I'm curious to see what your favorite aspirations are. What do you give your sims? Do you always do the same one? Do you like variety? Is there one you never tried?
Remember- The aspirations are Pleasure, Family, Romance, Knowledge, Fortune, and Popularity. Let's not forget the funny Grilled Cheese and hidden, unfinished Power aspirations.

Favorite Aspirations: (1 being favorite)


1. Family. I love this aspiration and definately use it the most. Growing up in a big family, I've always enjoyed it. I love my Sims having 1-4 children. I sometimes let them have 5, but I always feel like when there are too many sims, I never give them all the same amount of attention.

2. Knowledge. Their Lifetime Wants are always having a certain job and they get along with family sims. And I like getting them abducted.

3. Pleasure. This is good for when I have 4-5 kids and I dont want them all to have kids. They just live happily and are all about having fun!

4. Fortune. Not too hard. They're again, a good match for family sims whereas they support the family funds and dont mind taking care of children.

5. Popularity. I hardly ever give my Sims this. Having so many friends, it's hard to keep all of their relationships up. Also, I hardly ever throw parties unless it's for the lifetime want "Golden Anniversary" or for a wedding. For birthdays, I just invite the sim's friends over instead of having a party.

6. Romance. Always involves cheating. Which may be fun to play, it's just awful.

7. Power. I only used this once through use of cheats. It's just a combination of Fortune and Popularity really. And the little icon is messed up.

8. Grilled Cheese. Basically stands for failure. I mean, there aspiration was in the red when they used the reward object. But funny :P

I seldom, if ever, assign Romance to a Sim, because I loathe the idea of cheating. If I do have a Romance Sim, I give them a secondary aspiration of Family (if I care about their Aspiration score) and any wants they roll to WooHoo they can satisfy with their spouse.

I tried Grilled Cheese once. Even as a secondary it's a pain.

My favorites are Knowledge and Fortune. I'm starting to like Popularity a bit better. And lots of times Pleasure is good in place of Romance, because they don't fear marriage.

That's really smart to give them(Romance) the secondary aspiration of Family. Cause then when they want anything romantic, they can get it without cheating and still get a "good" want of getting married. Sadly, I don't have Uni or FT so I can't give mine secondary aspirations.

I'm the same way. I'd say it's a tie between family and pleasure. My sims all get married eventually- I try to diversify things, but I love weddings! Pleasure is probably like a 'default' for me. I use it for anyone I don't have a really clear idea of. I sometimes use fortune. I don't like romance- it involves cheating. I use it sometimes, but not a lot. Popularity I don't like, but it does get used because I want a diverse neighborhood. It is SO much work to keep up all the friendships. I love knowledge. It's probably my favorite next to family. Power I never use. I like grilled cheese. It's fun. :p

Grilled Cheese is funny My sister was playing with her "dream family" (A family with her, her best guy-friend as her husband, and six kids with nice names) She's a weird college kid (Strangely has friends. Lol I love her) and her familoy was messed up. Their husky was named Darwin (She's into biology- Charles Darwin), too many kids, and her eldest kid, Charlie, used the aspiration object without her knowing and got a Grilled Cheese aspiration. I had to use cheats to change it for her. Lol

