I recently discovered the concept of Want-Based play - the idea that unless your sim rolls a want for something, you're not going to direct them to do it.

It's been fascinating so far. So many of my teens just don't do their homework because they don't want to, they don't want an A+, they don't fear a failing grade, and their parents don't want them to be overachievers. I had to add a rule that most parents wouldn't let their teens go out to community lots if their grades dropped below a C to force some of my D grade students to do their work before the social worker showed up to take their younger siblings away.

I also had university students end up on academic probation for the first time because they didn't want to gain the skill points needed to pass the threshold for getting a passing grade.

Now, in another thread, I see some people don't even have their sims get jobs if they don't want one. How does that even work? How does your sim survive if they never earn any money - is it that they want to write or paint all the time or something?

So for those of you who play this way, what are your rules? How does it work? What extremes have you encountered?
Thanks!

Playing want-based has changed my simming experience entirely. Peni is the one who inspired me to play this way. Her posts in different topics about this subject always made me want to play The Sims and her way of playing definitely suited me. Just like you, I love seeing how different my sims are. No one has the same 4.0 GPA, because they're all inherently different. It's great!

The whole job thing works out just fine, because most of my sims aren't on their own. They mostly live with other people and those people always end up wanting a job, so I haven't encountered any struggles with not having any money because no one wants a job. I do have families that struggle to get by because they don't earn a lot and they don't want a promotion. It's kind of hard to pay the rent if you don't earn enough! It does make for challenging gameplay and that's always what I'm looking for.

Sims don't get promotions if they don't roll wants for skill points or promotions. Sim kids don't do their homework unless they want an A+ or want to do their homework. No one gets engaged or married unless they want to. ACR makes for a nice addition to that. Sims fall in love on their own and it makes for nice and less nice surprises, but it's definitely always fun. Now I have an elder who's in love with one of my adult sims, but her son is also attracted to the same sim and I'm always looking around, hoping for some drama happening. I feel like playing based on wants also comes with letting your sims free roam and giving them the space to take the wheel. That's definitely what my sims have been doing, at least. It's the most fun I've ever had with the game!

I don't actually have social workers in my game, but I don't think they come if one or more teens have low grades? Low grades for teens stop them from getting/keeping jobs; I don't think that they have any other consequences?

I'm just making myself a snack, then I'll be back to answer your questions. I'm a big fan of want-based play and I love writing about how I do things and reading about how others do it! :-)

I play by wants but not 100% by them.

Added to wants is sims motivation/smarts. Neatness+ activity -playful points. If a sim scores 0 or less they are either unmotivated or may be learning challenged. I don't direct these sims very much at all. Even if they have the want to skill they can't do so unless either they do so autonomously or another sim with a higher motivation level asks them to join. I have a few mods that make autonomous skilling possible. Some of these sims are simply stubborn such as the uni cow. If she can get someone else to do her work she will. Unfortunately, nobody else can skill for her.

A sim who scores 1-7 is an average sim and these are the ones I mostly play to wants. Again not everything. If sims A wants a baby and their partner Sim B doesn't have a want or fear I may still let them have a baby. Kind of depends how nice sims B is.

Sims who score 8+ are highly motivated/gifted. These sims skill from toddlerhood. I expect them to get high scores at UNI, hold down professional jobs. They skill if they have a want to or not. So not doing homework as a teen isn't an option.

I play almost exclusively by wants. I like to let my Sims make their own choices and take their own paths in life.

I don't direct them to get jobs, woohoo, try for baby, make friends, study or do homework, or even work on their skills if they don't roll a want to do so. This makes every Sim different and you can really see their individual personalities and behaviors. It's part of what makes The Sims 2 so special to me. Playing this way makes every Sim feel like a unique little pixel person. They all have their own wants, desires, and dreams.

The only things I "make" my Sims do are take care of their basic needs. I won't let them starve or not sleep or pee themselves (if I can help it). Everything else is up to them!

I'm looking forward to trying some of this out too, Coriel. I'm experimenting with it right now but it's a little hard to implement because I'm doing a challenge. Jo's post on how she plays her rotations way back when got me started thinking about creating rules for my gameplay and Cindy's Pleasantview LP continued that interest. I do pay attention to what my sims want and try and take that into account but mostly I swing from the two extremes -- very controlling and my Sims do/achieve exactly what I set out for them or I'm completely hands off and just watching them like they're fish in a fish tank.

