure out a way to get around the out of time sync thing.  That really bothers me.  For serious sims I suppose I can have them meditate while I play up the household time, but I don't know what to do about the non-meditative types.

[Sandilou]

Shanpooter, I play with timesync based on 1 day = 1 year.  For OFB, all homes will continue to be played for 1 sim day in the neighbourhood district.  Owners of businesses in the commercial district (Bluewater) will visit their businesses daily and work from dusk till dawn.  I expect all of my business owners to maintain a separate full time job, so woe betide them if they can't keep up. When they return home they can either energise, or sleep.

In real life, my father worked around the clock to start up his own business; for the first five years he worked full time doing shift work alongside working in and running his own business.  He was also studying at the same time.   He slept about 5-6 hours each day at the most.   It paid off because his business has been successful for the past 20 years.  If my dad had to work hard to make it in business, so will my sims! <evil laugh>

[Pegasys]

Heh, I thought I had a lot of rules, but Gus, you might have me beat. However, here's my recent set of self-imposed "rules":

I do use Aspiration rewards, but only because I'm not as motivated to fulfill their aspirations otherwise. However, I do have a rule that my Sims must be in Platinum aspiration to use the Energizer and Elixir. And with the Energizer they must have at least 3 depleted needs to use it, if it's just one low or two low needs then they have to fulfill their need the standard way. And after their children become teens, Sims can't use the Elixir. In general, my Sims don't use the Elixir very often anyway (I did allow a couple gulps of Elixir for my Sim who opened up the first business in OFB, but that was a one-time exception).

I don't use money cheats, in fact, no20khandout and expensivenpcs are both implemented in my game.

I'm instituting the one-child-per family rule, and if they never have a want for children, they won't have any at all. My one exception here is a family couple, where both husband and wife have a LTW to marry off 6 children. They are the only family who I will allow this LTW to be satisfied. (They're up to 5 children, and it's utter craziness!)

I don't use macros to skill up and I only allow flamingos on my trashy lots.

If a Sim is to be resurrected, then a relative or close friend must earn the Resurrect-O-Nomitron by going into Paranormal and gaining the reward. (Though it usually doesn't take very long anyway). No buyable rewards for my Sims. No energy paintings, statues, or anything of the sort. I haven't made the infamous snapdragons nor Servo yet and it sounds like I'll have to have some sort of rule regarding both of these.

I will use the college clock on campus though to speed up the final. The novelty has worn off, and I don't plan to send every Sim through college, but the majority do go. 

And I've already mentioned that I always save, even when totally unintended things happen out of my neglect or not paying attention. Just today I lost another vampire. I told him to go to his coffin and he wandered outside instead. I seem to have problems keeping vampires alive!

I don't have a lot of rules regarding OFB yet, but my Sims do have to go home after each business day. They can't just energize up and stay for days at a time.  (It just seems wrong to stay on a lot until Friday and go back home and it's Tuesday.) Also I try to keep regular business hours on a community lot; my appliance/electronics shop opens at 9 am and closes at 9 pm. Sort of like Best Buy.

[windy_moon]

Most of my rules for anything are an attempt at "realism".  I don't use objects or characters that feel completely unreal to me (for the most part).

Never played vampires, ressurections, aliens...probably won't play robots.  Other than the thinking cap (which I use religiously), I don't use aspiration or career rewards that look or feel unreal. 

So, for OFB, I'm in the same pattern.  Right now, my Sims who have buisnesses are the Type A folks, so working in overdrive feels real.  Checo Ramierz works his ass off...and the store is open 7 days a week, but that's Checo. After the store closes for the day and he sends the employees home, he eats some food from the mini-fridge, chugs a lot of espresso, maybe takes a shower, and then spends hours cleaning, gardening and restocking.

The clock being out of sync doesn't bother me nearly as much as I thought it would.  By the time he gets home and crashes into bed, he's only got a few hours with his family before he starts all over again.

Maybe it's because I'm less awesome than everybody else, but I haven't found OFB businesses to be super easy.  Maybe it's my "realism" rules.  My Sims are required to carry a variety of merchandise, like a real store, and not just the big ticket items.  (None of them have enough capital for keeping gobs of high ticket items in stock, anyway.)

And *no* ticket machines unless it's something I would buy a ticket to in real life.  My son is running a home business where Sims will pay a lot of money to watch somebody's TV.  More power to him, enjoy, but that's not for me.


P.S.  None of my rules are about an aversion to "cheating" or trying to make the game harder, per se, it's just about my stories.

