Better Rotational Gameplay in The Sims

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[00:00:00] Gloria from Yellow Llama Co.: Hi. Gloria here. I’ve been trying something a little different than I normally do on the podcast. I’ve been making some diary style videos over on YouTube, where I dive deep into my personal save files and share how I find new ways to solve old problems. It’s been a lot of fun, and they are also quite listenable.

Gloria [00:00:15]:
So I want to share them as video podcasts with you here as well. There are moments when I refer to what’s on the screen. If you want to see what’s happening, you can watch along on Spotify or YouTube. I get better at describing what’s happening in later episodes. The episodes are also going to be a bit more off the cuff. I’ll take you along my thought process, which I hope will inspire your own gameplay. Wherever you’re tuning in, whether you’re listening or watching, I’d love to hear what you think. Your feedback helps shape what’s next, so feel free to leave a comment and let me know.

Gloria [00:00:43]:
I had the save file where I tried to play rotationally, but each household is very isolated from the others in terms of storylines and their goals. What intrigued me initially about rotational gameplay was the fact that since you weren’t playing just one household, you’d always have variety in your gameplay. Right? But really, my favorite storylines are the ones where things are messy and intertwined, when the households grow to have a shared history and feel like they have depths. Some of the families in that state file were connected, but for the most part, they were all living their own lives independent of each other. Instead of having a separate storyline for each household and playing each in isolation from each other, I want to focus on creating connections between the households I play, ultimately with the goal of a shared storyline across these households. I wanna develop a feeling of community between these households. So now I wanna start playing rotationally differently in a way that seamlessly connects the households when playing with each other. Depending on how many households you’re playing, it can seem complicated though at first to figure out how to connect them all without it becoming overwhelming.

Gloria [00:01:43]:
I figured out how to do this though. To start, I like to keep things simple. I have a main sim or household that acts as the glue or connector between the sims and the other households I’m playing. So I usually have an idea for the main sim storyline already. Right? So I simply add the other households to the storyline, however, it might make sense to get things started. For example, this is Keith Fox. He’s the star of my current save file and the world currently revolves around him really. Instead of trying to think of some overarching storyline that ties everyone in equally, I first looked into how I could tie other sims stories into Keith’s story.

Gloria [00:02:17]:
And to make those connections that make sense, I could get to know each household first by playing them, then brainstorm how they can connect to each other, or I could simply provoke interactions and see where things go and spontaneously think of the rest of the storyline as I play or a mix of both. That’s Umbragrove at the door. Let’s let him in. So I could do a mix of both, but I want to make the connections meaningful from the get go. So I actually chose Enneagram personality types for the different people in Keith’s life, and I came up with different relationship dynamics based on how each personality type would interact with Keith’s personality type. So he’s an enthusiast, that’s a type 4, I believe. I collected all the people currently important in Keith’s life on this board here, and I selected Enneagram types for each one of them. So it’s actually not a 4.

Gloria [00:03:01]:
He used to be a, type for individuals, but Keith, I decided is actually a type 7, Enneagram personality type, an enthusiast. So I selected personality types for each sim. Based on how these personality types interact with each other and the sim’s traits and also where they currently are in their relationship to Keith, I brainstormed how they relate to each other. You can watch my last video, after this one. So finish this one first. But you can watch that last video for more details on how I brainstorm those relationship dynamics. I’ll link it in the description box below. So Sienna Grove is Keith’s fiancee.

Gloria [00:03:37]:
They met on Cupid’s Corner and hit it off immediately, had an amazing first date, amazing few dates after. He moved in, and now they’re engaged. And they’re highly compatible. So not just trait wise, but they’re both enthusiasts. They both have a similar energy to each other, and they really fit well together. So it’s super easy for them to have fun together and go on adventures and to push each other in that sense, but sometimes they can shy away from confrontation and serious conversations and if you’ve got 2 people in a relationship that are like that, that’s obviously not ideal. So that might be a point of contention between the 2. Then we have Umber Grove, who we just now saw came in at the door.

Gloria [00:04:16]:
He is the brother of Sienna, future brother-in-law of Keith. So he’s gonna be a very important part of their lives. He also has a wife, Juniper, a son, Wren, and they actually have another little, baby son called Louie. But Umber is a type 5 investigator. He’s very introspective, and he helps keep Sienna and Keith grounded. Of course, he always has Sienna’s interests at heart, and he wants to make sure that, of course, he’ll always, you know, have his sister’s interests at heart. And he sees now that he’s there are 2 high energy individuals in one one relationship. They kinda push each other.

