If you're not familiar with the way The Sims 2 works, and especially if you're coming from playing The Sims 3 or The Sims 4, you will probably realize something is different upon playing the game for a few hours: there is no story progression.

If you don't actively play a family, it doesn't change. At all. They don't age, they don't get jobs, they don't have kids. They can't even die. The only way for characters to live their lives is for you to play them. For this reason, if you only focus on one family as you would in other Sims games, you will find that the rest of the neighborhood has been frozen in time. Here is where playing in rotations comes to the rescue.


You can think of each family in the neighborhood as its own save file. They interact with each other, but they also exist on their own. You can do as much or as little with each one as you want. It is entirely up to you. However, when you play rotationally, you intentionally play every family in the neighborhood, in a predetermined order, for predetermined lengths of time. In this way, you get to play every single character in the neighborhood, being there for all their important moments, and intervening as much or as little as you want.

Sounds simple enough, right?

If you decide to give rotational gameplay a shot, you will need a system. What that looks like depends on you and what you think would be the most fun. There are two big concerns that come up with it, and how you address them will depend on how you enjoy playing the most.

• How long will each rotation be?
  
• How will you keep track of your play order?

A rotation, or the in-game time that you play each family, can be changed suit your style. Feel free to experiment and try what you think would be best for you. You might want to do one day rotations at first, as a way of getting acquainted with the neighborhood and this style of playing. You can also do two day rotations, that way you get to make more progress with each family before moving on to the next. Or you might want to try seasonal rotations, where you play each family for the duration of an in-game season (which is 4 in-game days).

Anything longer than that is not advisable because you will create too big of a time difference between the active family and the rest of the families in the neighborhood, and that defeats the purpose of playing rotationally. That being said, if you'd like to do longer sessions, who am I to stop you?


For convenience, it is advisable to have a play order. You can figure it out as you'd like, and unless you are playing some of the premade neighborhoods that have suggested play orders, you can play in whatever order you'd like. Below are some examples for The Sims 2's Prima Guide[ia801304.us.archive.org].


A play order that I like to use is playing the households in the neighborhood in clockwise or counter-clockwise order. This way you can always pick up where you left off and let the neighborhood guide you intuitively into what family you should play next. Even if you do this, it is advisable to keep track of what family has what place in the rotation. A system I use is writing at the top of household description.

If you'd like to use this method, you might want to start by writing this at the top of every family biography: "A - ROTATION 0." Change the letter to a corresponding letter of the alphabet to guide your desired order, and you're done setting up. Then, when you play a family, you can write "A - ROTATION 1 DONE", and if you didn't get to finish the rotation you can write "A - ROTATION 1 IN PROGRESS". These little reminders will help you when determining what family to play. This system is quick and easy, you can't loose it and you don't need any external programs or apps.

Now, if you'd like to have a more detailed system, you can use a track sheet. Many Sims 2 players have created versions that you can download and try for yourself, and some include useful things like Aspiration calculators, Lifetime Wish trackers, job trackers, age trackers and more. If you go with this option, you will have all the information about every playable sim in your neighborhood available at a glance, and it might help you keep things more varied.


If you'd like to give one a try, you can use BellaDovah's downloadable templates[www.belladovah.com].

When you play rotationally, there are going to be some situations that disrupt the usual order in which you play. One of these is when Sims move out to live on their own, and when they move out to college. While the exact way you deal with these situations is up to you, here are a few suggestions that might help you not lose the fun and the flow of playing rotationally.



If a sim in your household moves out, maybe because they fell in love and want to start their own home, a relationship ended, or any other storytelling reason you might have, you will create a new playable household. You might want to add this new family at the top or bottom of your rotation list.



You might want to think of college as extra time to spend with the sims you know and love. Sims don't have to do it, but if you choose to take them, you'll get to spend some extra time with them, work on their skills, seeing them find new friends, fall in love, and be harassed by a mascot in a cow suit. What's not to love?

Since University is an extra life stage, meaning sims can go without it, you can treat it as simply extra time, outside of your regular rotation. That means that when you want to move the sim back into the neighborhood, you can just add them at the top or the bottom of your regular rotations. This will mean you will spend a lot of time with them, so be warned.

Some argue that playing rotationally is implied to be the way the people making The Sims 2 wanted to experience the game. However, with life simulators being inherently open ended, there are no right or wrong ways to play. This way of playing just makes everything more engaging, makes you familiar with all the Sims in the neighborhood, and makes you care about what happens to them the most. Here are some pros:

• It helps you experience all the content that the game has to offer, which really is a lot
  
• It makes every family feel even more alive because you will take an active part in the relationships that form in the neighborhood and every change in their lives
  
• It provides a lot of room for storytelling opportunities because every sim will now exist a lot more contextualized than when you don't play rotationally, you will know about their families, friends, relationships, and much more

While I personally would argue that playing rotationally is the most fun, I absolutely understand it isn't for anyone. I would recommend that every Sims 2 player gives it a try to see if they enjoy it, but if they don't there is no reason to force yourself to like it. Here are some cons of this gameplay style:

• It takes some time to set up, which might be a little bit difficult the first time you do it, but will certainly get easier as you go
  
• It requires keeping track of what happens in each household, so you will need to have a system in place that prevents you from losing sight of what family you should be playing and what you were doing with each one
  
• It might feel like it's harder to make progress since you have to play all families and this will inevitably take more time than playing a single family

While mods are not strictly necessary to play rotationally, some can help make the experience make more sense as a whole, as well as adding more depth and fun.



A great mod to have even if you don't play rotationally, ACR is a game that spices up romantic interactions in the game, adding a lot of autonomous actions sims will do based on their chemistry. Beware, this will mean that sims that are attracted to each other will be much more likely to romance each other, have their first kiss, woohoo and even trying for baby without you doing anything. It makes sims feel more alive and more unpredictable, and if you're playing with Romance sims, things get pretty chaotic, in a good way!

But ACR does much more than that. Using ACR you will be able to adjust jealousy, gender preferences and more.

You can get ACR here[simfileshare.net].


Vanilla pregnancy length is 3 in-game days. When playing rotationally. you'll find out that that duration is actually very long and does not make a lot of sense compared to the rest of the life stages. Shorter pregnancy makes it so that pregnancy only lasts two in-game day.

You can get the 48-hour pregnancy mod here[www.belladovah.com].


One of the biggest caveats of considering sending sims to University when playing rotationally is just how long it will take for them to finish. In an unmodded game, it can feel painfully long. Thankfully you can mod semesters to be considerably shorter. This will help you keep the pace of rotations similar to how long it would normally take you to play a seasonal rotation.

You can download the Semester Changes mod here[cyjon.net].


If you move a sim out from their original household, or back to the neighborhood from college, the game will give them 20,000 simoleans so they can afford a starter home. Some players like the challenge of having this removed, since it's not very likely that most people will be able to afford a house right after leaving university.

You can download the No 20k handout mod here.[www.moreawesomethanyou.com]

Since not all of your sims will necesarily go to University, and taking them to University takes a lot of time and effort on your part, one way to make the process more rewarding is this mod, which makes it so that sims can go up in their careers only to certain levels depending on their education level. That means that a sim that didn't go to University will be restricted in how high they can get in their career.

You can download Edukashun Iz Gud here.[cyjon.net]

So, there you have it. Playing rotationally is one of those things that are harder to explain that they are to do, since when you do them there will be a lot of things that will come naturally, but I still hope this guide encouraged you to give this play style a try! Like I said before, there are no right or wrong ways to play this game, but you might find that there is a lot of fun to be had in playing rotationally if you give it a shot!