Great thread! I hope more people share.

Too many babies and too much woohoo, that's how it works.

Like Jo, I do use a motivation scale to assist me in want-based play. I'm still working on the details though (I'm realizing that I'm a simmer that loves to plan more than she plays ). Right now only my overachievers can skill or do things without rolling a want for it. Everyone else has to roll a related want to do something. It has been a bit of a struggle to differentiate average sims from underachievers, so I'm currently in the midst of designing a job tier system to compliment my motivation system. Underachievers will eventually be restricted to jobs that have lower wages and that are less technical/require no special skills, while average sims have a little bit better opportunities. In this way, sims with the highest paying jobs that require lots of skills have really earned it. (Class will play a bit of a role too, since motivation is based on personality which is genetic and isn't something a sim can change easily. So if a sim is rich enough, their class and status can buy them into the right schools where they can learn more skills and into the Academie, whose degrees will unlock the highest tier jobs. What a sim does with all that opportunity and education is still up to them, but at least the Roths and Goths of my hoods can push their kids in the right direction.)

Anyway, I can't say I've observed too much differences in my main gameplay yet, but that's probably because I'm too chicken to stick to the rules, especially when it comes to toddlers. (It just doesn't seem fair, toddlers almost always roll wants to learn their skills, it's the parents who don't always want to teach them! I can't decide whose wants are more important.)

Anyway, my sims love rolling wants for a job even when I don't want them to have a typical Maxis career, so I don't really have that problem yet. I do try to let ACR and sim wants dictate romances, though. And let me tell you, plenty of my sims love annoying me by refusing to pick a partner to commit to. Or they're very go-with-the-flow and sleep with/date anyone with the slightest suggestion--from anyone, mind you, not just me.

For example, I just spent a somewhat trying two weeks with Lilith, trying to get her to figure out her life. She just graduated and, since her intended fiance was stolen/seduced away by Angela, Lilith moved back home with her mom and her mom's new husband. Job pickings were weak and nothing she was interested in came up so I had her date around a bit. But she never really wanted to be attached to anyone. She hooked up with old flames from uni and some main hood playables but none felt right, or she didn't roll wants for them. I do have some bachelors in need of wives, but I didn't want to just marry her off to anyone. Lilith is the last Pleasant since Angela married Francis J. and became a Worthington; I don't really want to give up the name for nothing. If she was going to marry and give up her name, it better be for someone she actually wanted to marry, you know?

So I was stuck on what to do with her and her wants weren't helping. She did get a job in athletics eventually--her ltw--and after that I had her move out and get an apartment downtown because she was getting to be a distraction from Mary-sue's new family. She could throw some parties and make new friends while I waited for her to roll a want that told me who she wanted to settle down with. So there she was downtown, living with roommates in an apartment that was a bit too expensive, still dating up a storm. I kept having her date Ashley Pitts, as he would be a great sim to move in and take her last name, but she didn't want to marry him. Fine. She had an on-again, off-again relationship with Leod McGreggor but she wouldn't roll wants to marry him anymore. Whatever. I wasn't about to make her move to the country and give up her last name to become a stay-at-home baby mama unless she really wanted it. No matter how desperate Leod got. Time to look for someone else. Frustrated, I had her invite over all her male friends she had good chemistry with. ACR decided she wanted Beau Broke. About this I was not happy, as I had grown up Beau and sent him to college with Marsha Bruenig. I had planned that match for ages and Beau was one of the few sims in the hood that got to move in a townie significant other before I started my 'Playables Only' rule. But, if that was what Lilith wanted, I would let her have him. She tried to get close to him, but Beau, the good family sim he was, refused. This made her roll the want to flirt with him. Ok, I thought, now I can help out and direct her advances.

This time Beau accepted. They dated several times, but still no get engaged/married want! And now poor Beau is confused, rolling wants to be with her one minute and Marsha the next. Fine. I'm not happy about it, but fine. Who else is in her relationship panel? Dustin? Well, I don't really want them to get back together--they had a causal relationship in their late teens and throughout college, but I'm not convinced Lilith isn't just trying to get back at Angela for stealing Dirk all those years ago. Or maybe I'm just biased against the relationship from a previous hood, long ago. (I once married her and Dustin years ago but throughout the marriage she kept rolling wants to fall back in love with Don, who knocked her up then left her. I think I restarted the hood just because I was so angry about that.)

