To answer the title of this topic - no, I don't. If it was implented in the game the means and gameplay to develop/support an imaginary religion, I think that would be a lot of fun to mess around with. Most likely, I would want to create a Watcher-based religion since I play the game and direct my Sims' lives. But I personally don't feel that real life stuff belongs in a Sims game. That because I seperate game and reality and like it so.
This is an idea I like a great deal. It addresses religion for those who want it but doesn't alienate a bunch of people who's religions might not be represented and doesn't upset people who don't wish to see religions that are not their own represented. I'd still hope for an opt in/out system though because there are people in the world who play and don't wish to be force-fed any religion.
I'm an atheist myself, but I like to create a representative sample so to speak and have actually added different religions to my game through the holiday system. So far, I've represented Catholicism, Judaism, Wicca, and Druidism as holiday markers ( I am aware that there are many many others, and not just those 4), but I don't want it in every game either. A Simsland only religion that isn't really any real life one and is all of them at the same time would be great. Especially if it were slightly editable like the holidays to allow players to tailor is slightly to suit themselves.
Loving yourself is the most simple and complicated thing you can do for you.
Not really.. I just use whatever holidays EA included. I haven't really put much thought into religion for my Sims, probably because religion isn't that big of a deal to me.
I have created some made up religions in my games using the club system and community lot churches for story purposes. Nothing really based on real life though. Because I have a lot of opinions about it, and none of them are good. But in game it's fun to have a club that meets in a church and reads books, sings songs, listens to speeches, and play instruments. I have to admit I got the idea for this set up from Cinderellimouse on Twitter when she posted an amazing church she's built called St. Plumbob. I also incorporate the attend holiday ceremony rabbit hole that came in seasons for some of my holidays too.
I recently made a muslim sim, and I took advantage of the seasons calendar to create Ramadan and Eid. I also put a mosque in Windenburg, but I haven't had her visit yet and Ramadan hasn't come around yet anyway. I'm not religious, BTW
Well they could do it, but It would have to be completely user defined ranging from none to what ever you want it to be. Something similar to the fame perks or selecting vampire strengths and weaknesses.
In general I would like to see them build a lot of tools in the game where you could create in game:
aspirations
traits
careers
religions arising from custom traits
etc.
In other words creating the basic elements and then allowing the player to combine them like we do for holidays, clubs, fame and vampire.
Hi everyone. I realize this thread is kind of old but I just stumbled across it and have things to share that may be helpful to some people.
First, I want to emphasize that having a wedding or getting married =/= visiting the inside of a church. I realize that since these forums are in English, and many primarily English-speaking countries have a Christian hegemony, forum users may be disproportionately (in relation to the wider world) part of the Christian faith or have grown up in a culture where the term "religion" had the connotation of only referring to Christianity. However, people from anywhere can learn English as a second language (and it's encouraged in many places as a lingua franca for science/politics/business/etc.). Plus, many people who are less fluent in English could just be lurkers, still reading, still voting in polls, but not willing to comment. We must remember that the English-language forums are only a microcosm of The Sims community, and what we read here cannot represent every single player's beliefs and opinions. (Also, there are obviously Christians in places where the dominant language isn't English, such as Ethiopia, India, Palestine, and Venezuela. While I acknowledge this fact, the world historical background of it is sort of outside the scope of my post.)
My larger point here is that, anthropologically speaking, being married is a economic, familial, and sociopolitical status in every society that exists or has existed in the past, whether the ritual providing that status (called a wedding in English) is religious or not. When it is religious, it is sometimes Christian and sometimes not. I will use examples from Judaism, since that is my religion. I usually play Sims who are Jewish, and in cases where I want some of them to get married, I download a synagogue/shul/temple from the Gallery and aside from performing the actual ceremony under the arch and fulfilling certain actions if I choose a goaled event, I have complete control over how I want the party/reception to go. Sidenote: I download from the Gallery because I am not very skilled at building my own lots (haha!) and I prefer to focus on the social aspects of The Sims 4 rather than building. For those who do like to build and share their own created lots and want to see more Jewish content in the game, please upload synagogues/shuls/temples! This also goes for anyone else who wants to see content from different religions or secular cultures: please upload more of your Buddhist temples, Muslim mosques, Shinto shrines, Wiccan nature sanctuaries, and secular restaurant/museum/bar/park/etc. wedding venues! I'm sure they would be highly appreciated by many other players.
Similar things can be said for observing mourning rituals and holidays. Although it may be hard to hold memorials for deceased Sims in the game, you can put large stones on any public lot and call it a graveyard, or you can create a building for storing urns that represents a tomb. Graveyards and tombs aren't inherently Christian places. You can also build an ancestral shrine around a deceased Sim's urn on their family's or friends' residential lot. I also really love that the Seasons pack has given us options to create our own holidays. Soon, I plan to start a new save of a Jewish family where I will make an effort to celebrate a larger variety of Jewish holidays than I usually do in The Sims, and I can make a new thread listing the traditions I picked for certain holidays if people are interested in seeing that.
