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The Neighborhood Rotation Thread

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    CathyTeaCathyTea Posts: 23,089 Member
    sabreene wrote: »
    @roseinblack69 Me too! I love how MC Command has so many different aspects now -- it's really cut down on my need for extra mods! I love having them all in one place!!

    I'm giving it a try! :)
    Cathy Tea's SimLit Anthology

    Do you also play The Elder Scrolls Online? You can find me there as CathyTea, too!
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    sabreenesabreene Posts: 1,152 Member
    @CathyTea Yay! That mod has so many favorite things of mine, I don't know if I could play without it anymore!

    There's so many little things -- One thing I love is the "Pause on Zone", so that every time you transition to a new screen or start the game, it starts paused. I love it, so that if I leave the room while it's loading, I won't miss anything! And another thing I love are notifications -- you can turn them on (each separately), and it will notify you for birthdays, babies, deaths, move-ins, marriages -- so you'll always know when things are happening.

    I don't know if you're using the 'story progression' type stuff, and having npc marriages/babies -- but if you are, there are settings to determine what age it happens at, if they're matched up to the same age, if they can be married without getting pregnant, pregnant without getting married, or if usually a pregnancy means the couple will get married.

    One thing -- as default, it's set to fill up all your empty houses in your game except for one. So it will automatically move your homeless into houses on move-in night. If you want to keep more houses open, you can increase that number! (I think I have mine set to 6, though I change it around)

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    Julyvee94Julyvee94 Posts: 6,694 Member
    This is awesome! Thanks for checking on it sabreene. Would you post it in the bugthread too?
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    roseinblack69roseinblack69 Posts: 4,070 Member
    @sabreene I also can't imagine myself playing the sims 4 without Mc Command Center :) I use all modules and I really love what this mod does :)
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    OJennOJenn Posts: 8,429 Member
    Does anyone know it there is a listing of townies in Widenburg? Like what Premades are there in a fresh save.
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    pixalqueenpixalqueen Posts: 230 Member
    edited January 2016
    OJenn wrote: »
    Does anyone know it there is a listing of townies in Widenburg? Like what Premades are there in a fresh save.

    Here you go, I had looked for it awhile ago for something I do remember. ---> CLICK HERE
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    OJennOJenn Posts: 8,429 Member
    pixalqueen wrote: »
    OJenn wrote: »
    Does anyone know it there is a listing of townies in Widenburg? Like what Premades are there in a fresh save.

    Here you go, I had looked for it awhile ago for something I do remember. ---> CLICK HERE

    Thanks so much!
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    StormyDayzStormyDayz Posts: 4,035 Member
    First let me just say how excited I am that @Julyvee94 invited me to this thread! I've got it open in 2 windows and I'm answering the thread questions on one while I read everyone's answers on another. (If that makes sense?) If you're interested in reading my neighborhood story check out Keeping Up With the Jones's. If you're wondering who's who you can find them all in Sim Biographies. The thread for my story updates is here. I'm currently working on chapter 48.

    - Do you have a fixed ingame time you play each household for? If yes, how long?
    Yes and no. I usually just hop from house to house but I've been trying to add more structure to my schedule so I've been trying to stay with each family for half a day to a day.

    - Do you play with aging on or off and why?
    On long. Because if I didn't my beloved elders would never die, I wouldn't let them! Now, I have a system with the birthdays: I keep a list of who's next on my ipad and add to the list as they age up. Luckily the lifespan of child and teen is the same. I don't really celebrate the older sims birthdays because with just the child/teen birthdays there's a lot! I've recently started keeping track of the days of the week on a notebook too so for example Monday might be Rosa Lothario's birthday and Tuesday Nebula Noble's, ect.

    - Do you play the EA premades?
    Yes! I started off with all the families that were already in houses and added all the other EA premades like Andre DaSilva and June Kay.

    - How many household do you rotate with?
    Erm well, currently by my count it's 17 (it was 22) but that's going to change soon because the triplets are getting married and moving out sooo we'll see.

    - Do you add households as you go or do you have pre-determined households to rotate with?
    I have been adding and *cough* recently subtracting as needed to fit the story.

    - Are you using your own builds or do you keep EA's houses?
    I'm trying to think if there are any EA houses left in my neighborhood but I don't think there are. I'm a terrible builder but luckily there are some wonderfully talented people to do my job for me via the gallery.

