Originally Posted by Annababy

Personally, I have three entire neighborhoods going (I long ago erased Strangetown, etc.). Each neighborhood has a different theme thing going on. One hood is straight out picture perfect, no cheating, playing as intended, which I've had going for a long time.
The second hood is my Springerville, where everyone is bi, no one gets married, everyone cheats on their lovers, everyone has multiple babies by multiple partners (naturally, inteen and insem are happily used here). Most of the sims are romance or pleasure sims, and cheating is the expected thing.
My 3rd hood is my legacy challenge hood, except I have my own set of rules, in that every day that passes represents one year, so the founder started out in 1800. The rules for what items I can use on the lot, who can have what kinds of jobs and when, etc. are rigorously adhered to depending on the year. For example, women couldn't have real jobs for a long time, and then were limited in how far they could promote, which I'm keeping to. Gay sims have to keep it secret--if they are found out, they lose their chance to be heirs (until 1975, according to my rules). Makes it tough. It's 1942 right now, and my heir (males only, of course, until 1960) had to quit his job as a detective to join the military, which he'll have to stay in for the next few 'years.' Anyway, this challenge is especially fun because families don't get filthy rich within a generation or two--takes longer, especially for the early generations who only farmed--, it makes heavy use of custom content to redecorate every few years to keep up with the styles of the time period, same with clothing.

Whatever, the point being is that play according to different rules--or no rules at all--in different neighborhoods.

Originally Posted by FranH

In order to keep the information about each household more or less intact, I've finally found a program that allows me to list out a few lines about the households as I'm playing with suitable editing-it's a diary program, and it's free.
http://www.splinterware.com/products/idailydiary.htm

It looks like a real diary, and it lets you type in unlimited lines of text-with formatting included. Great way to track this stuff and keep tabs on where the hood is at in game play. This will definitely help my game stay interesting for a long while!

Originally Posted by ForeverCamp

I actually just came up with this while I was plotting out my 'hood for the Prosperity is Random challenge by SamanthaSSJ.

If you have Uni and you're sick of the studying and getting into university free and with Fs, try this (I'm not sure if there's a mod for this or not):

Before the happy little teen heads naively off to university, ding their household funds for a specified amount of 'tuition' for at minimum the first semester of university. I calculated mine at 2000$/semester, based on the approximation of how much my real-life uni costs me a year (if you want it harder - make it more! Want it more accessible? Make it less!). A prospective uni student's earnings at their job - and any scholarship money they may have earned - can go towards that initial 2000 and subsequent semesters' tuition. Then, at the start of every semester, subtract the next payment (grant money counts) - don't have the cash? Well, in real life, you don't pay the tuition, you don't go to class. They must drop out of university.

Example:
John Smith (teen) wants to go to university and study biology, which will cost him 2000 a semester. His family is a low-income household (less than 2000 in the family funds).

He has a part-time job that has made him earn a total of 900 simoleons (so 2000-900=1100 left to pay). He has also earned 750 in scholarship money (1100-750=350).

Now you have two choices for John (or three, if you choose to implement some sort of student-loan system):
1. No university for you! Your family can't help (if they have less than 350) / won't help (if they have more than 350).
2. Subtract 350 from the family funds and send little Johnny to work hard, study hard and become a fabulously rich doctor!
* 3. This would come into play IF you chose to make some sort of student-loan system. Send John to university, but he's now 350 in debt to the Repo-Man Loans Agency. Any further loans on his tuition are accumulated and must begin to be paid off after graduation (a real realist? Charge 'im interest after grad - the student loans where I study, any way, don't start accumulating interest until after studies are complete).

Keep in mind that while in university, students still have bills to pay - it might keep it slightly more interesting to play, now that they have a heavier load to bear. Studying hard might make the load easier, since they get more grant money, but it won't do much for their social life!

EDIT:
I've discovered that this is apparently something like the University portion of the Build-a-City challenge. I'm not as smart as I thought was, .

Originally Posted by negneg189

I've always found, that when stuck in my game, being boring, I always go vanilla. Perhaps it's just me, but I've found that with my CC, I focus more on the appearance of the sims than on storylines.