1) Knowledge - I love to make my sims skill and that´s something that make a knowledge sim happy. They also roll funny and interesting wants like being abducted by aliens, being struck by lighting and to become various supernatural creatures. Their LTWs also tend to be something okay.
2) Family - One of my personal favorite aspects of the game is breeding, and family sims like to do that a lot. They tend to roll "nice" wants like playing with family members, make best friends with their children and to help them with their homework. It´s also interesting that, while some family sims constantly roll wants to have babies, some start to fear it already after their first child.
3) Fortune - They know what they want in life and how to achieve it. It´s always nice to play sims who all the time have clear goals. If they roll a want to buy something expensive and you fullfil that want, they can however become a bit tiresome and start to roll those wants all the time. Because of that I try to avoid fullfilling those wants and then they stop rolling them and start rolling wants about their carreer instead.
4) Popularity - I used to not like them so much, but now I do - they force me to play the game a bit different with parties and community lot visits. And I enjoy to play the game in different ways to get some variation. Most of their wants are pretty easy and/or interesting to fulfill so this is actually a funny aspration to play with.
5) Romance - Not really nice individuals but selfish and slightly narcissistic ones. It is, however, a lot of fun to play with them. Mostly in my game, I make to sims marry each other as soon as possible and avoid divorces. With romance sims you have to play a bit different there, and I like to not always play the same way. My romance sims usually also get married, preferable with another romance sim, but they continue to have an open relationship and create drama for other couples.
6) Pleasure - It´s very rare that I chose this as a primary aspiration and if I do I select another one as a secondary. Their wants tend to be too boring and repetative. But I like it when they want to go on a date or just visit city. Community lots visits are very interesting and pleasure sims always try to remind me of that. And in combination with another aspiration you´ll still get some bigger wants.
7) Grilled Cheese - I have almost never played it, but when I did I remember I didn´t find it particular interesting. But it´ll probably work as a secondary aspiration. I´ll have to try that some time.

Over time I've gotten to like all of them. The important thing for me is to match the right aspiration, or combination of aspirations, to the sim.

Fortune was my first favorite, and many of my favorite sims have it. Fortune is a flexible aspiration that usually results in a sim I can count on in a crisis who also tends to be sexy as heck. Some of my horniest sims are Fortune! Depending on life experience and stats, a Fortune sim may be a stodgy family man, the plaything of romance, an insecure nebbish who assumes he has to buy love, a maniacally hard worker who delights in being The Provider and is a perennial soft touch, a spendthrift, a miser, an obsessive business man, a relentless worrier who can't take too many precautions...so many possibilities! The Grouchiest Man in Drama Acres, the Sweet Local Sex God, the male lead in the Defining Love Story, The Sexiest Woman in Drama Acres, the Most Devoted Husband, the Woman Rebuilding Her Family Fortunes - all Fortune Sims.

Family is great for me because I love big families that keep me hopping. Romance is great for me because I love Drama and they're always good for throwing monkey wrenches into things. Knowledge sims are so curious and adventurous that it's easy to find story uses for them, plus I just have fellow-feeling with them; but they can be difficult to pry out of their homes and closest personal relationships. That, however, can be used as a story problem that motivates those who love them to meddle in their lives. I used to have a real problem playing Pleasure sims because they have such short attention spans, but once I learned to turn that from a bug into a feature I found that, played in the context of a family or social group, they combine the best features of Romance and Popularity. Popularity is my least favorite because their chemistry tanks so hard and they're so unlikely to want children, but they are easy prey for Romance sims, they're great connectors and facilitators of Drama, and I've had good experiences giving a teen Popularity and later shifting Popularity to the secondary spot and giving them more "mature" primary aspirations.

I have yet to play a Grilled Cheese sim and don't really see the attraction. It's hard to think of a story use for wants about grilled cheese. I expect I could do it if I had to, but I'm not motivated to do so at this time.

I'd have to say it depends on where I am in my game. For certain age groups/generations, I prefer one Aspiration over the other.

Family is my all time favorite, as it feeds my need to have my Sims breed (oh, hey, look - that rhymed!). I've grown up/am growing up in a small family and have always been fascinated with large ones, so, having my Sims Imitate "Cheaper By the Dozen" (but, like, x6) is always a lot of fun.

Pleasure, Romance and Popularity are nice too, but, they require too much work, so, I only really give them to teenagers (and only teenagers that have other siblings with less attention-consuming Aspirations, like Family, Knowledge or Fortune). And I only give Popularity to the pretty Sims - that's how it typically works in real life. And, I hate having a Sim that I feel looks like a NPC be the center of attention - Ugh. No.

I haven't ever played with the Knowledge Aspiration - I tried, but, I changed it after it got a bit boring. It's too predictable. And, I know Family and Fortune are extremely predictable, but, at least they feed my habitual nature of trying to get my Sims into bigger and better on having more and more.

And, I never knew about the "Power" aspiration and, while knowing about "Grilled Cheese", have never directly played it for any worthwhile period of time.

