I put this in the TS2 forum because by necessity the game is rotational, unless I want eternal townies. Especially with the onerous friend requirements, I need more families.

I have about ten families planned. Four alpha families, and then a few beta families to provide more friends / the next generation's mates.

What do I do in the "beta" families? Hit play and walk away except to step in to ensure no deaths? "Force" myself to play them?

what's an alpha and a beta family?

Alpha = my main characters.

Beta = side characters, friends and possible mates of the alpha children.

Don't force yourself to play anybody! It's a game, not an obligation. If you're not interested in the beta families, don't play them (you can always cheat their ages up in synch with their interesting friends) until you're interested; or force them to be interesting.

How you do this will vary from family to family. Perhaps you can do a different challenge with each family, or have a random event generator to throw different stuff at them. I make different rules for different families. This person is dyslexic - no reading for skills for him! This family has recently simmigrated - what rules changes are appropriate to that? This family is the one in which you fill fears instead of wants; that sim is spoiled rotten and fills all his high-point wants no matter the consequences. (Make sure that's a sim who generates wants that are likely to wreak havoc and generate storylines - Pleasure is great for this.)

What have you never done in this game? (We all have stuff like that.) These are the families you do that with! Experiment, take chances, push the parameters of your playstyle. You'll get interested.

I play an integrated hood so every family has a role in running the hood. In that sense I would say the family that owns the B&B (she does that, he is the newspaper reporter) is an alpha family as in the Mayors family and his wife is a nurse at the local clinic. The farming family who own the grocery store very vital. There is no home delivery here. A beta family might be the towns repair man and his wife who runs a small hair salon/clothing shop. They are still important to running the town but not vital. People can repair their own stuff, go to the mirror to change their hair or buy off the hacked coat rack from home.

I find having a reason for each family to be there, not just as friends, and having them carry out their own specific roles in the community helps a lot as there is no wondering what to do with them. The banker runs the bank, his wife the teacher goes off to work but later will teach at the school. My town is so new the eldest child of the founders is just about to become a child so no school yet. There are a few sims who don't have a defined role yet, but not many. For example the ministers wife. She is busy staying home with the toddler now, but later I will probably have her work at one of the owned businesses, as by then some will need to start employing people. Most families in my hood either own a business or are employed by one. I play every family fully.

If you are not playing Sims 2 I don't know if owned businesses or an integrated hood would work.

Also not all Sims 2 players play rotationally some play legacy style with one main family. If they have other families they either A) ignore them and let them stay as is or B) Go in and cheat them up.

If you are not into the role playing thing maybe try playing each family differently or doing a mini challenge. Peni gave a few ideas on that one. One could be like an ISBI or have rules like the old Official Wacky Boolprop challenge (I think that would still be on the new forums not sure) that had various flavours so I hope that challenge isn't dead. Things like one bad apple, where one sim was picked at birth to not be directed, or ghost hunt where they had to lure in sims and kill them off.

I'm assuming you're playing without townies? Otherwise, I'm not sure why you'd need "beta" families. If you are playing with townies, then why not just use them for friends and possible mates? If you don't like their eternalness....Well, I use the aging-up-3-other-Sims-at-age-up feature from FT to keep my playables' townie friends in age-synch with them, and I'll also manually age up any other townie friends they have, up to and including killing off those townie friends when a playable dies. Thus, they are non-eternal.

But if you don't want to do that and/or have no townies, then it's like Peni says. Either don't play the secondary families and just go into their households and manually age up the members at appropriate times (and possibly add members, if needed?) to keep them in synch with your main families or else go ahead and play them and do things with them that are interesting to you. Peni gave you some good suggestions.

Yeah - very sensible Jo and I have a similar attitude in that all families are alpha in some sense. Little Carping sim roles are not so thought through (though most sims have a role of some sort) but they're all there for a reason - mostly the reason that I wanted to tell their stories.

As I said on another thread, I play who I feel like at the time. Sometimes that's only a couple of families at once, sometimes I flit between hoods with a handful of families. I play very casually and laid back, not tying myself into stories or maybe doing a legacy style family or two.

Forcing yourself to do something is the best way to kill any fun out of a game!

I have a little canon of my own. What Watchmen was to DC's acquired Charlton Comics characters, my Sims canon is to Archie Comics.

I tried this two times before. The original was in a blank hood, and I found myself playing the rich kids, finding the other families less interesting. The second was in Belladonna Cove with some of the characters townie-fied. This is where I introduced my Sim-self.

But TS4 modding took over. I modded originally out of annoyance with TS4 but now mostly for the glory, and for the jab at EA (You make it, I rip it out!).

The re-reboot is where I got stuck. I went to completely blank, ditched the Sim-self and more playable houses again, so I can play with ACR and Chris Hatch's "Visit Other Sims". The latter mod is why I don't want to use townies for major or moderate characters.

I think I will play "difficulty settings" with my families' intended socioeconomic status.

The private school affluenza brats (the Alpha families I mentioned in my original post): Easy.
Cheat! Pamper them! Pre-skill them!
Shit should not Happen to them.

The upper-middle-class kids: Medium.
Start them as toddlers instead of children.
Shit should not Happen to them.

The ordinary kids: Hard.
Control only the main kids. Don't micromanage the parents, they are middle-class and not rich.
Ironman mode! Shit Happens! If the breadwinner dies of LOLRANDOM fire or flu, or is fired by a rogue Chance Card, so be it!

