Seasons & Time
I currently play with all seasons set to 28 days, to allow for plenty of time in each season, although it frequently doesn’t feel like it’s enough! I’m searching for ways to extend the seasons but so far had no luck. This means that each Sim-Year lasts 112 days.
Pregnancy
I have pregnancies set in WickedWhims to last 84 days – the equivalent of 3 seasons, or nine months. I tend to ensure I’m playing a family when their baby is due, simply because I’ve yet to find a way to change a baby’s name! As a result, I frequently note down approximately when a baby is due.
Ageing
I switched ageing off at the beginning of this game and I age up everyone manually on their birthdays.
The exception to this rule is for the younger sims. Toddlers are aged up on their birthday until they’re due to start school (see Primary Education).
For school-aged toddlers, children and teenagers, they officially age up in the Autumn, just before they start school. Teenagers leaving secondary education age up in summer, just as school ends for the summer, after they turn 18. This is for starting Uni/work purposes.
~ Babies age to Toddlers on their 1st birthday.
~ Toddlers age to Children in the Autumn when they are 4. Because Autumn marks the beginning of the academic year, children all start school together so the year they will turn 5 is the year they age up to children.
~ Children age to Teens in the Autumn when they are 11 and in the academic year they will turn 12. However, I give them the Preteen trait when they age up and they keep that until they are about to turn 13.
~ Teens age to Young Adults in the summer they have finished school/the academic year they turned 18.
~ Young Adults age to Adults on their 40th birthday.
~ Adults age to Elders on the 65th birthday.
Above is a screenshot of my current spreadsheet. This is showing the calendar which marks the birthdays. I edit this to update the ages regularly and highlighted in red is where I mark what the current date is in my game. This enable me to keep an accurate record of the birthdays in game.
The Daily Plumbob 
Hi MissyHissy, first of all, I want to say I love these posts that show your gameplay. Between you and PleasantSims combined I’ve gotten so much inspiration for my gameplay, and your mods in particular have made the game super enjoyable to me!
I think the way you play is very similar how I want to play, but I have trouble understanding your aging system fully. I would love to read a post on exactly how you set up everything to play like this. I mainly have questions about the following things:
– If 1 year = 112 days, than a sim you’re playing will reach adulthood in 4480 days and then they’d have 20 more years to live as an adult + however long they spend in the elder stage before they die? Am I getting this right? That means your custom lifespans would be superlong, which I like – for me, if I set it up in a similar fashion, I think it will allow me to play without a fixed schedule rotationally and still be able to do everything I want with each family. But since I’ve never heard of a simmer playing with this long a lifespan, it would be great if you could help me understand better.
-Do you set up your mc command aging to reflect this math? If yes, I guess technically one could play with aging on and still not worry that somebody will age up too quickly?
-How do you mark your sims birthdays in the calendar, do you make a holiday and then update it each year to show the correct number of their age (the number in brackets?)
Thanks for sharing all these helpful resources and wonderful mods for all of us to enjoy – and know that I’m reading everything you post!
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Thank you very much for such a lovely comment!
– I’ll be absolutely honest, I play with aging off altogether, so I don’t even use MCCC for this. I have an Excel spreadsheet with Sim’s birthdays logged on there and I update that regularly. I then usually switch briefly to a household to age a Sim up, if appropriate, on their birthday. Usually, I don’t screenshot those birthdays unless it’s a birthday I want to share for any reason. I do have some screenshots of my spreadsheet so I’ll get a picture added to this post to show how I tend to log everything.
– However, I see no reason why setting the age span in MCCC wouldn’t work! That would certainly be a way of playing with ageing on and could solve my death-by-old-age problem. It’s a very good idea and something I might have to look into doing in the not-so-distant future.
Another note; if I want to play a birthday but without the Sim actually aging up, I have a custom event for a birthday party but without the aging requirement; I think it’s a KawaiiStacie mod but I’ll check.
Thank you again for a lovely comment and for your questions!
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Thank you for your reply and for adding the spreadsheet – that helps a lot!
re: MCCC – I was thinking the same thing – it’s so much better to actually not also have to arrange an Elder’s death after you’ve played with them through a long and fulfilled life. I’d much rather be surprised. 😁 + I think having aging on but on superlong like this would not only make keeping track of birthdays easier, as they would show up on the calendar, but it would also mean that there’s less possibility for aging sync-up fails if you don’t play your rotation on a very strict schedule (I know I’ll be bad at sticking to a schedule).
re: playing a birthday without aging – not sure I understand why you’d need it. Do you celebrate your sims’ birthdays every year of their life? I think I’d just do it for each life stage 😂
I perked up when I saw that you replied, so looking forward to reading more playstyle-related posts from you whenever you feel like writing them. 😊 Feel free to screenshot spreadsheets more – I’ll gobble up everything you post haha. 🙂
Hope you have a not-too-stressful patch day!
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Sorry for the delay in replying; the patch was indeed quite a nightmare and I think I’ve only just recovered!
I’ll definitely give the MCCC idea some thought. It might just be the answer I need there. I’d like the element of surprise but didn’t want them all aging too fast. This might just work.
I don’t celebrate them every year, just if it happens to feature in a story. Usually I quietly mark the updated age on the spreadsheet and do nothing else. Sometimes, particularly children and teens, if the birthday happens to fall while I’m playing their family, then I’ll feature it a bit.
I do intend to share more game-play related posts. I’m constantly updating the pages and the education ones will start getting some updates soon, so watch out for those!
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Hi, i just find you’re blog and it’s amazing do way you play, i’ve got so many good ideas to implement. I don’t know if you already talked about this, but how your aging system works? Like the years you’re always talking about in your post (like 1 sim day = 1 sim year?).
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Hi there!
The aging is fairly straightforward. 1 year = 112 days. The reason for this is that a year is 4 seasons and my seasons are on 28 days each. Each sim has a literal birthday (the day they were born) so they have a birthday each year.
As far as aging up, I mention that in my Aging section on this post but they only age to a new age stage on certain years.
Hope that helps and thanks for commenting!
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I’m still going through your gameplay posts, so maybe you’ve answered this elsewhere but how do you handle elder deaths, with aging off? That’s something I’m still fine-tuning with my Sims 4 and haven’t quite figured out how I want to do it.
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Haven’t covered that yet myself. I’m not completely sure myself but I’m thinking I might cheat it. I’d prefer them to be more spontaneous and not pre-planned, as it were but I really don’t want aging on at all. So I really haven’t figured that out either yet.
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I’ve been toying around with Maisie’s system, which I’ve used in TS2 for a while now. I’ve mostly done the random rolls but haven’t figured out how to tie skills or traits or relationships into it yet.
https://retromaisie.wordpress.com/2012/07/04/dealing-with-death-in-millwood/
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Ooh, that’s an interesting read, thanks. I might have a proper look at this soon and see if I can come up with anything.
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