I think the pleasure aspiration is probably my favorite. It's easy for me to fulfill a pleasure sim's wants. I love it when pleasure sims want to play on the couch. I think it's hilarious to see a young adult, or adult jumping on the couch, especially when another sim is sitting on that same couch reading a book with a serious expression on their face. I haven't seen an elder play on the couch yet, but that's something to look forward to when my pleasure sims become elders. The aspirations I use the most when my sims grow up to be teens are pleasure, knowledge, romance and popularity. I use fortune and family more as secondary aspirations for teens. I don't want my teens to be that concerned about getting jobs or having children until after they become adults. I never use the grilled cheese aspiration.

You have to use cheats to get the Power aspiration. It was an aspiration that was supposed to be shipped with the base game and be the hardest one. It appears to be unfinished, and I found out about it on the Sims Wiki.

I have a question about the Pleasure aspiration. I got Sims 2 Double Deluxe, so I don't know what Sims 2 is like without Night Life and Celebration Stuff. I heard somewhere that the Pleasure Aspiration came with Night Life. Is that accurate?

Yes, it is. I believe that's the reason they made all the Tricou bastard teens Pleasure - to get the aspiration firmly introduced.

1. Popularity
2. Romance
3. Family
4. Knowledge
5. Fortune

(no EP's.)

Isn't everyone in that family deceased? I don't have anything to resurrect Sims with unless a witch resurrects them as a zombie. (Dont have University or Freetime) Besides I haven't really played in a while, my game got messed up. I'm still trying to fix it.

Apparently Jon Smith Tricou was as busy as Don Lothario. Interesting since Jon Smith was a Family Sim.

No, the living downtownie teens descended from John Smith Tricou, but not from his wife Whatshername. If you can get Goth Boy, Skater Boy, The Girl in the Nightlife Hairdo, the Girl in the Leopardskin Hat, the Asian Boy, or the Not Particularly Distinctive Black Boy to move in, you'll see that they have family trees that include all the others and the dead Tricous. These are the only downtownies with existing relationships.

A lot of the current information in the wiki entries for them is questionable - I haven't had a single one with an inappropriate LTW, and I've funneled them all into the game via University by now, and those names appear nowhere in my character data that I can locate - but you can at least recognize them through the pictures here:
http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Jon_Smit...27s_Descendants

As for the elder Tricou being a Family sim: What is a conservative Mormon polygamist patriarch, if not a Family aspiration? For my backstory, Tricou is always referred to as "Notorious rake and polygamist cult leader John Smith Tricou," and the ghosts are presumed to be the relics of a cult meltdown, from which the parents of the bastards had lucky escapes. The Girl in the Leopardskin Hat has grown up to have a Fortune/Pleasure aspiration, rebought the House of Fallen Trees, and is doing her best to live down the family reputation and tragedy. You don't have to resurrect the Tricous to have a good time with them.

Well, his wife Jennicor was a Pleasure sim. Possibly, he wanted more kids, but Jenn didn't (apparently she is permaplat, so she was doing something else besides babymaking), so he purposely slept around and refused to use protection to spread his genes.

Either the wife found out and killed him, or died from a horrible case of syphillis.

I use a dice to determine a sim's aspiration. Then I learn to roll with the punches. (lame pun intended)
However when I first started playing I assigned EVERY SINGLE SIM with the Family Aspiration. I don't like it now...I think I sort of wore it out. I don't like the Romance Aspiration either because they always want to woohoo with like 10,000,000,0000 people and I usually couple up my sims and start families. So I guess my favorite ones are Knowledge, Fortune, Popularity and Pleasure. I don't even bother with Grilled Cheese.

I've honestly never seen them Downtown ever. But then again, I was playing in my town with about 4 generations of each family and I hate the premade lots in Downtown. So mine never went to community lots. But now in my new town, I'll making all the lots myself. That's odd but cool that they have relationships.

1. Knowledge
2. Family
3. Popularity
4. Fortune
5. Romance

1) Family
2) Knowledge
3) Fortune
I mainly use popularity, pleasure, and romance, as secondary aspirations.