Lastly, I want to say my main advice here is to be creative! Yes, The Sims 4 has restrictions that can be hard to tailor toward certain religious or secular practices, but there's still a lot of flexibility within the mechanics. The examples I used here don't even begin to address the wide range of options from mods and custom content. It is certainly also fair to tell EA that you would like to see specific things officially added to the game. I'm not dismissing that. I just wanted to help people generate ideas to satisfy their gameplay style in the meantime! Overall, I wish everyone has a great day and stays safe in these scary times!
Unless I at one point want to do a Peteran/Jacoban kind of thing, religion has no place in my game. I am by birth a christian, but I am not practicing the religion, nor do I believe in any God (Atheist if you will...or more like agnostic). None of the special holidays we celebrate (christmas, easter) has anything to do with our christian religion. They were, in my opinion, celebrated long before and for other reasons.
In the Sims 2, I had custom careers, skins, and a very active imagination. One of my towns was a neo-medieval (well, a weird medieval-western fusion) city in which monks and nuns were important (serving as teachers and doctors, respectively), and there was an order of knights who dominated the military and politics. One of my uni houses was a clerical greek house designed like a monastery, with a rectory, a chapel, and sleeping areas. At first this religion was just inspired by medieval Christianity, but I later made it overt. The neighborhood also had a Muslim community, inspired by Iranian and Shiia customs which I'd been reading about at the time. I never extended this religious approach into TS3/TS4, in part because we don't have the creative control over our neighborhoods the way we did in TS2. In TS2 I literally created the map from scratch.
I don't have any shots of the religious elements available, but the above might give some idea of the historical 'feel' of the neighborhood.
I didn't incorporate religion in my game until recently when I decided I want the game to be more realistic and reflective of irl. Started downloading religious cc and buildings. But in my stories, my sims swear with the Llama word so I guess Llama-ian is my sim's main religion too. Similar with what someone else posted.
I am a Christian but limit religion in my game. As someone else said, I try and keep rl separated from gameplay, but have put Attend Ceremony on a couple of my holidays...I think it gives a nice touch to me. Seeing as how I gave up doing formal weddings in Sims 3 it seems dumb to put a church venue down. (I've had one good wedding and that was in Sims 2. *sigh*)
Editted because I can't type.
In my house, dog hair sticks to everything but the dog.
What if the eyeball ring were an indication of faith in the Watcher? I'd feel kind of bad removing it every time I make over a townie, in that case.
To answer the question of the thread, kind of sort of not really. I did give Mua Pel'am a traditional Polynesian temple space (if "temple" can accurately describe the functions of a mara'e). Some of my Sims who pursue Wellness consciously appreciate the spiritual aspects of yoga.
I don't build churches, mosques, synagogues, ashrams, etc. And they, in turn, don't try to prevent my gay Sims from marrying, adopting, etc.
I view the holidays like I view holidays in the real world, just a day to celebrate time with family and reflect on what you're thankful for. Nothing to do with religion. I also have some middle-eastern sims wear hijabs, but to me it's not really because of religion, but rather just cultural attire.
Is sun salutation religious, or merely exercize? Not even actual yogis agree. Hindu? Buddhist? New Age Woo? Brendy joins the saguaro and palms in greeting the sun, Oasis Springs.
That meditation garden has been in daily use for three generations, now, in my save. The sculpture was specifically chosen to echo a "Watcher's Eye" motif. About half my Sims are spiritual, if not religious. Perhaps more if one considers the practice of magic for spellcasting a spiritual discipline.
"Let us meditate on that excellent glory of the divine vivifying Sun,
May he enlighten our understandings." — Gayatri mantra
In the calendar I have put my religions main festivals and got rid of all the main 4 ones that originally come with it. I don’t make my sims celebrate them though it depends on the sim household and their story.
I don't really consider myself religious or that. I give my spellcasters a room dedicated to their personal space with an altar, their familiar orbs, wand, athame, chalice, a besom to clear out negative energies, and more. I really go all out taking more time in a build for a spellcaster's magical area than the rest of my build making sure everything is placed just right in a build.
Playtesting - not just tabletop games and card games any more. Really that should have been playtested in Beta and not [img]just with accounting and marketing but actual players. https://i.imgur.com/t48COW6.jpg[/img]
I don't really consider myself religious or that. I give my spellcasters a room dedicated to their personal space with an altar, their familiar orbs, wand, athame, chalice, a besom to clear out negative energies, and more. I really go all out taking more time in a build for a spellcaster's magical area than the rest of my build making sure everything is placed just right in a build.
