The few pages I've read in this thread are great, since it starts with bad gameplay and now a discussion on corruption, even with those who've moved on or haven't played Sims 2 in a long time.
My two biggest dumb things were moving families between neighborhoods and deleting urns and gravestones, before learning it's a bad thing to do those.

Building huge sprawling( yet still had most furniture outside... ) single floored houses on flattened lots with no roof via motherlode cheats because I didn't know how to roof or put in staircases-I got so excited when I discovered wardrobes because one looked like a staircase and I thought I could use it as such - my first house didn't even have a door just a gap in wall. Not painting houses and only flooring them because the carpets were pretty, never going to community lots because I didn't know how to get off birdseye view, not understanding homework was necessary and my kids got taken away. The list goes on

LOL, yes, it was a steep learning curve! I got the kids taken away to military school all the time when I started playing TS1, took me forever to learn how to take care of them.

Bringing in the forbidden NPCs into a house with the addneighbortofamily cheat...so bad...

That's exactly what I did too!

In my first household, I matched a family sim (woman) with a romance sim (man). I thought she would look after their kids while he remained faithful and cherished her very existence! I learnt a harsh lesson in 2004

You can play sims however you want, you don't need to be boxed into things. EG romance sim = unfaithful/sleeps around, family sim = lots of babies, Pleasure sims = plays lots of games/has lots of dates. No, those are just stereotypes, sims don't have to always follow those. Romance sims can indeed be perfectly happy married with kids and can make great parents. I've seen both romance and pleasure sims make better parents than family and knowledge sims. You can also play them as being a sim who is a romantic. They can go on lots of dates with their partner and be very happy with that. It's your choice as the player. So yes you can have a family sim married to a romance sim and they can even be happy. I had one such couple in my legacy years ago. I gave her family as a secondary and she constantly rolled wants to play with her kids. her LTW was to be top of the athletic career which was very doable. If they have a LTW you don't want, roll until you get one you do want. Have a want to whoohoo 3 sims? Don't fill it. do other things to roll other wants and train your sim. You can get some sims who are unfaithful but most sims are amenable to being trained into what you want for them. You do that by encouraging other wants, ignoring wants you don't care for and filling wants you do like.

I'm so glad this thread has been revived. It's my favourite of the long-running threads. elfinity, I love the way you keep an eye on this thread, and read all our posts about the silly things we did. Many of the starters of our long-running "Common Threads" haven't been heard of for years, but, thanks to your guiding hand, this one stays your thread.

I've been meaning to reply to your post @elfinity ever since you posted it nearly a year ago. I apologise for my extreme tardiness and hope that late is better than never!

Your post really helped me to appreciate my Sims. You're right about them . My Sims are not stupid and never have been. Absent-minded, very eccentric, and one or two of them even occasionally a little bit silly, but never stupid. The stupidity in my early game was all mine -- never theirs! Yes, they stayed calm during fires, and I and they together fought them effectively. They helped me learn how to play. Not surprisingly I have grown inordinately fond of these Sims who have been with me from the start. Truth is, I love them to bits! :lovestruc

I've now got through another year without seeing the Grim Reaper. I'm beginning to fear that the first time I meet him will be when he comes for me. Every Sim I have ever played is still alive (and long may it stay thus!).

I've read through my earlier posts in this thread (#746, #758, #778, #785, #803, #865, #870, #949, #957 and #967), and realise that there are still quite a few incidents from my early game I could relate to you. So I promise I'll post again soon. The nice thing in my case is that it's humour un-tinged with sadness. The story of my early game is largely the story of Andrew and Gloria Jones, Garry Mackay (Gloria's boyfriend), and the Moltke family (Martin, Manuela, Julian, Brigitte and Hans), the only families I played in my first few weeks. They are all still with me and very close to my heart. Indeed, thanks to the odd way I play, only one of them (Hans, who was then a toddler) has aged up.