Gloria [00:04:50]:
They’re both very ambitious, but sometimes they have difficulty bringing it in, and so he helps keep them grounded. Then we have Lucas Wolfe, which is a sim that Keith met while he was still living in Moonwood Mills. And Lucas, as you can see here, he’s a bit of a loner. He’s gloomy, socially awkward, and he’s a type 6 loyalist, which means he’s more on the cautious side of things. He’s, more reserved, And that actually is a complete opposite to Keith. You know? High energy and, outgoing and adventurous. And so they complement each other in that way because Keith helps push Lucas out of his shell and to be more adventurous and enjoy life more, while Lucas can be the voice of reason in case you’re and also always have his back. Then we have Christopher Volkoff.

Gloria [00:05:37]:
He’s a type one reformer, so he is a perfectionist, not only in terms of his sims 3 traits, but also ties into his Enneagram personality. He’s very structured and he actually he’s got more of a mentor role, I think, when it comes to Keith. That hasn’t developed in the game quite yet, but I’ve got this planned now for Christopher and Keith. Christopher will basically challenge Keith’s lack of discipline and help him meet his goals, but at the same time Christopher can be impatient at times and so he might push too far. Last but not least, we have Lily Zhu who also lives in the same household as Christopher, they’re both in Moonwood Mill, and she will play more the role of Keith’s confidant. She is the type 8 challenger. She’s bold, she’s to the point. While also can be the voice of reason, I think she’s the one that really, for the in comparison to the other sims, really manages to strike that balance between giving Keith that straight talk he sometimes needs and supporting him in that way while keeping a safe space for him to confide in.

Gloria [00:06:37]:
So she somehow still manages to make him feel comfortable and vulnerable, and I actually brainstormed where Keith opens up to her and shares something with her later in the game. I haven’t played it yet, but I brainstormed it in that video I mentioned, so definitely check that out. And that was basically based on prompts from the Enneagram personality types, so how they can interact with each other. And from that, it inspired, a bit of storyline in regards to those 2 and how she can get to know him better, understand him better. And so I definitely recommend exploring that as well, so trying to figure out who are these other sims in the households you’re playing, how can they be related to maybe your at the start your main sim, right, because it can be a bit complicated if now I try to figure out how is Lily related to Christopher, how is Christopher related to Sienna and Lucas, like then you have, like, so many different combinations and it can become overwhelming. So at first, I try to focus 1 sim is in the center and I try to look at, okay, what are the connections between these different sims and how does that make sense? And then from that, I can then build on the rest of the story. So as I play each household and I get to know them better, I’ll get more ideas on how to continue to add branches, so to say, to the storyline that pertain to those sims so that Keith isn’t always the driver or the or the center of the story. I actually want the sims from the other households to be more than just pawns in Keith’s story, right? I wanna create a story that involves all of the sims in the end equally.

Gloria [00:08:01]:
Just for the start, to keep things simple, I have one sim that I basically can use to give direction to the story at the beginning that is, like I said, the glue between these sims. The more I play with those other sims and get to know them better, I’ll naturally figure out how they can play a role in the storyline in their own right and how they have a role with each other within their community. I want to build like a community vibe. I want the sims to have a shared goal which I think would contribute to that community vibe. Right? Because if you have think of a sport teams and stuff like that. Like they are held together by that common goal that they want to win some sort of championship. They have a common goal. They have something that they’re all striving towards and I think that’ll automatically make everybody like if you’re pulling on the same string then that’ll help when I play each household for them to just go through a common goal.

Gloria [00:08:50]:
I want them to have a shared goal that they can work towards as a unit, as a community and I actually I can’t wait to decide in this like group of sims who’s gonna play the villain cause imagine how much fun it’ll be once it’s time to play their household and basically work against everything your other households have been working towards so I think that’ll be fun. In every story, you usually have a hero or a protagonist. Obviously, at first glance, that’ll be Keith but who knows? Keith might not end up being the hero. I might actually choose another sim for that or or maybe the hero will be different in each round. And speaking of rounds, organization is key. So let me show you how I organize my rotational gameplay. I really like to use Notion for this. I have a record in my Notion template that is dedicated to the save file.