[anelca]

for those who like to have regular hours for their businesses, Inge Jones  at simlogical has an open/close sign which you can set the hours on, or leave it as is.
i think i'm going to use it on the beauty shop business i've just opened as a home business, with a couple of female friend sims. just watching them makeover customers is quite amusing but a bit boring (unless theres something i've missed that they can do)
although i play fairly randomly, i am getting a bit fed up with how long it takes for customers to browse

[Renatus]

Well then, let's see... my guiding principle with my current neighborhood is to keep things mixed up and unpredictable, because with former neighborhoods I got bored very fast because I perfectly matched up all the sims with their aspirations and mates and jobs and it was dead boring. With that in mind I seeded my neighborhood as per Prosperity Challenge rules - roll a die to determine the number of families, and then to determine number of members per family as well as their personal statistics (age and such). I used a dice rolling website so I could use any number of sides I needed (and so my cat wouldn't case my gaming dice around the house), and ended with five families, all having at least one child (11 total across the five) but all also headed by elder parents! I would have never thought to do that on my own. I keep with the rules for rolling aspirations, taking all chance cards, keeping lots in sync, and saving no matter what, but those are the only ones - I don't keep to the sexist marriage rules or keep score.

I have a few of my own, too; depending on how well a sim matched with their aspiration, I may re-roll it if some drastic change happens in their life, like the death of a family member or a near-death experience of their own. I also tend to play to wants, although within reason; just because they want something doesn't mean they get it, and just because they want something doesn't mean they won't do what's good for them anyhow. I try to take their personality and previous want patterns into account.

I mostly don't use aspiration rewards, not really because they make things easier but they don't make sense in most cases with my style of play, even though I tend towards magical realism. Smart milk makes sense for most families to have because it acts like the equivalent of feeding the babies the best possible food; however, things like thinking caps or energizers wouldn't make any sense for normal families to have, because where would they have gotten them? With mad scientists and magicians and the like, however, that is a different matter. I also use them to enhance RP aspects - one woman got two doses of elixir even though she was due to die soon after her husband, because her son was still at college and I thought it was ridiculous that their money would vanish and their house go up for sale without him there when she died.

I also made my own townies and downtownies to populate the neighborhood, also using die rolls to determine their stats.

I haven't played the neighborhood a lot since I got OFB, so right now only one sim, Matthieu, owns a business, a small flower shop, started with capital from his wife and mother-in-law, who got large inheritances when the MIL's parents died. He loves his new wife Chandra quite dearly but prefers to spend his time away from the house so as to avoid tension with his MIL, Inderjit. She used to be quite the swinger and when Chandra was a teen she had a habit of picking up young men to woohoo... Matthieu could kick himself for not realizing why Chandra's distinctive features attracted him so much, even though it was her mind that made him fall in love with her.  He still regrets that one night stand, and even though Inderjit has supposedly mended her wild ways and even settled down with one of the other young men she romanced, Matthieu has had to fend off advances from her - one right after their double wedding! Still, she makes half of the stock for his shop so he has to talk to her sometimes, and now that he has a son, he can't spend all of his time away from home.

After my experiences with Matthieu I think I will impose some ground rules on myself as regarding community lot businesses; deciding their days of operation, opening and closing times, and then sticking to it - that is, for stores run by responsible types. I think I will stick a static energy sculpture on those lots because fiddling around with their needs is an annoying pain in the ass otherwise - I can send them off to meditate or procrastinate when they get home for the amount of time they should be gone. I already make stores sell a variety of items and only items that make sense together, with very little exception - in the flower shop, only flowers and plants are sold, although Matthieu does his MIL's husband a favour by hanging up his paintings for sale in the shop.

I'm pondering who else will open a business in the neighborhood. Seija likes money but she is more likely to keep to her current job and hurry up with paying the mortgage on her house; however, her husband Damien is a stay-at-home dad, and now that the twins Castor and Pollux are in school most of the day and Deneb is still a baby, there is only so much time cleaning the house takes up in a day. I'm sure Seija would appreciate the extra income, and perhaps if he involved her younger sister, Maarit, that would be good for her as well. Maarit always followed in Seija's footsteps, going goth when she was a teen just like Seija did, trying to live a party life, even pursuing the boy that Seija had cast off as her boyfriend, but her heart has never seemed to be in any of it. In college Maarit started concentrating more on books than other people and she seemed happier, even married her sweetheart, but she still doesn't seem to care much about anything, even her baby daughter. She doesn't even seem to care that her husband still has a 'thing' going on with her older sister... fortunately Damien doesn't know about this, as it would break his heart.