I love that. I really need to start doing it with my spellcasters. I have a lot of (mostly unresolved) curiosity about Wicca and modern witchcraft, so this idea appeals to me a great deal.
I don't have any RL religion in my game, but I have the Church of Similius, with their Priest tradition and connected Monastery. They mainly praise the green bars, not much else. There is a church building that is more or less trad, but I use iy only for weddings in the upper class, and no baptism or regular ceremonies. They do run an annual green bar festival, but I don't necessarily attend it every year.
I've dabbled with various faiths in my games over the years, but for the most part I find having religious elements gets distracting. This is a game, not real life. It's a simulation, and that means a lot of things don't have to be represented -- at least, that's how I feel. If I were to incorporate religion as an active element, it would take time away from other activities, and that's a trade-off I'm not willing to make simply for the sake of "realism". At present, I do have one cult that is going around prosetylizing -- it's the FTP, the Followers of the True Path -- and it's based on the vampires. I needed something to do with them, so I'm letting them convert sims to their cult. I'm already growing tired of that storyline though, so the cult is probably going to break up very soon.
I've just run across this channel while browsing for Sims 4 Church CC, I'm personally very religious and it reflects in my main Sims 4 game. I've made due without any religious DLC (you know EA being EA) and easily made up with Clubs, Festivals, Holidays, and lots of CC both downloaded and what I've made on The Sims 4 Studios. I've built many Basilicas, Cathedrals, Churches, Religious Schools, Clergy and Priest Households and I've made full CC outfits, Vestments and Liturgical robes on the previously mentioned S4S for the Divine Services.
Since our Sims 4 Reality is often based on our individual values, beliefs and likes and dislikes It makes sense a good lot of us pour our Christian faith (and other faiths) into our games. I don't mind there not being any official gamepacks and with using other features from other DLCs, Church builds on the Gallery and custom made and CC It's quite easy to create full fledged divine Mass services and such. Besides while I enjoyed TSM's fake religion even if they added it to TS4 (or gamepacks allowing other religions and such) I'd stick to the Christian Faith within my game as a personal choice. I have utterly no problem with people having their own religions and custom religions in their games and that's cool but it is a personal choice what goes on in your games and keeping EA out of this type of thing will allow more personal choice in each game without forcing religions we don't want into our game (Either for us religious folk and other religions or atheists with any and all religions).
What do You lot think?
P.S. If anyone's intrested I was thinking of putting together a link with the Church/Christian CC i've downloaded for others interested (note this would only be made up of Christian CC leaning to the Traditional side of Christianity)
I don't do religion on my own Sims, because I'm not religious myself, but I have nothing against it.
I like adding for example Muslim families in my saves now that we have outfits for them. I also like to think that some Indian families are Hindus. I've downloaded a Jewish family from the gallery to be neighbors for my Sims. There are also some Wiccans on one of my saves. I still haven't included Satanists, but I will probably do it later, too.
Comments
This is an idea I like a great deal. It addresses religion for those who want it but doesn't alienate a bunch of people who's religions might not be represented and doesn't upset people who don't wish to see religions that are not their own represented. I'd still hope for an opt in/out system though because there are people in the world who play and don't wish to be force-fed any religion.
I'm an atheist myself, but I like to create a representative sample so to speak and have actually added different religions to my game through the holiday system. So far, I've represented Catholicism, Judaism, Wicca, and Druidism as holiday markers ( I am aware that there are many many others, and not just those 4), but I don't want it in every game either. A Simsland only religion that isn't really any real life one and is all of them at the same time would be great. Especially if it were slightly editable like the holidays to allow players to tailor is slightly to suit themselves.
In general I would like to see them build a lot of tools in the game where you could create in game:
aspirations
traits
careers
religions arising from custom traits
etc.
In other words creating the basic elements and then allowing the player to combine them like we do for holidays, clubs, fame and vampire.
First, I want to emphasize that having a wedding or getting married =/= visiting the inside of a church. I realize that since these forums are in English, and many primarily English-speaking countries have a Christian hegemony, forum users may be disproportionately (in relation to the wider world) part of the Christian faith or have grown up in a culture where the term "religion" had the connotation of only referring to Christianity. However, people from anywhere can learn English as a second language (and it's encouraged in many places as a lingua franca for science/politics/business/etc.). Plus, many people who are less fluent in English could just be lurkers, still reading, still voting in polls, but not willing to comment. We must remember that the English-language forums are only a microcosm of The Sims community, and what we read here cannot represent every single player's beliefs and opinions. (Also, there are obviously Christians in places where the dominant language isn't English, such as Ethiopia, India, Palestine, and Venezuela. While I acknowledge this fact, the world historical background of it is sort of outside the scope of my post.)
