*If Sims go to university, once they move back I will deduct how many 'years' they have been away for. For example, a sim that graduates from a 4 year degree, will be 4 years older when they move back, I will use the simblender to adjust the ages.

My sims age up at different times than EA, EA have their sims age up at 6pm, mine ages at 12pm, this helps me plan a birthday if needed and gives the sim enough time to decide if they still want to go to uni or not.

Aspirations

I choose my aspirations using a calculator that I have recently created. It combines several different calculators to help me choose the right aspiration. This is helped with a new random interest mod that I have in game, which will be over on my mods page.

The reason why I like this way of deciding the aspirations is that it feels like I have 6 new aspirations to play from. For example, if a sim is a Fortune sim, they can be either a gold digger or hard worker. For romance, they are either hopeless romantics or serial romancers.

The "Crumpulator" can be downloaded here.

Features of the Calculator

Aspiration based off personality / interests
Secondary Aspiration calculated too
Has a random number generator inside
Sheet 2 is a custom school randomiser, for those who have my edited school mods
Ideal degree calculator
Ideal career calculator

Pregnancy and Adoption

Sims in my game do not care for gender roles, yes there are males and females but anyone can get pregnant. This means that two male sims that are together can have biological children, same can be said for two females. The rule somewhat applies to male-female pairings, though in my game it is whoever wants to be pregnant, for example, John Burb could get pregnant whilst Jennifer still goes to work.

This means that adoption is not really a thing in my game, though if there are unwanted babies they will usually go to another family member.

In my game, children will not be taken by the social worker for any reason, I have this as I like to live out failing grades / rough childhood etc.

When sims try for babies, and are unsuccessful 3 times, this indicates to me that one of the sims is infertile. I will roll the randomiser to see which one it is.

Sims can offer to be surrogates / donors to other sims if needed, I mimic this by using the simblender.

When 2 sims woohoo, they will have a 5% chance of getting pregnant via risky woohoo, if the other sim is not part of the active household then I will use the random number generator in the Crumpulator, numbers between 0-5 will mean the sim gets pregnant, any other number they are safe.

Careers and LTWs

Careers I will tend to follow their LTW / wants in the game. However, if it makes sense for certain sims to be in certain careers, I tend to force them and follow the narrative that they are not happy in their job.

I use two mods to make jobs a little harder, 5% chance of promotion (this is an edited version of Harder Promotions by Lamare) and halved career wages.

To counter this I do have No Friends Needed mod.

Careers in my game require some sort education, well most do but not all, I use Doctors Need Degrees mod to achieve this.

Careers that require a degree:

Careers: Medicine, Science, Natural Science, Law, Education

Careers that a degree is very useful:

Careers: Business, Law Enforcement, Military, Show Business, Journalism, Architecture, Intelligence, Oceanography

Careers that a diploma is useful:

Careers: Athletics, Culinary, Politics, Slacker, Artist, Paranormal, Music, Entertainment, Dance

Careers that do not care about your education:

Careers: Criminal, Adventurer, Gamer

In my game I have 50 new LTWs created by Lamare, I love this mod for the character it brings all the sims. I do like to let me sims achieve their lifetime want, though I am actively looking for a way to disable the "platinum aspirations".

I will pick their LTW from the picker that mod comes with, this works it out based on their personality and other factors.

Money

Sims do not get a 20k handout, if they want to move out the family have to provide the funds to do so.
University is no longer free*, sims will have to pay to attend, at the moment this is a total of 20k.
When sims get divorced, they will split everything in half and go their separate ways, unless they have a prenup**.
Sims can take loans out if needed, but will endure high interest rates - for me to decide as and when, see how generous I am feeling.

*Sims can save a bit of money if they received scholarships, if the game gives them some I work out how many they have and then take that off their final payment, if they have 4 or more scholarships they get a free university experience.

**Usually in my richer families, there will be a agreed upon settlement prior the wedding, I will note down in their bio how much their settlements would be if they were to divorce.

Inheritance

Sims are not allowed to claim on the in-game inheritance, instead the sim that passed away will of left a "will". Or in other words, their final wishes. However, if sims have titles, the title will go to the first born sim regardless of gender.

For example with Consort Capp, he wanted Juliette Capp to inherit everything, but Juliette was not the true heir to the Capp estate, Goneril is. It was then agreed that Goneril will give Juliette a settlement from Goneril, and Goneril moved back into the mansion whilst Juliette moved away.

If the current "leader" of the family does not get along with the current heir, they can write them out of the will and have the second born take over instead. This has not happened yet but I can imagine it will in the future!

If a sim dies before their time, and the "will" has not been signed, the spouse will inherit, is no spouse or they had a title, it would transfer for the first born. If then no children it would simply go to the closest living sim in the family tree. I follow with the thinking that they are the royals and nobility.

Romance and Gender Preference

I will randomise gender preference on first play, but will change all romance sims to be bi.

ACR assigns gender preference a few days into the teen stage, I usually go by that UNLESS I think a sim is a certain way.

Teens in my game CAN be romantic, get pregnant and even get married - though I do not tend to use that option.

All sims now have to be "Going Steady" to propose marriage, this applies to adults and elders.

Adults / teens can happen, though I tend to avoid it, I like having the option so that when sims age to adults, they can still romance their teenage sweethearts if there ages are not synced due to the rotational nature of gameplay.

Seasons and Uni Rules

In my game Seasons last for 4 days, this denotes my round length also. This is just so that I have an an easy way to observe what households need playing first.

Uni subhoods will always be placed into the Fall season, to help with their skill building wants!

When it comes to uni sims, I will note down the day they moved out (always waiting until after 12) and then work out the amount of days from that move. So for example, if Tybalt moves to uni Tuesday night, he will move back Sunday morning if he takes a course that is only 4 years long.

This means that different degrees have different lengths, these are;

7 years will pass for these degrees;

Mathematics, Biology, Political Science,

5 years will pass for these degrees;

Physics, Psychology

4 years pass for these degrees;

Philosophy, Drama, Art, Economics, History, Literature

School

School in my game works basically the same, barring a few changes, I use simlogicals school changer controller to allow me to pick different schools for my sims.

I have created a few different boarding schools for sims children and teens, I manually charge them the cost as each school has a different cost associated. As I play with traits, if a sim has a certain trait they cannot attend that particular school.

I will randomise the skills and traits when they return before they age up, and again manually add them if I need to.

Within the Crumpulator I have a randomiser to work all this out for me on page 2.

Different schools focus on different skills, these skills will be randomised between 1-10. They also get given the hidden skill associated with the school too, such as meditate or study etc.

Not every sim will go to a boarding school, just those rich enough! I need to spend their cash somehow!

I have made a witch school also, but I will talk about that next.

Occults

Occults are allowed in my game, but mainly Witches and 'Aliens'.

For Aliens I use platasp's galaxy overlays for second / third etc generations,

Witch School - I have another school type, "Hogwarts", sims only require to be a witch to attend her, after if they are sent away I will give them the hidden witch skill, plus some randomised skills between 0-6.