Well, anyway, Dustin wasn't in a serious relationship, so, fine. What the heck, maybe she has a thing for Broke men? I let them date a few times and--Bam! Rolled a want to get married to Dustin.

At least I'm sure of what she wants now, though I haven't decided how I'll spin the story behind the want.

So yeah, that's what want-based playing is for me right now--it leads to relationship drama. I find that interesting, and I like to see how my sims' wants mix with my expectations for them, their backstories, and their class/social roles.

The other area I've noticed a big difference is in uni, especially as I have a harder grades mod. Keeping sims from flunking and encouraging them to skill autonomously all while making friends and having a busy social life is quite the challenging mini game and a nice break from the main hood once in a while.

I should probably start playing this way.

My game has too many Mike Rosses.

Why I would not say I play want-based, I definitely take their wants into account and try to give them most of what they want - but wants also tends to change if you make them do other things,

Example - they will not roll a want to make pottery if they don't have a pottery wheel - but once they do, that want replaces another one.

Since I had some sims out to eating pancakes at a restaurant last night, all of them now want to eat pancakes in the morning and some of them want to learn to make it as well

You're right Laura. Very early in my game, when my only mod was Phaenoh's phone book, Julian Moltke's grades dropped to F. He was in love for the first time, and he was upset about being fined for a hoax call when there really was a fire. He was actually squatting in the front doorway trying to do his homework when the fire broke out. He left his homework and bravely ran into the burning house to reach the phone and raise the alarm. And then he got fined! No wonder he found it hard to concentrate on homework for a while. But, apart from a message that he was one of the worst pupils on the school, there were no ill effects for the family. His younger siblings certainly didn't get taken away. (In fact Brigitte is just about to become a teenager.) (Unlike Andrew) he didn't even behave badly. He wasn't looking for a job (if he didn't have time to do his homework, how would he have time to do a job?), so it really had no ill effect at all. Today, when he confidently does his homework in a few minutes before 'phoning Andrew and inviting him round for some fun, it seems incredible that both boys once were at the bottom of their class with F grades.

I pay a lot of attention to my Sims' wants, but I don't let them dictate events. I try to fulfil their reasonable wants because I like them to be happy. I generally don't fulfil wants that would likely do harm to themselves ort to other Sims. For example I would always ignore a want to see the ghost of an adversary. Because all of us find that we hate some other people at some time in our lives. But, fortunately, very very few of us go on to murder the ones we hate. But I do let wants help to inform me about my Sims characters, and sometimes I "fulfil" wants even when they no longer have them. For instance Bill McBain (Pleasure) kept wanting to stay home from work, despite the fact that his LTW was to reach the top of his career. When his wife Jenny (Family) had twins, it was clear that one of them would have to stop work to look after the new additions to the family. Jenny is a conscientious police officer. So I gave Bill his wish. Now he never has to go out to work. But sometimes, when trying to cope with two screaming toddlers, I think he realises that "work" was actually easier! (And he got paid for it! )

I just can't get my head round the idea of only doing homework when you want to do it. In my 13 years of schooling I had homework that I wanted to do maybe five times in total. The rest of the time I did it because I was terrified of the consequences of not doing it! Only doing it when I wanted to? It's as absurd as only going to school when I wanted to. I don't think I would have gone very often. If at all! I hated homework, and didn't think much of school. They were just necessary evils that had to be endured. So my Sims almost always do their homework -- eventually. But I downloaded Jenflower's homework mod for them so they don't get it every day.

I find so far that I am using Want-Based play as a way to stop myself from doing things that I otherwise always did, even though it didn't make sense for that sim.

For instance, I always did my homework. I used to always direct my teens to do homework - which gave them less time to go out and meet friends or date. Now, if they don't roll the want, they don't do homework because, unlike in the real world where if you can complete an assignment and still get a low grade, in the sims if you complete it all the time, you're definitely going to get an A. All my sims used to get As, but now a bunch let their grades drop. I'm excited that I'm going to be able to let teens drop to F without social worker consequences before a parent intervenes with consequences (unless I have parents who also don't care so much or are too distracted with their own lives). Then, if a teen has a D or and F when they should be going to college, TOO BAD. Which I never had happen before.