Gloria [00:09:33]:
So in this case, you have Keith’s save file. It has all the characters, the households, plans, all in one place. It even has a manager here that I can use for my rotational game plan to keep track of what’s happening. So for example, here I’ve already added, 4 households to my rotational gameplay. So we have the fox household, of course. The wolf household, so that’s Lucas’s household. The Grove family, so that is the brother-in-law of Sienna, and then we have the Volkow household which has Lily and Christopher. And so with this overview here, I know who’s currently in which round and in which order I’m playing them.

Gloria [00:10:07]:
I also have here some notes that helps remind me of how I actually want to play this rotationally, so I’m actually having this in 2 phases. So at the start, my goal is to get to know each household and build those relationships between them and, you know, find that common goal. So I’ve added find a common goal real quick also to the notes, and so in this phase, I will swap the households at any time. I’ll play each for as long as or little as I’d like in the moment just to get a feel for things. I’ll have aging turned off for everyone, so for played and unplayed households and I’ll disable neighborhood stories and once I feel like the ball is rolling, I will start keeping track of the rounds and play households in order. So then I’ll start actually using this portion, this rounds overview and I’ll turn on aging for everyone for played and unplayed households. I’ll play each household for a week then change households on Sunday at 3 AM, at least that’s the plan so far. I think it might be hard for me since Keith is the legacy family that I’m playing and you know how attached you get your legacy save files or legacy families, but the thing is I plan on getting attached to every household so I would hope that I would yearn to play the wolf household as well, the Grove family as I play them more because obviously I’m attached to the Keith household because that’s the only one I’ve really been playing, but I’m sure that it’ll be easier to swap households and be away from the Fox one, once I start having that emotional attachment to the other households as well.

Gloria [00:11:31]:
So that’s the households view that I’ll definitely be using once phase 2 begins. I also have this type of overview where we have the households organized by the round they’re in. So if the Fox household, if I had already completed round 1, Fox household would be down here in a round 2 section. This just lets me see on a bird’s eye view, some notes about those households, the members, the property, that they live on, the world that they live in, their current funds and net worth if I added those details. If you’re familiar with rotational gameplay and keeping track of that in any way then you probably recognize this set up a little bit. So I know a lot of simmers like to use Excel or GSheets, like, to create a spreadsheet of their different characters for each household. So I have something similar here set up in my Notion. So I have the fox household with each character that’s in that household, their current round.

Gloria [00:12:25]:
I have notes for each cinema. I can see their current goals. So that is automatically rolled up based on the goals that I added to their individual profiles and it’s only the ones that are relevant to where they are right now in life. So, for example, if it’s a life goal then only the goals for the current milestone are shown. If it’s, a bucket list goal then only the goals from their current life stage are shown. And other than that, all the goals are shown. And then also I have any planned events that might be upcoming will be shown. We see any other information I might wanna know.

Gloria [00:12:55]:
So, if it’s a legacy sim, what is their role, their life state, what is their life goal, their current career if they have one, any skills that they have in progress. So, this basically just automatically lists any skills that I added to their profile that are yet mastered and we have information about the most important relationships in their lives so their spouse, partner and children and that’s basically listed for the other households as well. So if I open up this toggle, I’ll see the same information for the other households as well. And I really like that I have this toggle here so I can only see the information that I really care about in that very moment. So if I’m playing the Fox household, I only see the Fox households data and I can just click on the Fox household as well to manage them directly from within their household profile. So we have a character profile and we have a household profile and I personally like to work in the household profile because there we have little buttons here where I can quickly add a memory, a snapshot, a transaction. Here I also have space for the household notes and plans and I can quickly click into a character, have their character profile open up inside peek view so I can make more changes like add a skill and stuff like that. So in the other view, in the rotational manager, it just gives you a bird’s eye view of what is the current situation.

Gloria [00:14:06]:
It automatically pulls that data, but to actually, like, add a new skill or, change the progress of a skill, for example, you’d have to do that in the character’s profile which is why I like to, when I’m playing a household be in this view because then it’s super simple to just click on the sim and have all of their details at my fingertips. So, for example, under achievements we have all of Kay’s skills, his current career, and his life goal And I can easily just directly from here, edit things or add things to it, open that up in another side peek view. So I really like working from the household page. On a macro level, though, so bird’s eye view, of course, the save file is the heart of where things are. It’s where I find all of my different households, all of the different characters, and, of course, have that quick overview of the different rounds and rotations. What I actually want to do next so we currently have 4 different households in the mix. We have 2 households from Chestnut Ridge. We have 2 households from the Moonwood Mill region or world, and I actually wanna add 1 or 2 more households to the mix from other worlds.