The Kurosawas might be ripe for opening a business - with two of them (father Takumi and son Aki Joseph) intent on becoming mad scientists, and the mom, Amelie, having reached elder in a state of permanent happiness due to seeing all three of her kids make it through college, selling toys, robots, or general mad scientist services might be right up their alley. Keiko Ann wouldn't mind running a business as she doesn't seem terribly thrilled with her day job, but her girlfriend, Esperanza, will be unhappy if they gain the sort of reputation mad scientist types usually get - she's sure it'll cut into the popularity of her art, although all she'd really need to do is take it in a new direction...

That's only three of my five families, too, and gen 2 is only babies and children! All this talking about them makes me want to go play.

[shanpooter]

Sandilou, I use the same 1 day = 1 year at Uni for keeping my neighborhood up as well, but I can't sit through eight semesters of 72 hour each.  I usually go through each semester in about 24 hours of the semestser timer.  That even seems to long to me.

I applaud your father in his efforts.  I have started a small (very small at the moment) business in my home about 5 months ago, so I kinda know how that goes.  I'm trying to expand though, and the teeny tiny town that I live in just doesn't have the demand.  I wish I could work around the clock, but I just don't have the customers base (yet - being hopeful).

windy_moon, I play for realism as well, but a kind of a skewed realism.  I love the zombies and such, but I use them sparingly.  I want my game to seem real, but not too real, since is fantasy, and I like it like that.  I only let certain sims use certain rewards, like my science minded sims can use energizers and servos and cowplants, and my more freakish characters and undead sims can use aspiration suckers and ressurecto-thingies.  But most of my sims live life without the rewards and other odd-flavored aspects of the game.

I absolutely love the sign from simlogical.  It is wonderful for home businesses.  Does anyone know if it works on community lots as well?  Don't know why I haven't tried it there yet.  It bothers me that the business is automatically opened when you first arrive.  Sometimes I like to go in early and get things ready or build something new, and I can't do it because a bunch of idiot townies are milling all over the place by the time I get out of the taxi.

[Sagana]

This is a fun thread. I'm really enjoying reading about all the ways people play and things they do.

I don't care about realism, but I do about breaking the base rules of the world for the storyline. Before this, I played with some "Sandman" (Neil Gaiman) type stuff and a bit (didn't get very far) with some Firefly/Serenity people. So I only had things that fit within those worlds. I could see doing a "Charmed" one or something of that nature. Not Buffy tho, cuz the vampires are wrong and it would bug me.

Right now I'm just playing with the Sims world rules, so all of that stuff is there, but it has to be done all in-game. My other neighborhood, that I'm still very slowly setting up, is more like Charles De Lint., a strongly drawn 'reality' for the base with a mythological/dream-stories are real "underworld". So there's very little "overt" magic and, of course, nothing point and poof, but the magic of the world is there anyway, if you squint and turn your head sideways :) or really look in the corners. But that world is much more scripted too - it's for storytelling.

I love your characters Renatus! Thanks for telling about them. Matthieu and his situation sound so interesting. I'll have to look up the prosperity rules. Mine started out as a Legacy, but quickly kind of morphed into a weird backstory that I'm still waiting to see how comes out. I am dicing for all the 'family' aspirations. Honestly, I think it's more fun that way than to just give them. But you've got lots more tension/less happy. I wonder what Maarit really wants to be happy. :)

[Sandilou]

To make the game harder for myself...(I need value for money here) I've removed some of my favourite sanity hacks so that my sims will have to do the leg work themselves; here's just a few:-
Inge:  Skill while reading, Skill doing homework, NoEmptyPot, CribGetOutAll, Baby's and Toddlers SleepThroughTheNight
Syberspunk: Skill while dancing
JM: Autosoc, Autoyak, Phonehack (sob ), nolamehires, noplayableshoppers, runtoclass
Monique: runtoschoolbus

Naturally my sims have No20k and are often forced to borrow money, if they are lucky enough to afford Monique's computer.   My two concessions are: a) the sims can earn money and skills while working at home on Monique's computer and b)Monique's Do homework mod which calls all children and teens to do their homework at 7pm. If they are in a bad mood they won't do it anyway.

If JM updates his harderjobs for OFB then I will use that too.  Maybe it's to do with me being black and my parents being immigrants in the UK; in real life we have to work hard for everything that we want and need; it just doesn't feel right for my Sims to get things too easily!

[Motoki]

Can't you just talk the phonehack talk module out but leave the main phonehack in? I thought Pescado separated out the feature to auto talk to 100 rel into a separate package as of NL.

[J. M. Pescado]

To make the game harder for myself...(I need value for money here) I've removed some of my favourite sanity hacks so that my sims will have to do the leg work themselves; here's just a few:-

I don't think removing the sanity hacks will make your sims do the leg work themselves. It'll make YOU do a lot of extra clicking, but nothing else actually changes.

[PlayLives]

If JM updates his harderjobs for OFB then I will use that too. 

I think it is updated.