It does the same thing in University for me. Beau Broke is a Pleasure Seeker and he ended up on Academic probation and needed to unlock a body skill to even have the possibility of passing. He didn't roll a useful want and I had to trick him by taking him to the campus pool. Luckily wanted to go swimming and he isn't a college drop out like his older brother Dustin. (That boy is in trouble again. Check my Vote for what happens in my hood thread to find out about his disastrous life).

As for Phantom Knights comment about having trouble sticking to strict rules, me too. I definitely direct them to do things I want them to do, as long as they are fun or based on a story decision that was made. Also, if one sims wants something, and I want it too, then it can happen, even if not all the sims involved want it. Ex. Skipper Broke never had any interest in doing her homework, but Brandi wanted her to be an overachiever (top grades/top job). So Skipper worked on becoming those things.

I'm going to have to set up some of these motivational rules based on personality to decide who's got an additional advantage in my game. Currently I lock skills when they go to university at 5 points max per skill, 1 bonus in an area corresponding to aspiration. Then, depending on university grades and major, I unlock higher skill opportunities until they graduate. They also have the opportunity to unlock skills based on maxing out a hobby, learning one of the bookshelf skills (like parenting), etc. And through networking or outings and dates they are allowed to get their bonuses. Still, I'd like to start some out locked at 3 and other locked at 7 because some people struggle more than others. At the moment, I also don't allow my toddlers to skill even if they want to because I've found they are way way too advanced, but maybe I will reincorporate based on the ideas you are all bringing forward.

Keep them coming! This is SO interesting.

My kids all go to my playable school so they have no homework!

I use my Sims' wants as guidelines for how I have them behave, but only to a certain point. After all, I have to do stuff I don't want to do all the time

When it comes to homework, I've found the teens in my game almost never roll a want for it unless it's the morning of (and even then not always), so I use their interest in school as a % chance. If they don't roll a want by 6pm, I use an RNG to determine whether they do it that day or not.

I ran into a similar issue at Uni - only using their wants led to most of my sims flunking out, mostly because they rarely rolled a want for the necessary skills. So I use a system where they automatically gain the necessary skills when they go to class, but they have to have a want to go to class or to do any form of studying/grade raising. I've found this to be pretty balanced.

I do try to use their wants to determine things like relationships (though I cheat a bit for non-Family sims and send 'em on dates to ensure they actually roll relationship-related wants) or whether they have kids (with a 3 pregnancy cap per household, because I've discovered any more than that and I start to hate playing that family due to the chaos level). Jobs too, though occasionally I'll give them a little push if circumstances would nudge a normal person into it regardless of their wants. Ex: a recent family was hurting hard for money and had a new baby on the way. The dad was close to a promotion but missing a skill that he wouldn't roll a want for. I figured he'd be willing to do some skilling, even if he didn't want to, just to ensure his kid had a crib and changing table! In another example, I had a sim with a culinary LTW who was level 8, but randomly rolled a want to work in another field. I interpreted this as a momentary flight of fancy, rather than completely derail his life's work :P

I think I've been playing the want based style since I started playing the game. I guess in my mind that was the way you were supposed to play it. Now, I do it because I find it to be fun. Of course, I don't give my sims everything they want. Only the wants I find reasonable.

I also think that sims in some way know the difference between right and wrong. So, if they don't roll the want for getting a job and ending up losing their home; That's their fault, not mine. They know that they have to do some kind of work to earn money. If then roll the want of having woohoo with 10 sims, and end up with 10 children. Again, their fault.

AndrewGloria and Coriel bring up good points in regards to homework. Right now all of my sims always do their homework because that's what you're supposed to do. lol Going forward the kids will only do their homework if they roll a want for it (or one that necessitates doing their homework). But I also think family and fortune sim parents would make their kids do their homework whether they wanted to or not, so as a nod to that, if at all possible they can help their kids with their homework so it can be completed that way without anyone rolling a want for it.

There's still potential for some kids to do poorly now but I won't have to completely go against my that's-what-you're-supposed-to-do way of thinking. Thanks for the ideas!

I have some kids in home school now, so they only get homework once in a while

That's not the same as wanting to work. There are plenty of people in this world working in jobs that they hate. If they need the money my Sims get a job, whether they want one or not. Just like millions in Real Life.

A few of my Sims grow money trees instead of taking a regular job. But watering and harvesting a dozen money trees takes a fair bit of time and effort. My Sims say it is work; they're in the Financial Forestry career.

