They can choose secondary aspirations as soon as they age up, as long as they have an LTA point available. I usually don't spend any LTA points until they age up to teen, and then spend all the accumulated ones on the aspiration perks.

LOL, poor Romance sims.

Any Sims particularly surprise you? (I imagine that happens a lot. )

Mostly shy sims rolling Popularity, and then sometimes wanting 20 best friends. It's also kind of funny whenever someone rolls their own hair color as a turnoff. Serious pleasure sims, also, they usually wind up spending a lot of time playing chess. Playful knowledge sims are kind of old news, though, almost all my sims in my main neighborhood are super playful, so that combination is actually very common at this point, not to mention the knowledge sims who became werewolves.

Most of them are rich from selling off all those enormous date gifts !

The only thing more annoying is Bigfoot with a job lol.

One of these days, I should try playing a shy/serious Romance sim.

That's one part of the reason I made Bigfoot the caretaker of my orphanage in my current hood. I edited a custom Social Worker career so that he goes to work three times a week for an hour - and then comes home with donated items!

This is the personality of Nina Caliente. She is difficult to play as a typical Romance Sim--aka the Don Lothario type--and seems to be more suited to either serial monogamy or being a hopeless romantic.

Whereas her sister is the exact opposite and seems better suited to being a Romance Sim (or imo, a Pleasure Sim) than a Fortune Sim. So if you wanted to play against type, these two would be good to experiment with.

90/9/1 between family/knowledge/romance. I know, but I like family sims best (they're also the least annoying for storytelling sims IMO), and knowledge sims can be a bit fun too (plus they go well together with family sims), and on occasion I'll mix in a romance sim just to throw things off a bit.

I assigned the aspirations numbers 1 through 5, and then use random.org to let RNG decide which aspiration they get.

You don't like Pleasure, Fortune and Popularity?

Not too much, no. Unmodded (which is pretty much the way they are in my game), I find them a bit annoying. Pleasure mostly wants to buy stuff and have fun, popularity wants to make friends and party, while Fortune is all about earning money and then spending everything on expensive stuff my sims don't need. In a nutshell, anyway - and it can get a bit annoying the way I mostly play. Those probably works better with a different playstyle than mine. Not too fond of romance sims either (they clash a bit with family sims - especially on marriage/kids, and get a bit too hung up in having dates all the time), but occasionally they'll work out.

For story/picture sims I pretty much always pick family, because I find it to be neutral enough to not cause any trouble, while at the same time it's possible to get quick-ish points if need be (without cheating, or having to buy something, do something off-lot, etc.).

Romance and pleasure pixels are frustrating for me to even understand, let alone play-they're always looking for the next score, date or scene and it's very hard to keep them focused on things that also matter like jobs and making a living.

It often feels like EA's writers got carried away with their fantasies of a wild single life that never happened. Like they were all wanting to be Don Lothario but went home to a wife and 3 kids.

Which is actually pretty sexist and misogynistic when you really think about it. That's the one part of the game where I feel women got shortchanged.

But I'm not going to go into a feminist rant over it-I just ignore those two aspirations or make them secondary. They have no business (to me) dictating a pixel's life.

Glad to know I'm not the only one who dislikes romance sims! They're just really against my values to the point I struggle to find any happiness in playing them. For me personally, having my sims get married and watching their kid(s) grow up is one of the biggest joys for me as a player. Romance sims don't want that and I try to play from the sim's point of view so I just get bored.

Personally I don't mind pleasure sims. They might not have any big goals, but I think they're interesting in that sense. They want to avoid work. Mine often want to skip class or quit their jobs. Avoiding responsibility isn't a realistic way to live, but it feels very human. They also tend to be easily amused and rolls wants to watch TV or have a bubblebath. There's nothing wrong with wanting the simple things in life and I find the fortune-pleasure combo works really well for sims like Dina Caliente. I see them as kind of the inverse of other aspirations due to the lack of ambition.

I use the Crumpulator. https://www.lordcrumps.com/the-crumpulator

Or if I forget to calculate before they age I make very nice sims family, very playful pleasure, very serious knowledge, others either fortune or romance. Most romance sims I give the helpless romance trait to.

If a sim is pleasure, romance or popularity I give them a secondary aspiration to flesh out their wants a bit more. I rather like the combo of helpless romantic/family sim. To me they are just looking for the fairy tale romance and soul mate.

I love all the aspirations, and don't seem to have the problems other people do with them. It's just a matter of learning how to play them for maximum player satisfaction.

Some sims will give me clear indications of what they want in life by the time they hit puberty, and I always go with what I interpret their behavior to mean. If they're sending me mixed messages or haven't individuated much I'll use a die, usually a six-sider numbering the aspirations in the pop-up 1-6 clockwise, but if the sim has narrowed my choices I'll weight the numbers and change the die. If a sim seems equally likely to be Fortune or Romance, for example, I might go hi/lo between the two; or I might use an 8-sider and assign 2 numbers each to Fortune and Romance, so that those are more likely to be rolled. They might get the other aspiration as a secondary at that point; or I may plan to change to the other choice at Junior Year. When aspirations change in Junior Year I assign the original primary as a secondary, so any time a sim gets an "immature" aspiration - Pleasure, Romance, or Popularity, I'm looking for them to grow up enough by Junior Year to change to a "mature" aspiration - Family, Fortune, Knowledge, without losing their old drives and habits. Some of them don't ever grow into more mature values, though, and that's fine, too. A preponderance of Romance, Pleasure, and Popularity sims in high school giving way to a preponderance of Family, Knowledge, and Fortune, without either set taking over 100%, is pretty realistic in the ways I care about.

