I'm not including Superstar's Fame career, since going to work with your sim makes it very different from the others. But which of these do you most enjoy playing? And why do you like it?

Base game careers
Athlete
Business
Crime
Entertainment
Law Enforcement
Medicine
Military
Politics
Science
X-treme

Livin' Large careers

Hacker
Journalism
Musician
Paranormal
Slacker

Unleashed careers

Animal care
Circus
Culinary
Education
Fashion

I hate building Body skill, because the exercise bench drains Energy while you use it, resulting in my having to put sims to bed ridiculously early. (One can mod the bench, of course, but I use cheats less often than I used to, since I find the game less fun with them than I did before.) So any career that requires more than 3 or 4 Body skill is out for me.

I like building Logic -- sims can sit in a comfy chair AND have some fun AND socialize with the person they're playing with, and I also like building Creativity. They have to stand up to paint (unless you use the sitting easel at SomeSimThings), but they do at least gain fun from it.

I'm not wild about building Charisma, though I like it better now that I've made my silent mirror, so I don't have to listen to them jabber for hours at a time. :-)

So I want a career with no Body or only low Body, with a lot of Logic and a lot of Creativity, with relatively little Charisma, with not a huge friend requirement, that pays pretty well.

So I play a lot of Science. In large households, where other sims are bringing in plenty of money, I usually have one sim in the Circus career, because the career outfits for levels 5 and above are hilarious. If you've never played the upper levels of the Circus career because of the low pay, do try it someday!

I usually pick a high paying career - army or police to start and then switch as soon as a requirement for promotion is needed. That way, my Sims build up their funds quickly and they work on skills as they can. I don't really focus on friendship until much later and then start to settle them in a career. Which ones depends on the character I'm thinking of. Roger Roger, for example, has an army career. That isn't my favorite, however, because it burns so much energy. I agree that the Science one is fun. The psychic is interesting, but the hours are bad. Education isn't bad to maintain at the top (Goth Sr).

That's an interesting strategy! Lots of promotion bonuses, for sure. :-)

I like them all and I play them all. I like my sims to have careers that fit their personalty. I play mostly the same sims over and over in different neighborhoods. Some of them have a long and complicated backstory from back in the day when me and my friend wrote photo story for each other. I can't imagine Bobo Buxbaum being anything else than a hacker. And Camilla Sinensis, a very accomplished witch, has to follow the paranormal path. Aunt Tilly on the other hand, a witch as well, is a herb expert and must be in the medicine career.
When I create a totally new sim, I look at their interests. You can't be a hacker if you are not at all interested in technology. You will never be a good cook if hate talking about food.
The other day I played some vampires. They where very successful in the business field.
I didn't like the Superstar job because at the top they all work in the afternoon and evening. Not a good work life balance, not even for a sim. So I changed the top jobs with the career creator. Now the work from 10:00 to 17:00 and their families are much happier. (And they tend to work from home anyway.)
Only the slacker career I played only twice. Once to find out that it is the hardest career of them all and once because I had to punish a very unfortunate sim. She was such a beauty and all the other sims liked her. But she was one of the most impossible sims I ever played. Tell her to clean the dishes and you can be sure that she takes one dish at the time and walks not to the dishwasher or the kitchen sink - no, this sim finds a reason to go all the way to the bathroom. With every single dish. And she brakes the sink in the process. Tell her to look for a job and she breaks the computer. Tell her to go to work and next time you look she is in the pool. But what can I tell you - she did really well as a slacker. It was her third job and last chance and it was the only job she did not manage to loose.

I like all the thought you've given to this! And I'm amused at the idea of punishing a sim when the random number generator makes an object break. Sounds like you're a vengeful god! :-)

Vengeful?!?! At least I don't turn them into bone thin slaves for the rest of their closeted existence. ;-) ;-) ;-)

Of course I know that it is only a random number generator. But when I play it's much more fun to imagine it's the sims with their strange little personalities.
When you stop playing the game and start to play with the game - allow the sims to be persons in your imagination - they sometimes do very strange and funny things. Last week I was wondering who could be the love interest of Ebenezer, a very new sim. Two possible candidates came to mind, Esmeralda and Hanna. Both happened to be visiting. So I thought to my self, it is going to be the one who next interacts with Ebenezer. And in that exact same moment Esmeralda left the house, obviously in a state of panic.




(One of Ebenezers housemates had been bothering her all evening with bragging over and over again, but where is the fun in that?)

I feel this sooo much. I'm also a character and story-focused player, so I try to align my sim's decisions with their personalities and interests.

Between playing The Sims for the first time and reinstalling it on my PC over the summer, almost 20 years have passed, so I can't remember all of my early career experiences. I know the xtreme career was fun, but my main sim was an aspiring superstar, so I spent way more time working my way up the ladder of fame with her. Since reinstalling the game, I want to try out all the careers! I'm especially interested in the circus, paranormal, and fashion careers, and will probably create sims to try them out if none of the premades fit the bill.

What I love about TS1 careers in general is how outrageous they can be. I've spent most of my simming years with TS2, and found myself wishing for things like the circus and xtreme careers. Recently, though, I've realized even the "normal" careers can be exciting. I'm looking forward to experiencing it all in my current game. :D

Welcome back to TS1! I hope you'll have a great time!

If you're playing for the first time in awhile, you might not remember about the Maxis interest bug. New interests were added with the Hot Date expansion pack, but Maxis forgot to go back and ADD interests to their pre-made sims, so sims like Bob & Betty Newbie or Bella & Mortimer Goth had NO interests. And sims hate talking about topics they have no interest in, so they hate Every Single Topic of conversation. This gave rise to the myth that it's impossible to make friends in TS1.

It's easy to work around the bug, though! Just play the pre-made families for a minute, take them to any other lot (if you take them to an Old Town community lot, it doesn't even cost anything), and the game will generate interests for them while they're in transit. Bring them back to their home lot and save the game, and now that family will have interests.