    My own style: I really can't think of a description of my play-style. Structured? Naw. LOL If you read my blog you'll see it starts very confusing and random because I'd never played a rotation before. Every once in awhile I'll get some crazy idea that may or may not go so well. In some cases I'll have mates picked out for kids when they're still children and going by the story you might be able to figure out who they are. In other cases I hand pick sims off of the gallery and try to find a natural way for them to meet. For example: I realized that twins Marshall and Maxwell Goth would be aging up soon and I had nobody for them. I thought it would be cool for them to marry twin sisters, spent forever on the gallery and finally found Mary and Mallory Beckett for them. The first lot that the girls went to ironically had the boy's mother and aunt there so they "invited" them to their house to meet the boys. <shrug> Totally unplanned but it worked out perfectly.

    -What elements do you guys use in your neighbourhood rotations to keep the story going?
    Ummm I go on their aspirations and whims a lot. Get Together has added a new element of randomness where if a sim sends an emotional text to another sim they might invite them to do something. I'm loving that. Sometimes I'll just sit back and see if they do anything interesting on their own. New sims can sometimes add a little excitement to the neighborhood.

    -Do you guys use cheats in your rotations?
    Oh yea. I use money cheats (a lot) and relationship cheats (rarely). Whatever I need to keep the story progressing.

    -How do you go about transitioning between households in you story?
    My chapters all have several families in each one. When it's time for the next family I have their last name and family tree then the story.

    -Did you try to play with jealous sim?
    Not yet. I keep seeing it when I'm aging up sims but I haven't found one that fits jealous or kleptomaniac yet.

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    Julyvee94Julyvee94 Posts: 6,694 Member
    @Rainydayz179 love your answers! :) Hope you enjoyed the other insights as well. The Birthday list is so smart, I should do that as well ^^
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    StormyDayzStormyDayz Posts: 4,035 Member
    Julyvee94 wrote: »
    The Birthday list is so smart, I should do that as well ^^

    I used to use a notebook to keep track of them and drew a line through them as they aged up but someone mentioned to me that they kept track of theirs on their phone. I use the note app on my iPad so no more messy lines. I also keep track there if I have them planned to someday marry one of the other kids, yea I set 'em up young! :p

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    cully_ccully_c Posts: 655 Member
    Only up to page two of my catch up read but thought I'd say hey!

    "Hey!"

    I'm trying to add an element of rotational play into my current storyline. I already like to add in little side challenges as I discover them but this rotational play seems fun. Also means I don't get bored, which I am afraid I do, staring at the same sims day after day!

    Hoping I can pick up some tips here. Already got a couple I can try out!
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    cecerose0208cecerose0208 Posts: 1,521 Member
    Hi! I've recently started a Neighborhood Rotation that I'm writing a blog about. I'm finding it interesting to read about how everyone else plays their rotations.

    - Do you have a fixed ingame time you play each household for? If yes, how long? I don't really have a fixed time. It's about 1.5 Sim days per family, but that's not a firm time.

    - If you don't have a fixed time, how do you determine when to switch households? I try play to get enough story for a 1100-1500 word chapter for my blog post. By the time I play through each of my four families once, only about a week on Sim time passes.

    - Do you play with aging on or off and why? Aging on. I kind of like seeing what the Sims have been up to while I've been gone for 5 days. The only thing that sucks is they don't increase their money if they're not the active household when they return home from work.

    - Do you play the EA premades? Nope. But I've used MCC to mark all the premades as ancestral so hopefully they will stay in the stories for continuing generations.

    - How many household do you rotate with? Four. The Blanks, Butlers, Holloways, and Epsteins.

    - Do you add households as you go or do you have pre-determined households to rotate with? I'm planning to play in a legacy style, choosing only one heir to follow. So I expect it will go from 4 to 8, then back to 4 as the previous generation dies. That's subject to change once my current kids age up to Young Adult.

    - Are you using your own builds or do you keep EA's houses? Using EA's houses, but redecorating to fit my Sims needs.

    - Do you use cheats? Which ones? For one family, I used motherlode to get them in a big house and complete the husband's fortune aspiration. No other cheats other than bb.moveojects for decorating purposes.
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    Julyvee94Julyvee94 Posts: 6,694 Member
    @cecerose0208 Welcome here :) wow 1.5 sim days is rather Short. Do you put updates for all families in one chapter? Or one chapter per family? ^^
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    CathyTeaCathyTea Posts: 23,089 Member
    Hi, Cece and everyone!