At the start of my game I made Gloria and Garry as Romance Sims, believing that that would help them to fall in love with each other quickly. I thought they would get married, and then Andrew would have a father figure. Sure enough they quickly fell in love. And I saw "Get engaged" in both their Wants panels. But, when I looked more closely, I noticed it was in the bottom half of the panel -- they were fears of getting engaged -- not wants! I was a bit taken aback -- I thought getting engaged would be romantic! So they both tried to have relationships with others. Garry woohooed with both Trista Shaw (a Veronaville townie) and with the Diva. Gloria tried to do the same. She fell in love with Gary Thomson (another Veronaville townie) but never woohooed with him. But then she got very badly hurt when she tried to seduce her fellow-soldier Donte Chalmers (who I think is a Downtownie). Donte only wanted a platonic relationship, and he rejected all her advances. And I was playing to her wants, and not noticing her fears of rejection. As she got more and more depressed, I noticed Andrew moping around the house looking concerned. Well, it finished up with a session with the Therapist. Andrew had to invite Garry round to woohoo with her, as she was afraid of further rejection if she phoned him herself. Ever since then Gloria and Garry have only had woohoo with each other. And Andrew still phones Garry up every time, although the chance of Garry rejecting Gloria's invitation today must be nil. Gloria and Andrew are the closest mother and teenage boy I've ever seen. In Real Life they say that teenage boys do better with father figures, but in the Sims 2, Andrew and his mum have a very solid bond between them; Andrew is a real credit to Gloria (unless you consider him being gay to be a defect in his character). Andrew doesn't seem to have any hang-ups abut his mum having woohoo, and I sometimes see them talking to each other about it. There are leather sofas facing each other on either side of the hall at the entrance to the Jones's house, and on one occasion I've seen Andrew and Julian making out on one sofa, while his mum and Garry were making out on the other one!

I actually find it quite easy to keep Gloria in platinum aspiration. She has frequent wants to woohoo in bed or in the hot tub (and occasionally in public). She does it all with Garry, who frequently has the same want. She also frequently fulfils wants to make friends with various Sims, including many of Andrew's school friends. Wants to woohoo with 3 Sims are just ignored. I believe Gloria suppresses such desires for fear of getting hurt again, and also because she thinks it's better for Andrew if she doesn't have multiple partners; she knows Andrew believes he has found True Love. In many ways Gloria and Garry today are a couple who steadfastly refuse to accept that they are a couple. Andrew finds them a bit ridiculous, but he loves his mum and has a strong bond of friendship with Garry too.

Sorry this post is so long!

The very first family I ever played in sims 1, I set them to do a few things and then left the room, well the house, for a few minutes, well hours. When I came back the woman was lying on the front lawn asleep. I thought she was dead because I didn't know grimmy would come collect dead people. So, I deleted the family. Oopsie. That still bothers me, cause I think I killed her.

I had been playing the original sims game for some time before I got TS2, so I did have some idea what to do. At first I didn't want to touch the Maxis neighborhoods. I made my own neighborhood to learn how things worked because I didn't want to "break" or "mess up" the Maxis ones. Little did I know then just how badly broken they already were!

Lots and lots - and lots - of fires.

And on top of that, if you break any of your Maxis hoods, you only need to remove the Neighborhoods folder, and all the Maxis hoods will be re-created. But of course, as a noob, we didn't know that, either!

Sometimes I switch languages from my Czech to German just to feel like on a thin ice again in the interaction menu. Also it's a great way to learn vocabulary.

My noobiest moment...Playing Seasons without roofing for a week sucks :-D
Also pets breaking furniture. I had no idea how to stop them.

I watered the plants three times a day and then got upset because they died.

There was the time I moved a number of families, houses and all, into the family bin - because they were in the way of the new shopping complex I was going to build for them

The video in question is this, by the way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPYit5Njn78

There's a lot of stuff that were basically not in the base game eventually.

I played all my sims the same way, not taking into account their personalities and wants, then I complained that they were all too alike and that their personality points made no difference.

Wow, what game was that, cos it certainly wasn't Sims 2. Talk about false advertising.

When i was a TS2 noob, I downloaded so much CC from the exchange that I actually broke the computer I was playing it on... or at least, it contributed to the computer breaking. I also had every sim have face 1 and the same 2 hairs and outfits and such. I didn't have too many gameplay mistakes because I has already played TS1 and TS3 by that point.

