That makes me think. Removing the ladder from the pool has become a Sims joke. Did it start with Sims 2? Or did it start with Sims 1 and Skip Broke's death was a nod to the joke?

It was in TS, though I don't remember what came first, drowning or burning to death. (Probably the latter, because it is achievable at the start; you had to have some money to get a pool.) What I do remember is that everybody was fascinated by these discoveries and that 'hoods all over the world were soon left empty.

The question becomes, has anyone had a sim die in a pool accidentally? I mean you basically have to force most deaths, the exception being fire and old age (and sunlight, if vampire).

(And, I do mean a genuine bona fide accident, they didn't intend their sim to die in the pool)

Nope. Never had a drowning death.

I think the only time was when I had a very unfortunate family in TS3. I either made a single dad or the wife died and I just decided to go with the flow. Then the dad caught fire while cooking. I tried to put him out in the pool, and... well... didn't work out. Probably because of low motives.

Been a while, so I'm a bit unsure if he died of the fire on his way to the pool, or from low motives/already being close to death in the pool, but it was one of the two.

Apart from that time, I don't think I've had sims die accidentally from a pool, no. It's always been an "accident" (and a lengthy one at that). In TS4 I even had to put fences around the pool, because they've figured out how to climb the edges... (I was just testing, didn't save )

Ah, thread drift. A kid drowned in Sims 1 because I was doing something in the house and didn't notice that someone was blocking the pool ladder and the kid couldn't get out. I was very upset and now I always have multiple pool ladders and lots of space around them.

Also I remember a sequence in a Prima guide that involved Bella and her side piece drowning Mortimer by removing a pool ladder.

Close, but still it seems the fire was the primary cause overall. (Without the fire none of that would have happened)


Those rascals!


Your first example is a genuine accidental death from a pool, I'm impressed!

The second example would require the player to intentionally remove the ladder, so it stops being an accident. (To be an accident, it must happen without player intervention or planning in my mind.)

I suppose someone new to building might not realise the ladder is necessary, and only add the diving board? Or perhaps using move objects and placing it in an inaccessible location?

It seems quite a hard death to happen entirely on its own and accidentally.

Yeah, that was me doing two thread drifts at once, the accidental drowning one and the removing the pool ladder joke one.

I think most genuine accidental drownings have been due to a glitch (which I consider an 'unfair' death and don't keep), such as a stuck invisible object blocking the ladder, or a building error making it easy for a sim to get stuck blocking the ladder (which I think was the problem when my Sims 1 kid died; it took me awhile to figure out how to prevent stuck sim syndrome). Sims can be stupid, certainly, but they are pretty good about getting out of the pool when they get tired and hungry.

It's my shortest-lived family ever in any sims game. There were accidents upon accidents (actual ones, the kind I tried my best to clear up/avoid). I don't think they even managed a full day (and this includes the multiple TS4 sims who insists on setting themselves on fire as first-time cooks)

Is it any wonder I set my game to free will off, put sprinklers everywhere there's chance of fire, and avoid other dangers like hot tubs for sims I actually care about?

No the only accidental deaths i had were starvation and fire.
For starvation idk what happened, i probably didn't check on my starving sim so i didn't know she was hungry and yes i am aware sims wave to tell the player their hungry and autonomously cook food, but i guess said Sim couldn't even eat. Another case i wanted to make my sim hungry via cheats and she died of starvation. Quit without saving after that.

For fire one of my sims did a kitchen chaos and killed off 2 household members. she did it twice lol. I meme that she's horrible at cooking

The tides of the thread drift may be stirring.


Hmm, it depends what we call a glitch. I mean, if it's the game being dumb for example an invisible stuck object blocking the way, fair do's that's unfair. On the other hand if the player made a build error[0] by placing something in the wrong place, arguably the death is fair, the player made the bed.

I agree, it's one of the few things sims are fairly self saving about.. my guess it's the one thing maxis devs tested this one a lot, for undisclosed reasons.

[0] Or maxis, I once noticed the showers are inaccessible in one of the unedited hobby lots. Nice layout, but sims can't use it.


Ironically, I have to mod my games to make them a little more disaster prone, I find in my game nothing bad ever happens by itself, even with autonomy on.

Well... except for yesterday but that was the nanny's fault. She thought it'd be a good idea to cook food, then walk away from the oven to go watch tv all the while the kitchen is burning down with more dangerous fires, simlars firemod and delayed fire department response times. She's just sat, in the same room, watching TV as it all burns down next to her.

Thankfully fire department got there in time (Fire alarm), and put it out. Oddly, my sim had a 'fight' option on the nanny after. I've never seen that happen for an unknown sim (She has never met the nanny before), what made it weirder is my sim has an almost full 'niceness' bar. Yet, the fight option was available. I guess she heard about the fire. She won the fight. The nanny truly deserved that fight, I had no issue with that.


I've had starvation on pregnant sims, fires and vampires go poof in sunlight. (The game is quite unforgiving to vampires in daylight: Go outside and tell that neighbour to stop ringing your bloody doorbell. *Poof* vampire dies. I've built a fence with a lockable gate around the front door now. No more doorbell for vamps.).

I've yet to see any other death happen naturally. So, it makes me wonder if the other death types occur without modding or forcing them.

I once used moveobjects on while installing a pool ladder and this somehow glitched it and made Sims unable to use it. (No, it wasn't backwards.) I now try to install two ladders if there's enough room for it.

I tend to prefer my sims alive and happy (unless they're part of a story )

TS2 and TS4 sims are for the most part easy to keep alive even without motive cheats (TS4 sims are the easiest, apart from the "zero cooking point = auto fire" issue). Haven't played TS3 in quite some time, so I can't quite remember, but I wasn't too shy of maxing motives there (not because I had to, but more because the game was a bit buggy, and the long distances made it really annoying to get anything done when sims were moving about collecting stuff). In TS2, as long as the families aren't extremely large, they're mostly manageable without the cheat, at least with good routines and a decent house outlay. I mostly do pictures these days, so I tend to do max motives and autonomy off for those. TS1 was a nightmare (but I barely played it, soprobably didn't get enough experience with it).