    @cecerose0208 I'm interested in your answers to the questions!

    I started a Sim story project based on 30 Days of Simming (write 30 prompts, then create a Sim for each prompt). I wrote funny, stream-of-consciousness sort of prompts, just off the top of my head. Then, I'm writing a short story for each. I just finished the ninth Sim, and this is developing into a rotation because of the ways that the Sims interact with each other and the ways that the same ones keep showing up in each other's stories. I really like the way it's developing, both in terms of game-play and story. It's what I wanted from a rotation, which is like a community, where some folks know each other, some don't and they all live in the same connected world.

    - Do you have a fixed ingame time you play each household for? If yes, how long? I don't really have a fixed time. It's about 1.5 Sim days per family, but that's not a firm time.

    I'm also doing very short time spans with each household. The longest I've been with any has been a day. This is because I'm just going in and getting enough screenshots to fill out the first introductory story for each. I'm working my way down the list through all 30 Sims, and then once I'm done, I'll circle back and revisit them. At that point, I plan to let myself stay to play through a plot arc, if I want to.

    - If you don't have a fixed time, how do you determine when to switch households? I try play to get enough story for a 1100-1500 word chapter for my blog post. By the time I play through each of my four families once, only about a week on Sim time passes.

    This sounds really similar to how I'm doing it--and I like this a lot!

    - Do you play with aging on or off and why?

    In Thirty Sims at Three Rivers, I'm playing with aging off. I've got two other rotations going on--one has aging on (normal lifespan--though I may change this) and the other has aging off.

    - Do you play the EA premades?

    Well, they are friends. J Huntington shows up a lot. The Villareal boys show up a lot.

    Originally, since this was part of a CAS challenge, I was going to only create Sims. But now that I know the Townies, I've met a few that really fit some of the prompts, so I'll start using them.

    - How many household do you rotate with?

    I will probably have 25 or so. That's a lot, I know! Four of the Sims I'll be using are members of the same household. There might be a few other overlaps, too, but so far none are planned. I am really, really enjoying having such a large cast, especially since it's getting to the point where many of them know each other.


    - Do you add households as you go or do you have pre-determined households to rotate with?

    I'm just working my way down the list of 30. I will return to a household if one of the other Sims there fits the prompt. Also, for some future prompts I'll be adding new Sims to a previously played household.

    - Are you using your own builds or do you keep EA's houses?

    Mix and match! I love TheKalin0tron's houses so much that I use them whenever I can. If I do use a Maxis house, I'll usually do massive redecorating. I'm not fond of their interior design style.

    - Do you use cheats? Which ones?
    Motherlode and Free Real Estate. It would make sense to use skilling cheats, since some of these characters are skilled individuals--but I'm not using them. It's interesting to see the sort of naivitee that fresh-out-of-CAS Sims have.

    I am using MC Command Center to prevent culling. Ran into a bit of a problem with Tragic Clown overload, so I'll need to get the updated version of MCCC!

    I wouldn't play a rotation--or any game--without MCCC at this point, since it prevents culling of Sims, relationships, and ghosts!
    Cathy Tea's SimLit Anthology

    Do you also play The Elder Scrolls Online? You can find me there as CathyTea, too!
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    KamioKamio Posts: 2,213 Member
    I often play a rotational game. Two of my saves are played this way! One is an Amazin challenge with three tribes one is a neighbourhood of sims that I have played since the Sims 2. So without further a do:

    Do you have a fixed ingame time you play each household for? 1 sim week - switching Sunday night 9pm

    Do you play with aging on or off and why? On for my Amazon Challenge save and Off for my main neighbourhood.

    Do you play the EA premades? No. I dont like to mess with their stories.

    How many household do you rotate with? a lot? I rotate through every household that is in a home. So like 20+ in one game.

    Do you add households as you go or do you have pre-determined households to rotate with? I add households as I feel like/to bring in spouses for my sims. If I have a kind of game or type of sim I want to play I'll get it out of my system and leave them to wander the neighbourhood.

    Are you using your own builds or do you keep EA's houses? A bit of both. I build and I redecorate EA houses/downloaded houses.

