In another thread, a brief flurry happened when someone proposed re-writing some of the game career chance cards to be more realistic.

So this is where we do it.

What chance cards would you re-write, why and how would you affect/simulate the outcome?

My suggestion was to have one where in the Criminal career, "This sim has been busted! Send bail!" The outcome would be that they'd be put into the townie jail and then released into that population as a burglar.

It would reflect reality..if one wishes to have reality in the game.

I re-wrote the level 10 dancer chance card. It seemed strange to me that the dance-career didn't have a single big money reward, so I added one. The card is "Sim has just finished performing when famous ballet dancer Mikey Birish challenges him to a ballet dance off to determine once and for all who the best ballet dancer in the world is. Sim accepts and Mikey says that Sim can determine the location. Where should the dance off be held?"

The options are in a small private venue, or a local auditorium. In the original Sims lost skill points, I forget which. In mine, if they choose auditorium they either get 25,000 bonus for deciding to go on a tour with Mikey, or get a 15,000 fine from dance society for bad behavior. If they choose a private venue they can win 45,000 or lose 25,000 for refunding tickets.

Other than my desire for riskier careers from the other thread-

I hate the chance card for Home Video editor. If you select the bunny answer, you get a $75,000 bonus. This is the slacker career. They go from 3 levels of clerk jobs, to DJ to projectionist- basically the stoners career path- and then someone hands them $75,000. I think it's one of the single highest monetary rewards of any career chance card, and it's for a mid-level slacker job. I usually flip a coin (I learned the "right" answers long ago) but when I get this chance card, I always hit ignore.


I wish you could get vacation sightseeing chance results from careers. Like a Natural Scientist getting poison ivy or bees, or a criminal who injures themself loses body points and comes home with their comfort bar red.

I'd wager that's a mistake. The game multiplies the value of money rewards from level 7 and up by 1000. Perhaps the person making that career forgot. Does indeed seem very strange that the best monetary reward of that career is on level 7. I'm guessing it was supposed to be 7500. I'll make a replacement for it and put it on my tumblr.

I'd really like to see a real replacement for some of the top levels of most of the careers-true, this is a game, but there is no such thing as a "Captain Hero" or a "Mad Scientist", if you want to be precise. I know, to remove them would be to remove the wacky charm of the game, but haven't we moved on from that time?

Although I must admit that the sex-neutral equality of it far exceeds reality now and has for a long time. Women in the game get the exact same amount of pay the males do, and that's one big distinction that has always pleased me. That and the fact that the levels never reflect sexism in any way.

Except that in the context of the result itself, it makes sense. Still strikes me as weird, but that's Maxis for you.

It's not a mistake. It's an easter egg of good karma for stoners.

Looking at that chance card, it seems similar to the artist's problem where sometimes when you think your work is trashy, rushed, and just not that good, many other people think it's great. I've had that happen to me often enough in English, though I was not rewarded with $75,000 but instead just a good grade. Alternatively is the stuff that you like, and everyone else thinks is horrible.

I always ignore chance cards now. Early in my game I played them and Gloria got a couple of promotions in her military career with them. But I'll never forget how upset she was when she messed up on some cyber-attack and got a dishonourable discharge. (It's a nasty turn of phrase; Gloria's never done anything dishonourable in her life.) It took all Andrew's social skills to cheer his mum up and persuade her to look in the paper for another job. (She got one in the athletic career and is now well on her way to fulfilling her LTW. )

That made me very wary of answering chance cards, but when one came up for ex-townie Keith Cormier in the teen military career, I took it because I didn't think Keith was all that interested in that job, the pay was low, and getting sacked would give him more time to do things that were a lot more fun. So I reckoned he had nothing to lose. He'd have been a bit depressed, but he'd have found plenty of comforting solace in the arms of Mallory Mace. But Keith didn't get sacked: he was fined several days' pay. Now Keith was staying at the downtown Teen Townie Hostel and didn't really have any money of his own. So the fine was deducted from the hostel's scant funds -- which meant they had difficulty paying their next bills. (The hostel is a big house, so the bills are quite high.)

