I was playing Seasons today and my female Sim was pregnant. Well, to make a long story short, I forgot to roll the pacifier and as the baby was being born and I was kicking myself for forgetting, alas, I discovered that the baby was different than it's brother. I exited without saving, then came back in, had the baby, and the baby's features had been changed again. I guess that firstborn syndrome has been fixed since Seasons.

Sorry, but... what's 'rolling the pacifier'?

Whoa! Wouldn't that be nice?

I've never heard the term "rolling the pacifier" before but if it's what I'm thinking about it's that in order to get children that aren't clones of each other, you have to exit the house before they're born, go into CAS, start like you're going to create a sim and click the randomize button several times. If you've managed more than one child during a play session it's unnecessary, but if you save and exit the game between births, the kids will be identical without playing around in CAS.

Oh. I didn't know that.

That explains why all of my Sim children look the same. XD

Mhh has this been confirmed or is this another Sim Myth?

Darn where's Jamie & Adam when you need them? :D

I don't know if it's confirmed or not. I'm just saying that for me, re randomizing the babies has become unnecessary since Seasons.

This has been a problem since the basegame. The randomize engine is sado-random...which means it doesn't really work. I still have cloned babies since installing Seasons. I find that I still have to 'roll the dice' before births. GAH.

I have never had to roll the pacifier in my game, the siblings never lookt he same even when born on different days.

ive always gotten the same look unless i have my sims give birth to two kids in one play session..ill have to pay more attention next time i play..i havent actually had my sims give birth yet when i hadnt already did somes from making a new family (since seasons i mean)

I was kind of wondering about this, I can't really remember but it seems that the same thing happened to me. I was playing a family I didn't really care about so I didn't really investigate or anything.. :S

It would be so nice though, if they did fix it. I *ALWAYS* forget to roll the pacifier..

I never even heard about it until this thread. I also never had the problems described, my guess is it's all in peoples head... :p

That's strange.
I have never rolled the pacifier and my children always look different.

Certainly not all in peoples' heads: definitely a real problem. You won't notice as much if the kids tend to alternate male/female, but if you check the personalities you'll see they are indeed identical, if the children were firstborn kids born in two separate play sessions without randomizing some sims first. Their appearances will be identical also, but, again, less easy to notice if you get a male, then female.

Off to run some tests to see if it's still happening in Seasons. I'll report back shortly.

Definitely not in peoples heads.


There are two sets of twins in this pic. Unfortunately, because of this problem, you'd assume that the twins were girl/girl, and boy/boy. But not the case. Each girl is sitting in front of her twin.

I've never had to "roll the pacifier" either and none of my kiddies look the same! I've heard the term but I've never understood it, so I never did it. :shrug:
Guess some of us are just lucky? :D

You don't roll the 'pacifier". You roll the randomizer...AKA DICE.

This is a basic game behavior thing, actually. There's no luck involved - it's the way the game works. I'd say more likely you're probably just not noticing, or you've had your sims have more than one child per play session.

And it appears to STILL be how the game works - including in Seasons, as I have just tested it and got identical children three times in a row.

Loaded the game, impregnated a sim, had her have the baby, grew the baby to adult, saved, and exited. Repeated twice more.

All three children are the same - same skintone (despite their parents being default light and dark, they have not gotten any in between), same hair and eye colour, same facial features (as much as one can tell with male and female sims - the female sims are identical twins in appearance), and same personality stats. Their interests are slightly different (but quite similar - within a few points of one another) but personality stats and sign are identical between all three.

Here's the two girls:



Slightly different facial expression and angle, and they randomized into different hair as they grew up, but definitely the very same face.

Rolling the pacifier is still necessary if you plan on having only one child per play session, or if you don't care that your sim kids born to a particular set of parents all have the same personality and facial features.

I noticed that rolling the pacifier also helps the gender odds where births are concerned...for a while I had only girls born in all my families, combining the parents' genetics very much in the same way (I didn't mind much because there were different families) however last time I did roll the pacifier and surprise! a boy, with different genetic combinations.

But, probably a coincidence.

FYI, Axe, it is a well known game problem.

Never had such problem myself, tho.

Gender is purely 50/50, Ghanima.

Yeah but somehow the few times I did roll the pacifier, it broke the girl only streak. I usually don't do it as my sims rarely have more than one child. Probably a coincidence. :P

Probably a coincidence, yes.

wow i have never noticed this before

I've never done the rolling the pacifier thing and rarely do my sims have kids that look significantly similiar. *shrug* Maybe it's a Your Mileage May Vary kind of thing.

No, it will always happen the same way under the right circumstances.

If you only have one child per play session, born to the same parents, without randomizing sims in some way (roll the pacifier, roll random sims, use MATY's lot debugger to reroll) they will -always- be identical. If you have more than one child per play session, or if you have done one of the above to randomize before the births, then the children will not be identical - in appearance and starsign/personality points.

Always.

Always always always.

It's more a Your Mileage Will Be Exactly The Same But You May Misread Your Spedometer If You're Not Looking For It Or If You Drive On a Boring Highway kind of thing.