In past times playing, fulfilled following Wants::
-the Wants that base game's Prima Guide suggested
-Wants at age transitions; mainly the "birthday" sim/sims
-skill building Wants
-food-related Wants
-sometimes object buying Wants
-sometimes relationship building Wants
-sometimes job/career Wants
-occasionally other Wants

edit:: my rule for fulfilling any Want was if the Want did not contradict my plans for the character.

Since I interpret sims as complex characters, I always have a lot of different factors to juggle when deciding whether to fill a want, direct a sim to do something they don't have an active want for, free range them, lock a want or leave it to roll away, or whatever. Once I've played a sim a couple of days this is seldom a difficult decision to make, because I know them as individuals. Every sim, like every real person, develops in the context of certain cultures, experiences, and conditions which guide their behavior and, therefore, my choices on their behalf.

Harris Hawkins, for example, grew up poor in a large family. Keeping everyone fed took precedence over schoolwork, and older people were responsible for younger people; with the result that the only reason he wasn't taken by the social worker for poor grades was because a weekend came at an opportune time and he didn't bring home the F till he turned teen. He grew up into a Fortune sim because of the financial situation, and set about getting his grades up - partly based on expressed wants, partly based on his extremely serious nature. But both his family culture and his autonomous actions led him to take care of his younger siblings when necessary, even if it meant skipping school. By the time he went to college, he had A+ grades, and all through college he worked diligently, never cutting class or skipping a term paper, always getting the necessary skills to make dean's list - all based on his wants, and persistent fears of getting on academic probation. All very straightforward.

Then his little sister Pigeon went to college. Pigeon was Harris's special little sister, the one he skipped school for, the one he potty trained, and Encouraged, and fed, and played with, and taught to study, and read to, and took on outings, and tucked in, who called him every night at college. Pigeon grew up under less of a financial cloud than Harris did, but she took a Fortune aspiration because it was plain to me that he was her role model, even though their personalities were very different. He's ten points nice, she's one point grouchy, most notably, but she's also much, much more playful. So she comes to college with a different set of wants, bit also with a strong motivation to do things the way Harris did them. So she didn't work on skills without an enabling want ("make dean's list" counted as an enabling want), but I felt free to lock any wants that I thought would be ones she thought she should want because of Harris's example; and she did every term paper and went to every class, regardless of whether her grade bar could benefit from it or not. As she matured, What Would Harris Do became less of a touchstone for her, but due to her background and Harris's influence, I have consistently treated her as putting her responsibilities ahead of her wants if they came into conflict. But I also found that, being Pigeon, she tended to arrange things so that her wants and her responsibilities tended to complement each other rather than conflicting.

Pigeon's oldest sister Sadie, however, treated her family-defined responsibilities as secondary to her responsibility to herself. Not that she didn't love her family; but she wasn't about to let their needs get in the way of her LTW. Instead of moving back home, as she "should" have done after graduation, she moved downtown, where she worked hard in the athletic career and dated a lot, only returning to her old neighborhood after Pigeon had embraced the "daughter who returns home and becomes the new head of household" job, after Sadie was already a top athlete, after she'd married the lover her family disapproved of and had kids on her terms, not those of the Hawkins family. The same family culture influenced her, but she was rebelling against it. A younger sister, Sparrow, who attracted men like flies, got a Family primary and a Romance secondary, and the conflicts between those aspirations - the one she was trained to, the one she was biologically inclined toward - guided her play. I had rules about when I would and wouldn't direct her to follow which set of urges.

A sim whose children are starving will take the highest-paying job he can get, regardless of what it is. A sim with a financial cushion or no responsibilities will hold out for an LTW career. A married sim with a child outside the family will behave differently toward both family and child depending on contingent circumstances and personality. A Pleasure sim might not be allowed to lock wants, to simulate an impulsive, irresponsible attitude; but that same sim can have a character arc involving stepping up to the plate in a crunch and learning to take responsibility.

All sims are created equal; but not all sims are the same. That'd be boring. You don't have to play all of them exactly the same way, either; and whether you do that by feel, like me, or with "motivation scores" like Jo, or by some other method, you'll find that building in some flexibility will only increase your fun.