Gloria [00:15:08]:
I really like to use this map by strangest c. I found it on Reddit. Basically, it shows how the different worlds are in relation to each other and on a map. So as you can see, we have these neighboring regions close to Chestnut Ridge. So we have Oasis Springs, StrangerVille, Moonwood Mill, I would count because it’s still quite close. We have Evergreen Harbor, it’s also quite close, and Granite Falls. Now Granite Falls is, of course, a vacation world, so I wouldn’t really count that in a as a world where I wouldn’t want to look for other households for Keith to be close to, but we already have, of course, Simsie’s close to in Chestnut Ridge. By default, we have Santa, his the love of his life and her brother-in-law.

Gloria [00:15:46]:
We have a couple of households in Moonwood Mill we’ll keep in touch with, and now I want to make connections in at least another world because I I think it’d be fun to not only build community in the world he lives in, but with neighboring worlds as well. That’ll bring variety to my game play as well because I’m not just playing in the same world. I’ll actually be playing with Sims in different worlds and I have a mod actually that makes it to where Sims stay in the current world that they’re in. And so this way, I can also get to know other Sims that aren’t just in Chestnut Ridge. I think that’ll just be fun and it’ll be a natural it’s like, it’s very organic for Keith to travel to StrangerVille or for someone from Woodwood Mill to travel to StrangerVille, or Oasis Springs to StrangerVille. And so that’ll help me also with storytelling like what makes sense. Which households in the group of households that end up playing naturally will be closer to each other. Maybe, for example, those in Oasis Springs would never really interact much with those from Moonwood Mill because they’re so far away or in comparison to StrangerVille and Chestnut Ridge.

Gloria [00:16:47]:
So I think that could be interesting also for my storytelling. So I want to scope out Oasis Springs first just because that’s one of my favorite worlds.

Gloria [00:16:54]:
So I definitely want to

Gloria [00:16:55]:
play with the house from hold from this world. And again, and also if you weren’t aware, I’m actually playing with the beyond blooming save file by Analeya. It’s an excellent save file. I’ve been having a lot of fun with it so far. Really lovely sims with story lines are in here. I think Analaea selected also some really great builds that fit the worlds that they’re in and just offer a lot to you, especially like community lots that’s important to me. And so I can highly recommend that safe off if you’ve been looking for 1. And I also decided not to customize it too much.

Gloria [00:17:26]:
I only have like one lot from, that I placed for Keith when he was first getting his bearings in Moonwood Mill apart from that. I think I left everything I had to fix a buggy lot in in Moonwood Mill but that is really everything I’ve swapped. I actually stalled playing with Keith because I wanted to have a perfect save file and I ended up giving up on that notion and instead, now I’m having fun actually playing the save file. So definitely get her a save file. Everything’s already done for you and you can just jump in and play. So currently, the people in Keith’s life are more or less, I’d say, you know, normal income families, maybe a little bit lower income, I don’t know, like maybe Moonwood Mill because, we have like a co living situation. They’re not rich. It seems like they’re very, you know, down to earth, so they’re not it’s definitely not luxury.

Gloria [00:18:11]:
I think it would be fun to add a more wealthy household to the mix to add that contrast. I’m immediately drawn to this house and this house. Who lives there? Oh, of course, Landgraab. So I would definitely say Landgraab and watch are contenders and then, here we also have a couple of oh, nobody lives here, so that would have been a wealthy one and apart from that, I mean, this is definitely not, inexpensive, but I think I would like to look at the Landgraab household and see what they’ve got going on. So I know business is gonna be something that’s gonna be important in Keith’s storyline with Santa wanting to open up her own horse training school and Keith wanting to build a ranch. So maybe there’s some sort of investment going on with Landgraabs that I could tie into the storyline. So let’s check them out. So here we go, we’ve got what’s his name? We’ve got Jeffrey Landgraab at Grill.

Gloria [00:19:06]:
He’s family oriented, outgoing, good, and domestic. Okay. And we’ve got Malcolm. He’s evil, snob, dastardly. Okay. That’s interesting. And Nancy’s materialistic, ambitious, snob, business savvy. I think this could definitely be an interesting household to play with in relation to Keith and his storyline, and like I said, eventually have their own storyline within it.