I have never played grilled cheese, I've never been interested in it.

Although my favourites are (and probably always will be) Family, Fortune and Knowledge, not necessarily in that order, I've learnt to love the others too.

I've never had a Grilled Cheese Primary, but as any sim with that as Secondary is obsessed anyway I've never felt the need to use the Orb to get one... erm... changed.

I use Phae's Random Generators to choose aspirations for all CAS children/toddlers and all born-in-game sims, while picking up my random number generator to choose secondaries for CAS/townie-made-playable teens and older. I leave their primaries as they are. That way I have a good mix of aspirations/combinations giving plenty of diversity and therefore story opportunties.

1. Family. It was my first favourite aspiration, and even though the others are pretty close to it in terms of my favourites, I put it at number one simply because I've liked it the longest. It's also my most-chosen secondary aspiration; I love putting it on Pleasure and Popularity sims.
2. Pleasure. I love the carpe diem attitude they have, and even if they don't have a lot of high-scoring wants, if you buy them some things at first, they'll roll enough +500 wants that you can just keep chaining up.
3. Popularity. To me, this game is all about the relationships Sims make, and that's what makes Pop sims so great. The only thing I don't like about them is they're never ambitious enough (under my rules) to get into university. I need some college party animals!
4. Fortune. They're reliable, and the only sims who can be relied upon to progress up the career ladder. (I don't let sims skill unless they have the want for it, and Fortune sims usually oblige with rolling the wants they need to get promoted.)
5. Romance. I don't hate this aspiration, even though most of my romance sims tend to be fairly monogamous, or only have a few partners. Though I've got one who through exploiting the public-woohoo glitch is approaching 10 woohoos, and his former girlfriend (well, they still have hearts) cheated on her husband with a co-worker, so maybe they're less monogamous than I think. . ..
6. Knowledge. This is the only aspiration I dislike. If I wanted to watch book-reading, I'd people-watch at the library. I play this game to make my sims interact with each other.

I love Knowledge, because of their fascination with weird stuff and abductions.

Popularity and Pleasure are also pretty cool, and parties are much less of a hassle for me now because I know what to do when throwing them. And it's quite easy to form and maintain friendships with popularity teens and college students. With Popularity sims, masterpieces are often their aspirational bread and butter.

Romance is a lot of fun because you can take advantage of a lot of different sims, and possibly cause drama if you so choose. I know to keep these relationships discreet, like having my Romance sims go on dates on their lots, and if a Romance sim is married, just have the sim go on lots of dates with his or her spouse, and ignore cheating wants if you wish.

Fortune sims make great business owners, and you can keep a Fortune sim happy enough to run a community business for a long time by fulfilling badge, sales and loyalty star wants - your sim can use the energizer to keep motives up, or a throne if Apartment Life is installed and you love witching sims as much as I do.

Family is okay, but Family sims can be somewhat like their polar opposites as they will at times roll fears of having babies.

Grilled Cheese is kinda easy. While some of their more powerful wants, like talking about grilled cheese with certain sims can be risky, they will also often roll small-but-easy wants to simply eat grilled cheese. If Freetime is installed, you don't even need to cook it - just conjure and eat! Sure, the sim will lose some energy and comfort, and possibly gain weight, but the energizer will fix that up.

I try to match my simmies with their aspirations and characters as closely as I can-but in order of favorites, here are mine:
Fortune-can't match the greed that comes with this one-these sims are just non-stop over-achievers. Always wanting more and more stuff.

Knowledge-gotta know everything, and yesterday. Makes for a wise one.

Family-I use this as a secondary aspiration for most because it can become tiresome to have them want more and more babies when they can just afford one.

Romance is funny at times, but also tiresome to constantly fulfill those 'woohoo with every Tom, Dick and Harry, all at once' needs. Death by Woohoo, anyone?

Pleasure-a secondary for those who are lazier than all get-out. This way they can relax even more.

Popularity-a real bone of contention with me, because these sims cannot be happy unless they're friends with everyone in the known universe and beyond. Only if they have the outgoing trait to the max.

Grilled Cheese is the worst, and I never use it. It's boring.