I had one instance (in Tinsel Town) that I attribute solely to playing to wants only.
Darrell Walton is a very lazy man. Unambitious, unmotivated, the nine yards. For many years he coasted along on welfare and his painting. Paid the bills, had some fun, lots of friends, etc. He wasn't unhappy.
Then one day, I played his house and he'd developed a want to get a job in the architecture career! I was surprised and pleased. It was the first time since he'd gotten fired so many years ago that he'd shown any interest in work. So he got a job in it. He's now a foreman and doing well. I don't think he's so ambitious that he wants to actually be an architect, but to just be doing something to improve himself and prove himself worthy of earning a paycheck.

Way back when I first started playing, I played a Tester family exclusively to wants, not giving them any instructions unless it was to fill a want, just to see what would happen. It was horrible. The mother never took a single bath; she spent a lot of time yelling about low comfort, which a bubble bath would have taken care of, but she didn't roll a want for it so I left her to her own devices and she'd just sponge bath in the kitchen and then yell some more. The teen boy nearly burnt the house down (would have done, in real life) when he decided he wanted toaster pastries just before the school bus came, and then left them in the oven when he went to school. Nobody ever rolled a want to care for the toddler, who spent most of his time hungry, filthy and crying in his crib. If his crying woke his parents, they just got up and went somewhere else. The only one who tried to care for him was the teen girl - she never rolled any wants, either, but she would autonomously bathe him, and the number of times she'd just got the little mite into his high chair, or was bringing him a bottle, and the idiot mother scooped him up and dumped him back in his crib . . . It ended with the social worker, of course, and the girl was devastated. I kept her when I went on to play the hood, and somebody adopted the toddler, but I killed off the rest of the family (by moving them to the Family Bin and deleting them - oops!).

After that I went too far the other way for a while, and everybody was getting an A at school and reaching the top of their chosen career, which got boring. Now I follow their wants with regards to things like homework (except children, who have to do it), skills, jobs (everyone has one, except a few stay-at-home mothers, but if they have a preference I try to meet it), relationships and having babies, but they have to take care of their babies and toddlers whether they want to or not - fear of changing a diaper is no excuse!

Regarding homework, whether I feel like doing them (ha! just like in real life) I send the kids to do them. I don't have much concern over it for teens to do it sooner than children, because of the fact social workers don't target them and most of them in the current don't have jobs to stress for getting fired from. Though I might be planning ditching the vanilla school system and start my own established education in the simnation after I have the dedication to search such threads that players shared their own implimentation.

I direct Sims to do things for the following reasons:

0) not doing it would be absurd in context (if one of my Sims is going to try to get something from a room I know is on fire, I will stop them - they're better off oblivious to the fire, unless I think they can help extinguish it).
1) if there's a Want they have that I'm interested in meeting and is compatible with their character/situation.
2) if it's something I think that character would do anyway and it fits into a plotline I have in mind.
3) I'm bored, want to shake things up a bit and a Want looks like it would be just the ticket to do so.

Teens who want to do homework may be asked to do someone else's homework or their own, depending on what's available (I have the "homework sometimes" mod). This is a good example of something I might do for any of the above reasons:

0) Child will be taken by the social worker and, apart from the serial lack of homework, is doing quite well in this family, thank you very much. (A child who would be better off in the unrealistically-nice orphanage or monastery than in their current home may be allowed to skip homework anyway and be taken, but that is an extreme way to resolve a bad family situation, in my book).

1) Child who has an active Want to do homework, or do something that requires homework (such as a desire to go to university - in my game, that's only for students at A- or above).

2) Child who is generally diligent about their studies and has no obvious reason for suddenly not being so, or they are trying to be elected to the town Planning Council and realise learning about the world, such as in the homework they pursue, will help them to do this.

3) Child (most likely a teen) who rarely/never does homework, but is getting boring as a straight-F student (perhaps because they were in a storyline that finished, but haven't adjusted their behaviour because Sims can't read human minds very well).

Stressed Sims, for their own sake, get exempted from all this. There were days when I couldn't do homework I brought home, no matter how much I wanted to (usually I didn't want to, but that was because I found it made it harder rather than easier to learn... ...but Sims don't seem to have this problem, so I happily encourage homework in some cases when they'd rather not). It would be cruel to make a Sim do homework if they are consistently uncomfortable or preoccupied with something else to the point of constant distraction. (Also, I wouldn't be cruel enough to require a Sim to do homework during a party unless they were showing signs they wanted some excuse to not be partying!)