Since then I think I've ignored every chance card. So when I came to play Pleasantview, Mary-Sue didn't get sacked. Indeed I used SetHour to give Daniel and Kaylynn extra time in bed together! Kaylynn had left by the time Mary-Sue got home, so Daniel invited her to join him in bed, and he had woohoo with her too. (Woohoo with two Sims inside two hours!) So everyone was happy. What the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve over! I think Angela saw her dad in bed with Kaylynn, but she never told her mum. As I said, happiness all round!

Yes, I guess you are right. It does look like it might be intentional. I still think it's stupid though, I would not want one of my Sims to get that much money in that career at that level. If anyone else wants to change it, I made a fix so that the outcome is 20,000 instead. Find it on my tumblr (doesn't merit an upload here, so that's why I put it on tumblr).

Andrew, I totally get why you'd avoid them if you had two bad experiences early on. But with most of them Sims don't risk getting fired or losing money, and many offer a chance to earn nice things. Most of the chance cards and their outcome % are available on the wiki career tracks list) so if you wanted to, next time you could look up the outcomes in advance and see if it's worth taking a chance. For example, take the other answer to the chance card I just edited. You risk losing a days pay (613) and one creativity, but 85% chance of getting 7000 simoleons and 3 creativity points. If you'd rather avoid them all together that is of course your choice, just figured someone as nice to their Sims as you might want to give them the chance to win big (Not a fan of gambling in real life, but tell me one place IRL that gives you a 85% chance to multiply your bet by over 1000% ).

I like to check the outcomes on Snooty Sims and then go for whatever best serves the story.

I do pretty much the same thing, although once I thought I chose the "right" answer but my Sim still lost a logic point!

I had one pixel as a doctor take a chance card (level 6, I think) and he got fired for malpractice. Drove him right to the edge of insanity and Grilled Cheese aspiration.

I almost always take the chance cards when offered. Most of the time, they're pretty benign, but once in a while, they're brutal-like a day's pay, demotion or even dismissal.

I'm in AndrewGloria's camp regarding chance cards. Nothing peeves me more than having hard work wiped out because of something dumb and random. If the result was dependent on skill levels, I wouldn't mind it so much, because then I could weigh whether the chance of the reward was worth it. Even then, if I decided it wasn't it would get ignored. But I'm not about to let a sim get a negative memory and lose out on something (whether a hard won skill point, money, or job level) based on somebody's idea of lolrandom humor.

I only have a sim pick a chance card if it seems like something they would do.

Anyone knows why sometimes instead of getting fired, a sim would be demoted to the first level? I couldn't find out any pattern to it. @gummilutt, seeing that you've delved into chance cards, maybe you would know?

By the way, Fran, I love the idea of a criminal getting busted on the job!

And I crazy love chance cards as a concept in game, for the random things happen in life, even with hardworking people, and sometimes just because they're in the right place at the right moment (or wrong).

Can't say I've noticed that. Do you mean it says they get fired but they get demoted to level 1 regardless of which level they were at? If you tell me a specific career and level it happened on I can look at it to see if code is broken somehow, when I have time.

Not only it says it description, the chance card outcome in career editor of SimPE shows that it's supposed to be -N levels. Happens with different cards (I suspect all firing cards, but not for sure).
Anyway, nevermind, I won't bother you with this when I can look myself. Thanks.

I always ignore the Bon Voyage chance cards while my sims are touring on vacation. The rewards are piffling, and the penalties are devastating. They can really ruin a honeymoon.

Also there is a chance card, I think it's in the Culinary career, that gives you the choice of cooking hamburgers at a barbecue, or serving the salad. Whatever I select then, my sim always ends up losing interest in cookery. There seems to be no good outcome to that one, so I ignore it.

Oh, my Oberon last week made the video mash-up, and was bewildered to receive his director's entire fortune. The Summerdreams are now rolling in it.

I have been conditioned by playing challenges, and my Sims are not allowed to avoid work chance cards. Hobby chance cards can be skipped, though. I got so sick of my Sims getting fired for playing computer games in their lunch break.