My first family contained the parents, a female teen and a female child. When I moved them in, I furnished their tiny home but forgot to add the fridge. Once I realised I forgot the fridge, I was already out of money. The child was taken away. I decided not to save it, and the family was fairly happy.
In the same family, I got the teen to do her sister's homework. She neglected her own homework and lost her job. She was forever an F student but her sister went to college. The older sister is dead and the younger sister is a plantsim, but they were both married with adult kids.
I put the Oldies (Brandi Broke's parents, I think) in Don Lothario's home. The game told me to get Don to woohoo with Nina Caliente in the hot tub. First, I got him to marry Cassandra in his own house, on the spot. Then they woohooed. Instead of slapping Don, Cassandra got into the hot tub with Don and Nina. I'm not even lying. That legit happened, and I was dying of laughter . After that, Cassandra and Nina had a fight.
In Strangetown, I got Nervous Subject to juggle some cups. Then, I got Circe and Loki to join him.

^^^Okay we all had some victims when we play the game for the first time

And I laughed alot when I saw Cassandra joinedthe hot tub loool


Any other funny stories?

Honestly, my biggest noob moment was when I was still a newbie to the vast ultimate collection of Sims 2. Although I had gained most knowledge from the base game beforehand, I was still adapting to the new social interactions I encountered from other Sims and also I was brand new to the whole chemistry/attraction business. I have mentioned this previously in the "Things You've Said" topic in a shorter summary but I'll expand the story here.

I remember my Simsona was at the Bluewater Micro Mall when this happened, hanging out in one of the back rooms crafting robots to improve her robot-making talent. This was also at the time one of her current lovers, Frank, was mainly attracted to another woman (I had it set like that). Oddly, he found my Simsona cute enough to stalk her even when Lisa was present at the lot elsewhere. Although he was a Pisces and my Simsona a Virgo, they were both knowledge and their personality were fairly close to being identical so I guess that chemistry worked for them.

After these two had fun hanging out and Frank was forced to go home by the Sims That Be, I noticed William showed up and decided to direct my Sim to the front of the mall to see if she can grab his attention by freestyling. That worked and gradually more people wanted to join including Frank's girlfriend, Lisa. Once there were enough peeps, I got bored and had my Sim go to the pottery station nearby to craft a few plates. Then I received a notification from Frank for the usual smooch greeting, which I hastily accepted by clicking off my Sim's current activity.

Here is where this big "oops" moment happened, before I was more aware of the various interactions that are known to trigger love and jealousy. This was also before I ever knew CJ's Less Jealousy mod or ACR existed so the love triangle would've been impossible if my first lover was present nearby.

Seeing the "Leap on Arms" option under the Hug menu, I was curious to see what it did. Boom! I heard that very sound effect I learned to love and it was twice as loud than normal. Both Lisa and William got pissed simultaneously at the instant Frank accepted the hug, and I can recall William was in the middle of his freestyling while Lisa acted like a reckless primate towards the two. I paused the game right before the slapfest started and quit the lot prematurely; ever since the boo-boo occurred I couldn't stop laughing at my mistake.

What's funny is the little devil in my head was tempting me to do something like this but I knew of the consequence. I just didn't think twice when that opportunity struck.

I just remembered something stupid I did. When I first got Nightlife, I wanted to move a house I built from the main hood to a subhood without removing all the furniture. Rather than use the stay-things shrub like a normal person, I moved in a townie, moved my Sim out, killed the townie, and with the gravestone still on the lot moved it to the lots and houses bin. Then I put it down in the subhood, moved my sim in, and deleted the grave.

Without nounlinkondelete. (Though I'm not entirely sure if that would've helped.)

First thing I did was play the Montys. Had Romeo use the stove and make food while I went off to dinner and when I returned he was dead.

Also lots and lots of motherlode abuse. To me was like a godsend after suffering through klapaucius; for so long!

I decided to make a single male sim with a tragic back story which resulted in him taking care of 6 toddlers ( little did I know how hard it is to manage a sim with 6 toddlers) . I still to this day I can't stand the noises sims 2 toddlers make...

Did he adopt a lot of babies or did he get abducted several times?