A Sim that doesn't roll a want to get a job, doesn't get asked to be someone else's employee (if the potential employee is unemployed, that's done strictly according to the potential boss's wants) and needs money will either do a side hustle (such as bartending or playing an instrument for tips) or open a home business (because I very rarely get Sims wanting to do this, for some reason). Which it is depends on my read of their character, circumstances (a family might work at the local park, with one parent running the coffee stand, the other singing for Simoleons, and the children taking turns to staff the lemonade stand) and also their skillset - I'm not going to force someone with zero creativity to join a local rock band for money, because my Sims have ears (the listeners) and pride (the performer). I take a lack of desire for a career as a desire to do something else to make ends meet. I don't assume Sims actually want to see the Repo Man, and thankfully the game has lots of alternatives!

University seems to be a varied experience for me. I've have people romance their way through university, study through, set up bands and, in one case, start a business. Incoming students tend to have lopsided skill profiles (often 8-10 in 1-2 areas, 1-3 in 1-3 more and nothing in the others), which helps shake things up.

This thread has help me come up with ideas for my own game--so thanks, Coriel_Muroz! I think I finally found a way to distinguish playing my average sims from playing my underachievers; I'll direct underachievers less and give them a bit more freedom of choice.

See, normally, when I need my sims to do something but they don't have a want to do so, I "encourage" them to do it themselves. Take skilling for example. I have several sims in uni who don't like to roll wants to skill. But, for most part, a lot of skilling can be done autonomously--or with mods in, completely autonomously, though it may take some work. So if my sim needs logic points but they don't have a want to gain a skill point/be on dean's list/have a fear of being on academic probation, etc., etc., what I do is direct them to stand really close to a chess table or a telescope and let object advertising do it's work. About eight or nine times out of ten, the sim will sit down and start playing chess or start using the telescope rather than walk to another room to do something else.

Similarly things can be done with socials, although it can be a bit more complicated. Like, if there's a sim I want my sim to start a relationship with, but they aren't showing any interest/rolling wants--you can fulfill wants until romantic ones show up. Say the sim I need to roll the want has a want to Talk About Hobby (and don't they always?); well, family and popularity sims often roll more wants to socialize with the same sim after it's fulfilled. So I have the sim Talk About Hobby with the sim I want them to get involved with. Then I fulfill the socialize wants (Entertain, Tell Sim a Joke, Play with Sim, etc.) until Appreciate Sim comes up. At that point, instead of using the regular Appreciate, I'll have them give sim B a backrub--which usually leads to more romantic type wants.

In that way, I influence sims into thinking the things they do are their ideas. But now I'm thinking that underachievers should get less "encouragement" and I should have a rule where I can only encourage them a certain amount of times per day or something. This way sims' motivation level should match the level of my involvement in their affairs--overachievers will do everything they can to get that Platinum grave and Perma-Plat status, average sims will do an average amount of work to get it, and underachievers will do whatever they feel like doing to achieve their goals.

As for toddler skills, I think I'm still going to try and make sure everyone learns everything, even the nursery rhyme (somethings I like having older siblings teach their younger siblings the rhyme), but I won't stress it if the toddler grows up without learning some things. This way everyone should start off from the same base, with the same level of encouragement. Then where their lives go from there will be up to them. I'll save Teaching to Study for those with overachiever parents/guardians and private school students, though. And I like the whole "waiting until they roll a want to do homework idea". So I think I'll do that but also maybe either start school later or wake kids up earlier so that they have some time to do it in the morning. I do use Harder Harder Grades, though, so kids really shouldn't improve their grades unless they also have the required skills. Anyway, I'll have to see how this goes, if I end up with a bunch of homeless, degenerate sims, or something, all because I was too hands off. Should be a fun experiment.



I have some links saved already, if you need:
shameless plug for my own thread, Sim School: A Resource and Discussion Thread (I also attached a very rough first draft of a list of skilling objects teens & kids can use to learn skill points, if you're like me and wanting to build schools where sims autonomously learn skill points, not just do coursework)
Tell me about your school
Simlogical schools- Pros? Cons? Opinions? Muffins?
How do I control my sims at school? (Simlogical school)
Adult night school scenarios
How do you go about running schools?
Do you run your own schools?
And, on a less related note, but still good reading for choosing school activities: Not All Hobbies Are Created Equal