Change the way you rotate - instead of doing it in a set order use something like the lot sync timer to keep track of where everybody is.

I have three rotation styles I use most but they all have something in common: I don't play in a set order, I play in whatever order grabs me or whichever house is interesting at the time, and there's only one rotation I play with set days.

1. The last-families-first method. I click on the lot sync timer and make a note of the lowest day number on there. These households/families are the only families I'm allowed to play. As I use this for the megahood, there are always a bunch of families at this day, between 20 and 40, so I write a list rather than having to check each time. In a smaller hood obviously you'll have fewer. My rule is I'm allowed to play any family on this list, for as long as I like until I either get bored, want to play another family, or have to quit the game/quit to neighbourhood for any reason, which includes a sim graduating from college or moving out, although I sometimes fudge this. That's fun because it means if I feel in the mood to play some single sims I play them, a young family, play them, old retired folks, play them, teens, students, career focused sims, etc. I have a variety to choose from and I can take what I fancy. I have a text document with important events like weddings, college dates etc, so I don't miss things. If I get to the end and have just a few households who I don't want to play, I just triple-speed them to 18:00 and then quit to neighbourhood. If I find myself doing this on the same families again and again then I'll either try and zoom them forward several days to give myself a real break and hope I'm more inspired when I next play them, or I make them into townies, give them a new challenge, google for stories about what others have done with them, etc.

2. The "friend of a friend" method. I pick pretty much any family that I like to play, and then when I've finished playing them, I switch to some other household they are involved with so I can see that storyline from another side. If the neighbourhood is set up well then this keeps everyone nicely in sync, at least roughly. You do have to keep an eye on the day number to make sure they're not being pushed too far ahead. Again if I notice a sim or family is falling behind I'll make sure to play them or turn them into townies.

3. The "seasons by subhood" method. This is probably the most structured method I play. It's basically what it says on the tin. I play through an entire subhood for one season each household. That is helpful to keep a sense of continuity and what is happening at one particular time, but it can be tiresome in large hoods because being in one season for weeks at a time is boring.

I keep all the townies in my game and have often started playing with one family (or a single Sim) - even though I always use all the bin Sims as well. I like to play with each family for a while after moving them in - give them a chance to settle, learn some skills, aquire some hobbies and actually be interesting when they meet other Sims I jump around from family to family the way my game requires me too - for instance, if my teenager is ready to go to uni, I will go around to the other households with teens to get them ready for Uni too - in order to get my dorm full of playables. I'll advise you to just start playing your hood - you will find your way

I have diffrent rules for some families like what Peni Griffins said, I have one family who is only 1 sim who buys new clothing every rotation, (she wants to) and Take Picture in the photo booth. No other use of the photo booth she is only interested in having her picture taken. Planning for her to go on vacation where I placed a huge H&M in the vacation hood.
The other family are backpackers and they want to go on vacations very often. They spend all their money on travels.
I don't have any more ideas. Except the grilled cheese sims must be active and meet other grilled cheese sims and discuss their hobby. And eat grilled cheese of course.

Rotational games are not necessary or mandated. I see from your profile that you have FT, so you can age up townies/other sims when your own sim ages up, which reduces the "necessity" for rotational play even further.

Personally, I have certain families that I play in loose rotations (because I like playing in loose rotations) and some of them I just let run, some have their own mini-challenges, some have their own full-fledged challenges, some I play with no challenges at all, some own businesses... whatever seems fun and interesting for that particular family.

It's a game. It's supposed to be fun. Play in whatever way is fun for you. Don't force yourself to do anything you don't want to, and stop worrying about the "right" way to play. (PS: Legacies are not mandatory either.)

The simspirits are talking to me... huminahuminahumina...yes, they say, Dr. Chillgood, that soon, very soon, your "ordinary families" will be the ones you love best.

I play rotations, but I try to view them as "a day in the life' style-I make notes about each household to keep track of what's happening on that particular week. Projecting too far into the future does stifle the fun out of it, so I play it looser than I used to .

I've found that concentrating on the members of the household can also be burdensome, and watch what happens with their neighbors when they drop by. At times it will lead to interesting developments with the other lots because of what happened there. For instance I had one family I was playing and their newlywed friends had a huge fight on their front lawn over his flirting with another woman. That household has just gone into the 'sleep in the separate bedroom, buster,' stage and I don't know if they're fully recover their relationship. It makes for a more interesting play time when you do things like that.

I might as well give a little more detail.

The parents are not the stars. They are minor characters at best and genetic donors at worst. Maybe they can be my guinea pigs? Or maybe I'm just not good at fleshing out minor characters? Maybe I should practice storytelling before I jump into this?

Not-Archie is not the star. He is one of the broke kids. The private school affluenza crew kids are my stars. It actually dates back to Rock Band, but Rock Band 3's animation engine was not up to the task.

With Peni Griffin on this one - ordinary Sims have a unique way to win over one's heart

Back up what you've got and jump into it. No better way to learn what you want to do, and since with back-ups we get unlimited do-overs . . . well, if I had a dollar for every time I've restarted my megahood I'd have more money than I spent buying the game in the first place!

On the other hand; some days I'm just too bummed for any thoughtful play. That's when I play a hood I never go to, pick a family - and let them kill themselves.

Start with questions - at least that's what I do: 'What if ....'

'What if someone were in this situation*?
What would I do?
But what would this sim do who is not like me and has their own personality?'

And don't be too precious about what you think the solution is. Sims have a habit of finding their own.

Gets you a long way.

*whatever you can think of.