My larger point here is that, anthropologically speaking, being married is a economic, familial, and sociopolitical status in every society that exists or has existed in the past, whether the ritual providing that status (called a wedding in English) is religious or not. When it is religious, it is sometimes Christian and sometimes not. I will use examples from Judaism, since that is my religion. I usually play Sims who are Jewish, and in cases where I want some of them to get married, I download a synagogue/shul/temple from the Gallery and aside from performing the actual ceremony under the arch and fulfilling certain actions if I choose a goaled event, I have complete control over how I want the party/reception to go. Sidenote: I download from the Gallery because I am not very skilled at building my own lots (haha!) and I prefer to focus on the social aspects of The Sims 4 rather than building. For those who do like to build and share their own created lots and want to see more Jewish content in the game, please upload synagogues/shuls/temples! This also goes for anyone else who wants to see content from different religions or secular cultures: please upload more of your Buddhist temples, Muslim mosques, Shinto shrines, Wiccan nature sanctuaries, and secular restaurant/museum/bar/park/etc. wedding venues! I'm sure they would be highly appreciated by many other players.
Similar things can be said for observing mourning rituals and holidays. Although it may be hard to hold memorials for deceased Sims in the game, you can put large stones on any public lot and call it a graveyard, or you can create a building for storing urns that represents a tomb. Graveyards and tombs aren't inherently Christian places. You can also build an ancestral shrine around a deceased Sim's urn on their family's or friends' residential lot. I also really love that the Seasons pack has given us options to create our own holidays. Soon, I plan to start a new save of a Jewish family where I will make an effort to celebrate a larger variety of Jewish holidays than I usually do in The Sims, and I can make a new thread listing the traditions I picked for certain holidays if people are interested in seeing that.
Lastly, I want to say my main advice here is to be creative! Yes, The Sims 4 has restrictions that can be hard to tailor toward certain religious or secular practices, but there's still a lot of flexibility within the mechanics. The examples I used here don't even begin to address the wide range of options from mods and custom content. It is certainly also fair to tell EA that you would like to see specific things officially added to the game. I'm not dismissing that. I just wanted to help people generate ideas to satisfy their gameplay style in the meantime! Overall, I wish everyone has a great day and stays safe in these scary times!
I'm just not very interested in religion.
Gallery: Kathykins
AHQ - Game help and Bugs
I don't have any shots of the religious elements available, but the above might give some idea of the historical 'feel' of the neighborhood.
Editted because I can't type.
To answer the question of the thread, kind of sort of not really. I did give Mua Pel'am a traditional Polynesian temple space (if "temple" can accurately describe the functions of a mara'e). Some of my Sims who pursue Wellness consciously appreciate the spiritual aspects of yoga.
I don't build churches, mosques, synagogues, ashrams, etc. And they, in turn, don't try to prevent my gay Sims from marrying, adopting, etc.
I view the holidays like I view holidays in the real world, just a day to celebrate time with family and reflect on what you're thankful for. Nothing to do with religion. I also have some middle-eastern sims wear hijabs, but to me it's not really because of religion, but rather just cultural attire.
Hope this wasn't offensive.
That meditation garden has been in daily use for three generations, now, in my save. The sculpture was specifically chosen to echo a "Watcher's Eye" motif. About half my Sims are spiritual, if not religious. Perhaps more if one considers the practice of magic for spellcasting a spiritual discipline.
"Let us meditate on that excellent glory of the divine vivifying Sun,
May he enlighten our understandings." — Gayatri mantra
I love that. I really need to start doing it with my spellcasters. I have a lot of (mostly unresolved) curiosity about Wicca and modern witchcraft, so this idea appeals to me a great deal.
Since our Sims 4 Reality is often based on our individual values, beliefs and likes and dislikes It makes sense a good lot of us pour our Christian faith (and other faiths) into our games. I don't mind there not being any official gamepacks and with using other features from other DLCs, Church builds on the Gallery and custom made and CC It's quite easy to create full fledged divine Mass services and such. Besides while I enjoyed TSM's fake religion even if they added it to TS4 (or gamepacks allowing other religions and such) I'd stick to the Christian Faith within my game as a personal choice. I have utterly no problem with people having their own religions and custom religions in their games and that's cool but it is a personal choice what goes on in your games and keeping EA out of this type of thing will allow more personal choice in each game without forcing religions we don't want into our game (Either for us religious folk and other religions or atheists with any and all religions).
What do You lot think?
P.S. If anyone's intrested I was thinking of putting together a link with the Church/Christian CC i've downloaded for others interested (note this would only be made up of Christian CC leaning to the Traditional side of Christianity)
https://www.patreon.com/posts/38541182
I also have a Sim who does meditation and yoga in a spiritual manner.
I like adding for example Muslim families in my saves now that we have outfits for them. I also like to think that some Indian families are Hindus. I've downloaded a Jewish family from the gallery to be neighbors for my Sims. There are also some Wiccans on one of my saves. I still haven't included Satanists, but I will probably do it later, too.