career rules: a study on impoverishment

I've always had these career rules that I made up for my game, and I think I've mentioned them before, but never really talked about them in any detail. I haven't actually enforced these in quite a while, but writing these stories for Max and Bella recently reminded me of that. For a time, I was very strict about these, and they work kind of like the ROS do. Maxwell's father actually died of one of these when he was very young (Nina was still pregnant with Anjali at the time), which was part of their family's curse of bad luck - he was in an old custom extreme-adventurer career, and the story was that he died in a bungee jumping accident ;)

These are mostly an effort to make the Maxis careers more realistic, and give some risk for more interesting gameplay. And just to make things harder. I personally get very bored, very fast, when all of my Sims are at the top of their careers.

In addition to these, I also enforce having an appropriate college education for certain careers. To accomplish this, I use this uni careers hack by Syberspunk. The version I use is modified from his original, and I remember having to modify it heavily, which involved some pretty dorky knowledge of binary to hexadecimal math (you know, in case you thought I was kidding when I said I was a DORK, lol!).

So I'll follow up with my modified version (in its own post, here), so you don't have to go through the trouble ;)

Anyway, carrying on...

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Making careers/life harder:

#1: Pescado's Harder Jobs hack. Your university graduates will start lower on the ladder (which they should, none of this graduating into a level 9 job!), but this is okay because with the uni careers hack, the whole point of going to university is still to gain access to jobs they wouldn't get without the proper degree. I like Harder Jobs because it slows promotions and also limits the number of Sims allowed to occupy certain levels of certain careers.

(The AL reputation chance card crap sometimes overrides Harder Jobs, so that people get ridiculous promotions when they're not warranted, like Maxwell Shaw and Nathan Lind. But it's quite rare, or at least rare enough.)

#2: None of this heir/heiress business! Who do you know in real life who ever inherited their parents' house while they were still alive? Nobody? Okay, then stop it with your Sims! It's a very simple thing that will keep your Sims accumulation of wealth way down. Buying and furnishing a home is a huge way to spend a lot of money. Or if you want to keep the parents around in the same house, you can have your twenty-something take out a mortgage to buy the house from their parents. Or charge an inheritance tax if the home is transferred to the child as an inheritance.

I know though, nobody wants to play their empty nesters, right? There are other tricks to making middle-aged and elder couples fun to play (move them into group living situations, or keep them busy with businesses and hobbies). I think it's worth it to play my newly-graduated twenty-somethings living how they're supposed to live, in apartments and poor, lol!

Of course, a few of my lucky Sims still manage to have trust funds from their parents (my Riley girls, and the Jackson boys, to name a few), and this is fine. But the majority of my Sims, if their parents give them any money at all, will spend it on college tuition.

#3: Not everybody skills, and not everybody goes to college. This is probably the simplest way to keep a realistic distribution of wealth. From what I've seen of other people's neighborhoods, it seems I'm more able (or more inclined, at least) to keep my Sims really, really poor. Most of my families average a net personal worth of about $20-40,000, while I've seen screenshots from other hoods with bank balances in the hundreds of thousands.

This is partly because I keep them so busy with DRAMA that they're not able to sit around skilling. No skilling means no promotions. I'm okay with that. If they don't want to skill, or if they don't want a promotion, who am I to make them achieve one?

#4: College costs money! Tuition is expensive. (Current LCU tuition rates can be found here.) Not everybody can afford to attend college without scholarships. And the same rule applies for scholarships - if they don't want to skill for a scholarship, they don't get one.

One loophole is for my very high personality point Sims (7-8 points or higher), and they can study freely in certain areas. Neat Sims study cleaning, outgoing Sims study charisma, active Sims study body, serious Sims study logic, and all other skills must be rolled for.

#5: Not everybody who starts university will graduate. This is a true-to-life fact. Not everybody is cut out to graduate. If they don't roll the wants to keep their grades up, then they fail. I will let them fail, no matter how privileged they might be (as Keri has proven). If they fail, they must repeat the semester, and they must repay their tuition.

#6: Everybody pays taxes! Taxes are quite high in the Lake County area, and every bit of that money gets used for funding projects. Madison said she would lower taxes, but it's not looking likely, as the county has used it's allotment of tax money already, just three years into the term. (Doesn't it always work out that way?) Residents of Lake County pay 15% of their net personal worth every 2 years. Full details of the tax process here.

#7: One final trick I have to make things harder, is downloading a crapload of low-paying non-degree custom careers. This way, each day your Sim searches for a job, there will be less chance they'll get the one they're looking for. This means, in my hood at least, that they just didn't get that big break they were looking for.

Like poor Jack Phoenix, lol! But you know, not everybody who wants to be a sports star is going to end up one, no matter how promising you were in high school. In fact, most of us don't end up sports stars, but instead we just end up cops, like our fathers and grandfathers were, even though they also wanted to be sports stars more than anything in the world. Because that's how it turns out we can put enormous amounts of pressure on our sons to become sports stars, when all they really wanted to do is be an artist or something...

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Making careers riskier:

The rule about career risk in my game is that any time a Sim comes home from work, they must roll their career's risk. They are exempt from rolling on any day they receive a promotion or pass a chance card.

death risk = 1/200
jail risk = 1/75
injury risk = 1/75
social risk = 1/100

I use my random file to roll these - I updated the file, so have a peek at the new one if you want to see how to set up these risks. These risks are set kind of low for my own use. You might want to raise the risks for your own game.

For each career, I've listed the risk to be rolled, as well as any consequences that follow it.

Crime: death risk, jail risk, injury risk, lose 5 body points and enter physical therapy.

Law Enforcement: death risk, injury risk, lose 5 body points and enter physical therapy.

Adventure: death risk, injury risk, lose 5 body points and enter physical therapy.

Oceanography: injury risk, lose 5 body points and enter physical therapy.

Military: death risk, injury risk, lose 5 body points and enter physical therapy.

Politics: social risk, lose 5 charisma points, public apology and either resignation or enter "rehab".

Show Business: social risk, lose 5 charisma points, one year hiatus and enter "rehab".

Entertainment: social risk, lose 5 charisma points, one year hiatus and enter "rehab".

Athletics: injury risk, lose 5 body points and enter physical therapy, one year hiatus from playing.

Dance: injury risk, lose 5 body points and enter physical therapy, one year hiatus.

Other rules:

Crime: may not be fired without "ill consequences." Interpret that how you will ;)

Medical: must get Doctorate degree (4 extra years) before progressing to Resident. Pay appropriate tuition fees.

Education: must get Masters degree (2 extra years) before progressing to University Guest Lecturer. Pay appropriate tuition fees.

Law: must get Law degree (4 extra years) before progressing to Personal Injury Lawyer. Pay appropriate tuition fees.

Architecture: must get Masters degree (2 extra years) before progressing to Draftsman. Pay appropriate tuition fees.

Athletics: must reach assistant coach level by age 40 or find new work.

Dance: must retire by age 40 and find different work. May not receive a pension.

Extras: all other careers are subject to realistic interpretation, like with what happened to Bella, getting pregnant soon after getting her first film role. The death and injury risks and such are also interpretive. For example, if your Sim is currently a desk sergeant in the Law Enforcement career, you might not roll the death risk. Or if your Sim is currently a coach in the Athletics career, they're not very likely to be injured.

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I'm personally at a point in my neighborhood where I don't need much more drama than my Sims are already stirring up on their own, so I haven't been rolling these lately. Maybe I'll pick up again after my war drama has ended.

But you're free to borrow these ideas if you want, and I hope this all helps you torture your Sims a little more :)