The calculations or basing of aspiration on particular personality spreads would never work for me, because they'd make the sims too predictable. Shy Popularity and Romance sims present challenges and opportunities, and build in changes in the rhythm of play, as they will need quiet, solitary periods to recover from the social whirl. Outgoing Knowledge sims are less likely to get stuck in a rut of solitary study while the player loses interest. Grouchy Family sims can either be abusive and controlling to their families, or overprotective, disruptive, and embarrassing to their other family members. And so on. My Fortune sims are often very generous; my Romance sims can be free spirits who maintain friendships with their lovers in defiance of caught-cheating incidents, or make one Grande Passion (with lots of dates!) their life work, and are also drama magnets; and so on. I want them to surprise me, and they can't if i don't leave them room to do it in and restrict them to certain molds.

I go with my gut and that's how I end up with a lot of popularity sims clamoring to make ALL the friends.

I've said this before, but I'll say it again as there are newer Simmers and returners here.

I find Nice Popularity Sims easy and fun to play as all they really want is to be friends with everyone. I tend to put such Sims into people-focused roles like the pastor of the church, or teachers in schools. I honestly think that good people-skills are more important in such roles than pure knowledge.

Nice Romance Sims are just like Nice Popularity Sims, except that they like their friends so much that they want to take them all to bed. Many of the Romance Sims in my game are cute, lovable, friendly and generous. I honestly don't see what's not to like.

What Peni says is true.

There is no valid reason for all Knowledge sims to be serious. In fact, one of mine is active and playful, and will play Marco Polo all day long if I allow him too.

There is no valid reason for shy sims not wanting a ton of friends. It is harder for them, and I tend to start them chatting on the computer with somebody, then follow those up with phone calls, and also, they join fishing at ponds and get to know new sims that way.

And if you feel a sim may have been a good this or that later, there is always the second aspiration?

Oh, there is no reason to be a grilled cheese aspiration sim. Except for me

Usually I know them so I have some sense about an aspiration. For example: If sim got usually A+ and is very interested about some hobby especially nature, science, arts and crafts he/she is Knowledge sim. If sim is passionate to sell lemonade in the front yard s(he) likes to gain money. If I have no sense they are pleasure/popularity sims (like teens usually are in real life ) I can change it later in the university.

Once I had two siblings living very poor childhood They became taken away by social worker. Other family adobted them but I decided they still had trauma because one became a fortune sim and the other was a family sim.

Sometimes I choose it by family. If parents are into business maybe their children are also.

If I am doing some own challenges (like what happen if your family start with 0 simoleon) I would use different aspirationt to see how they are working.

The commitment issues. I respect that some people engage is polygamy, polyamory and other alternatives to monogamy, but for me it just doesn't jive and I personally don't enjoy playing it.
Also, if not for how love works in sims 2 I think the aspiration could have been renamed woohoo aspiration.

Also @Justpetro I don't know who Peni is, but I absolutely agree! Playfulness is associated with curiosity which I think is really important for knowledge sims.

@Peni Griffin - see above post

Whoops! Probably one of the people I've had the most interaction with. I need to get better at getting people's user names straight. If there was a blushing, facepalm, or sweat drop emoji I'd be using it right now.

I make notes in the bio as I play with a child about the types of wants they roll or things they keep doing that might hint towards a future aspiration. Children that roll wants for new family members (sims or pets), or who always want to play with family, might be family sims. The ones who obsess about a hobby or homework might be knowledge, popularity or romance sims might bring home friends more often than their siblings....

Sometimes I then look at the sims interests as they age up - there is a brief period as or after they do the age spin but before the dialog box opens where you can pause the game and the new interests are readable. Their new interests can now be used to add or remove aspirations from the short list I made based on observations during play.

These things leave me with a list of 2-4, usually 3, aspirations to choose from, and I then roll to choose from that list. For secondary aspirations, I sometimes give the sim another from this list as soon as I can, but only if I feel that another of the aspirations really fits. Some sims don't get secondary aspirations until they are adults, and some change aspirations at uni - depends on how well the aspirations they rolled fit them, and how I want to play them. For most sims, I randomize the secondary aspiration from almost all of the options, only eliminating one or two that just don't fit (no interest in food, grilled cheese is off the list; a sim with no interest in work or money won't get a fortune secondary).

Every so often I do have a sim that just screams one aspiration for their whole childhood - I don't bother rolling for them and just give them the aspiration they clearly are meant to have. These sims are the least likely to get a secondary aspiration until adulthood, and even then they might not get a secondary until either halfway to elder or until some major life event occurs in their household.