I find it hard sometimes to find an in depth personality with some of my sims with game features and my own imagination. I have seen others say they use traits and using the random programs to give their sims more personality. Anyone willing to share some of their ideas and thoughts on this ? I have already looked over a lot of the ideas on Apple Valley and Lakeside Heights and there are some great ones there.

Also, how do you keep it fun without being too bogged down with spreadsheets and keeping track of it all ? I know some folks put a lot of work and detail into doing this and the idea of it being more work than fun is intimidating at times. How do you find a happy medium ? unless of course spreadsheets and keeping track of it all is something that you really enjoy as well.

This is probably a no brainer to most but I find that it's easy to forget the 'Interests' panel. When I remember I'll set those values myself e.g. if I think sim X would be an animal lover I'll set that value to high. I think these only effect conversation between sims but I like it when say your farmer John who couldn't give a toss about fashion gets grouchy at downtown Gloria for going on about clothes. Adds a touch of realism and more realistic match making.

There are several ways you can go 'in-depth' into the characters.

1. Finding out their ambition or motivation: a formula (not mine, Apple Valley blog had it first) for seeing how ambitious they are: Outgoing - Playful=motivation. For example, Dick has 10 points outgoing (Leo, I suspect) and 3 points playful (don't get him mad at you-he's touchy)= a 7 ambition score, which is higher than average.

You can also determine their 'intelligence' by using this formula: "Outgoing"+ 1/2 "neat" points - "playful" points = sim intelligence.

Here's the actual website..full of useful and fun information that can help you figure out those pixels: Apple Valley Blogs: simology

I actually use my motivation as Activeness minus playfulness. If they're very active and more serious, they're highly motivated. If they're very playful and lazy, they're completely unmotivated. It makes skilling more interesting as only highly motivated sims would have high skills. I found that from here: http://eien-herrison.dreamwidth.org/110074.html There is also more information on different sim aspects.

My formula for sim motivation/intelligence is neatness+Activity-playfulness. 0 and below is low, 1 to 7 average and 8+ highly intelligent/gifted.
I look at everything, personality, hobby, interests. I watch what they do, jot down interesting wants or things they have done to form a clearer picture.

Actually, that formula is wrong-and it's as Eien Harrison's blog states it.."Actiive - Playful=motivation/ambition'. On the same scale Jo has written.

Guess that formulae and I don't like one another, and I forget them easily! I'm too lazy to edit that post, but we all make mistakes..

I like the concept of motivation, I just plugged it into my spreadsheet for my hood. It was fairly accurate with how I play my simmies-like my sim, S'Ahmisa Warwick (who is a vice-presidential candidate) was an overachiever and my sim Walt Humphrey (who is currently in jail) is an underachiever. In terms of intelligence, I tend to use a random trait "doofus" to indicate learning disabilities of all sorts or "genius" to indicate an abundance of skills. Other wise my simmies have multiple intelligences-some are musically talented, others more traditional academically talented, etc.

One of my more recent simology posts was looking at parenting styles for my simmies. I've been working on creating a simology post on jealousy but am tweaking the system still.

I use my spreadsheets as a reference and my blog is a way I keep it fun. By creating and writing their stories, the spreadsheets and their simology come "alive" for me and then as I write about them, I tend to learn even more about their personality that explains some game-play behaviors as well.

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My hood: Apple Valley
http://applevalleyblogs.blogspot.com/

http://starrsim.tumblr.com/

Sim Player since 2003

Have you seen the in depth aspirations post on tumblr?

http://dinuriel.tumblr.com/tagged/sim+psychology/page/2

Haven't seen that, thanks.