    Do you use cheats? Which ones
    I don't use them in my rotation unless it is to skill someone up to where I think they should be/to help with promotions if I haven't been around enough in game - especially GTW careers. I need to be in the mood to go to work with my sim.
    Simming since 2001!! Origin ID: KamioMax[/center]
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    cecerose0208cecerose0208 Posts: 1,521 Member
    Julyvee94 wrote: »
    @cecerose0208 Welcome here :) wow 1.5 sim days is rather Short. Do you put updates for all families in one chapter? Or one chapter per family? ^^
    1.5 days is sometimes too much! I take a lot of screenshots, and get a lot of story out of what happens, at least so far. I'm still getting to know my Sims, and for two families, I ended up pushing some screenshots into the next chapter so I wouldn't end up with a 2000 word post.

    I've put up some of the introductory posts here: forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/886013/dreams-drama-neighborhood-rotation

    @CathyTea I'm glad you like the way I play my rotation. I wasn't sure what the Three Rivers posts were, and I hadn't started reading them yet. Knowing the format now, I'm intrigued, and I'm going to go back and catch up.

    Neighborhood rotation-style of play has quickly become one of my favorite. I love seeing my other Sims show up and not be playable. And I am amused at seeing how the pre-mades and townies and other NPCs have the same personality no matter which of my Sims they're interacting with.

    I'm paying attention to the pre-mades for the first time really. I love the Landgraabs. Malcom is so surprisingly nice and warm. And Nancy is a tough cookie to like, but she's so charismatic she always pulls people in no matter how she treats them when they first meet. I never would've guessed that about them.

    One of my families, the Blanks (the aliens), have two children. And they have a little crew now with almost all the pre-made children: Alexander Goth, Elsa Bjergsen, Max Villareal, and Lucas Munch. I can't wait to see them grow up with my kids.
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    StormyDayzStormyDayz Posts: 4,035 Member
    @cecerose0208 Oh I totally agree with 1.5 days being too long! Especially since I've changed it to more of a story format instead of documenting what happened in each house. The only problem for me right now is I can't think of any new drama for the neighborhood so I'm taking a break from playing it and doing a couple (3) challenges.

    It's so funny that you think Malcolm is nice and warm because he was a total jerk in my rotation until he aged to elder, he was also one of my favorites! Which is why I like Wolfgang Munch. (which I re-named Wolfgang Black) He's currently dating Malcolm's youngest daughter Veronica Landgraab. ;)

    Goes off to check out your blog thread...
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    Julyvee94Julyvee94 Posts: 6,694 Member
    Malcolm is a nice guy in my rotation too ^^ he's a criminal, but he always beats up jerks who break the hearts of my other sim women :D and nancy actually became a writer, rekindled her romance with Geoffrey and they had twin girls! Fun times :)
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    CathyTeaCathyTea Posts: 23,089 Member
    Julyvee94 wrote: »
    Malcolm is a nice guy in my rotation too ^^ he's a criminal, but he always beats up jerks who break the hearts of my other sim women :D and nancy actually became a writer, rekindled her romance with Geoffrey and they had twin girls! Fun times :)

    I really, really like Nancy in your rotation, @Julyvee94 !

    You know, in Book Club in a few weeks, we'll be featuring Neighborhood Rotations! We'll be reading yours, @Julyvee94 and also @JoieWilder 's. I forget who else's we're looking at... Let's add yours, @cecerose0208 and @Rainydayz179 ! And if you have others to nominate, please do so in the Book Club thread! :)

    Neighborhood rotation-style of play has quickly become one of my favorite. I love seeing my other Sims show up and not be playable. And I am amused at seeing how the pre-mades and townies and other NPCs have the same personality no matter which of my Sims they're interacting with.


    I love this, too! I've just gotten to the point in Three Rivers where a lot of the same Sims (mostly Townies, but a few premades and some of the other CAS Sims I've already featured) are showing up during other Sims' turns. It's so cool! And it's so neat the way the plots are interconnecting. It feels very patchwork quilt like to me, which is so much fun!


    I'm paying attention to the pre-mades for the first time really. I love the Landgraabs. Malcom is so surprisingly nice and warm. And Nancy is a tough cookie to like, but she's so charismatic she always pulls people in no matter how she treats them when they first meet. I never would've guessed that about them.