Gloria [00:19:28]:
And this is a this is a badass house. I mean, look at this. Woof. This is definitely not Moonwood Mill anymore. We’re not in Chestnut Ridge anymore. Damn. They’re living a life. I think I’m gonna choose this household for my 5th rotational household.

Gloria [00:19:46]:
So I add them to the sim guardian. So I’ve added the land grabs as characters to the save file and I’ve also added their property, the modern concrete mansion, which is a beaut. I’ve added that. I’ve also created a household for them. So now I can actually add that household to the rotation. So I’ll do that here and the only other household I’ve saved in the save file, so I’ll just add them, order is number 5, so they’re the last in this group and then they’ll also be in round 1. Now, this might already be enough households. I mean, 5 households for my taste is already quite a lot, so I might just leave it at that, but I’m still quite curious considering how close Stranger Feel is to Moonwood Mill and Chestnut Ridge, I think it would be very interesting to check out what kind of families, what kind of households I can bring in from that.

Gloria [00:20:33]:
So here we are in StrangerVille. Looks a lot like Chestnut Ridge. It had that, you know, dusty, deserty vibe, westerny, so I think it would work well to actually maybe find a family here too if I can if it doesn’t become too complex and too much. Let’s see who’s here. We have cowboy Cahill right here, the curious family here, the little toddler, which sounds like a lot of work, Come go be honest. We have Roswell here. I’m not sure. Is that a cat with a hat? Oh, no.

Gloria [00:21:03]:
It’s a cat with a little it’s a cat with a little jumper on. Okay. That’s what we’re looking at there. Here, we have eclectic arts, which could be interesting considering Keith is artistic. He’s a musician. I like that they have animals. Sigworth. Okay.

Gloria [00:21:19]:
I like families. I like playing with families, so that could be interesting. I think I might go for the Eclectic Arts. Like I said, I think that would tie in well with Keith’s story, we can see, let’s check them out. Okay. This looks like a really cool group of sims. We have, oh, we have a Paranoid, Bookworm, Muser, geek goofball. Cool.

Gloria [00:21:40]:
We’ve got a cheerful, art lover, gregarious, bookworm. I think these work really well with Keith and also the other people. Creative, music lover, bookworm, muse user. Okay. Okay. I think we’ve landed on our 6th and final household that I’m gonna add to the rotation. Oh, and they have little doggos. Love it.

Gloria [00:22:00]:
I might have to kick some of them out because I find pets to be actually a little bit, stressful on work like toddlers. So we’ll see if we keep them. We might keep this big one. He’s cool. Okay. What is she flipping out about? We’ll see when we play them. So just like with the Landgraabs, I’ve added everybody from the Collect the Arts household to my Notion, and created a household for them, which I added to the rotation. So, now, I have 6 different households all in order, nice and neat, ready for me to then jump into rotational gameplay, this time a bit differently than I’ve been doing it in the past.

Gloria [00:22:33]:
And, I think, this way, it’ll be far less overwhelming because I’ll be playing one story line where everybody is following a similar thread, where there’s a red thread going through the story line, where everybody has some sort of important role in it to keep things simple for the beginning. Everybody has a role in regards to Keith’s life. He’s the glue between everything, and I’ll figure out how the Landgraabs and Eclectic Arts households fit into that mesh during gameplay. I think I’ll let them organically build those relationships and connections once I get to know everybody from the households a bit better. It was super cool that we have somebody who loves music in this household and something that’s paranoid which I think might add some interesting gameplay especially with Moonwood Mill also having, you know, that werewolf background. I think that could be interesting. And then, of course, the Landgraabs being very much in money and real estate, considering that Keith wants to get a ranch and Sienna is gonna start her own business soon, I I think they would fall really naturally well into the storyline. And at some point, I think I’m also going to figure out the back stories for these or at least figure out an Enneagram personality for the people in these households.

Gloria [00:23:38]:
And I think that’ll help me deepen their relationships even more because the Ini game personalities help guide what kind of people are they, what are their motivations, their fears, their vices, and how they interact with other characters. If you’re interested in the notion template that I’ve showed here, if you’re like, oh my god, that looks really cool. I wanna get organized and on top of my rotational gameplay as well. I’ll leave a link below. It’s called a sim guardian and it’s like my ultimate dream notion that I’ve built. You can learn more about it in the description below.