    One of my families, the Blanks (the aliens), have two children. And they have a little crew now with almost all the pre-made children: Alexander Goth, Elsa Bjergsen, Max Villareal, and Lucas Munch. I can't wait to see them grow up with my kids.

    I adore the Villareals! In my University Challenge game, my University Challenge Sim lived with the Villareals as an au pair. It's pretty much and ISBI challenge, so I got to see how they were when they were mostly autonomous. They're a very cool family!

    The Landgraabs will be featured in an upcoming chapter of Three Rivers. I've got a soft spot for Geoffrey!

    That's really neat that you're discovering aspects of them that you enjoy! :)
    Cathy Tea's SimLit Anthology

    Do you also play The Elder Scrolls Online? You can find me there as CathyTea, too!
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    StormyDayzStormyDayz Posts: 4,035 Member
    CathyTea wrote: »
    You know, in Book Club in a few weeks, we'll be featuring Neighborhood Rotations! We'll be reading yours, @Julyvee94 and also @JoieWilder 's. I forget who else's we're looking at... Let's add yours, @cecerose0208 and @Rainydayz179 ! And if you have others to nominate, please do so in the Book Club thread! :)

    Yep. I'm already on the list. Someone nominated my rotation for it.
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    cecerose0208cecerose0208 Posts: 1,521 Member
    edited May 2016
    @Rainydayz179 Maybe Malcolm just didn't like your Sims, lol. He's family oriented, so I was surprised he was so nice to my single Sim Carmen. I've tagged Nancy for pregnancy, so I can't wait to see him with little children!
    CathyTea wrote: »
    You know, in Book Club in a few weeks, we'll be featuring Neighborhood Rotations! We'll be reading yours, @Julyvee94 and also @JoieWilder 's. I forget who else's we're looking at... Let's add yours, @cecerose0208 and @Rainydayz179 ! And if you have others to nominate, please do so in the Book Club thread! :)

    That's so great that you want to add me to your book club. I've got posts scheduled every three days for next 2 weeks, so there will be a couple of chapters on each family to read.

    I assume there's a forum thread for the Book club?
    Post edited by cecerose0208 on
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    StormyDayzStormyDayz Posts: 4,035 Member
    @Rainydayz179 Maybe Malcolm just didn't like your Sims, lol. He's family oriented, so I was surprised he was so nice to my single Sim Carmen. I've tagged Nancy for pregnancy, so I can't wait to see him with little children!

    I'm confused? Are you talking about Geoffrey? Nancy is his wife, Malcolm's mother. Looks at Malcolm's bio... I've got his traits down as evil, snob and ambitious.

    Here's the book club link.
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    cecerose0208cecerose0208 Posts: 1,521 Member
    @Rainydayz179 I sure am mixing them up! I've been calling him Malcom... Ooops! I need to go fix a couple of my blog posts, lol.
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    CathyTeaCathyTea Posts: 23,089 Member
    @Rainydayz179 Maybe Malcolm just didn't like your Sims, lol. He's family oriented, so I was surprised he was so nice to my single Sim Carmen. I've tagged Nancy for pregnancy, so I can't wait to see him with little children!
    CathyTea wrote: »
    You know, in Book Club in a few weeks, we'll be featuring Neighborhood Rotations! We'll be reading yours, @Julyvee94 and also @JoieWilder 's. I forget who else's we're looking at... Let's add yours, @cecerose0208 and @Rainydayz179 ! And if you have others to nominate, please do so in the Book Club thread! :)

    That's so great that you want to add me to your book club. I've got posts scheduled every three days for next 2 weeks, so there will be a couple of chapters on each family to read.

    I assume there's a forum thread for the Book club?

    Yes--there should be a link in my siggy...
    Cathy Tea's SimLit Anthology

    Do you also play The Elder Scrolls Online? You can find me there as CathyTea, too!
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    StormyDayzStormyDayz Posts: 4,035 Member
    @Rainydayz179 I sure am mixing them up! I've been calling him Malcom... Ooops! I need to go fix a couple of my blog posts, lol.

    Okay now it makes sense. Yes, Geoffrey is very sweet and mild mannered... unlike Nancy. They divorced in my game and he married a really nice lady he met at the park and had a daughter Andrea. Nancy married the Fogel guy, his name slips my mind and had a son Cory but they ended up divorcing too.
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