How To Encorporate The Wheels of Samsara into your Sims 2 Let's Play

Mother, I'm trying to deal with the cyclical nature of life through a video game, again.

"I think when I started doing games I really wanted to carry that to the next step, to the player, so that you give the player a tool so that they can create things. And then you give them some context for that creation. You know, what is it, what kind of kind of world does it live in, what's its purpose? What are you trying to do with this thing that you're creating? To really put the player in the design role. And the actual world is reactive to their design. So they design something that the little world inside the computer reacts to. ... If you're building a solution, how large that solution space is gives the player a much stronger feeling of empathy. If they know that what they've done is unique to them, they tend to care for it a lot more. I think that's the direction I tend to come from." - Will Wright, creator of The Sims

Cycles

There's something inherently fascinating abobut cycles. All religions have them -- maybe hinduism and buddhism most notably with the wheels of samsara, but also in Christianity, with it's depiction of the Wheel of Fortune, or the book of Ecclesiastes:

Nature is repetitive. Fractals

So bringing this cyclical nature into The Sims, both places it in a bigger, more epic narrative, but is I think also -- laugh at me all you want -- almost meditative. It gives this sort of hyper-narrative to the entire game, where everything exists in a bigger context, so big that you as the player might not even see all of it, which I think mimics the feeling of playing a video game when you where little. In a viral tweet, a user describes how he as a child would take video game characters to specific spots and pretend he lived there. it's very common for people to have valued games as children as a space to *exist* in. Whether you go the whole way and pretend or simply value meandering. I did this all the time as a kid, and it creates a problem of nostalgia. I at time feel this yearning, craving to return to a video game I played when I was young, with this vivid, vast world I'd spend hours in, only to realize that the video game in question is about little pet shops running around in a poorly animated 3d world, and you can't possibly retvrn to the state of mind that enjoyed this. It's too small. I guess if the pet shops could die maybe I'd be off adding reincarnation to these games too.

Stories

What is the Tarot? Well, it's a deck of playing cards Valentino thinks the tarot card originate from ... well, you know. I am not immune to schizophrenia. (quote) Christ-story "Take up your cross and foollowo me" The suit of Swords follows the story of suffering. The suit ends on probably the darkest card in the entire tarot, with a man laying down with ten swords in his back to a pitch black background. Simone Weil Quote Faust-story The faust story contrasts the Swords story, in that it is a story centered not around suffering, but around temptation. Hero's Journey Story "With great power" ... well, you know the rest. Proust Story The suit of Cups is a suit about coming to terms with the fleeting

Sims 2 players are sort of the known most deranged of the sims players - that is to say the group that takes the game with most absurd ardinance. It's not uncommon for players to play with taxes, excel-spread sheets, fantasy worlds, and mods for things like death by child-birth, laundry, etc., and almost everyone playing the game slowly developes their own rulebook for how they prefer to play the game, with terms like "want-based gameplay", and rules about how many kids different sims can have, since overpopulation is a constant problem. And maybe it's not strange that the fanbase for this specific installation of the series is borderline insane: setting up the game at all in 2024 takes multiple steps and extra mods to even make the game functionable and modern; apart from that, it's also the version of the game that almost 20 years later, still has the most in-depth genetic and personality system, where genetics function according to the Punett square, and personality is decided by genetics and enviroment in a simple but sort of sophisticated way, compared to later installations. ("fascinated with the idea that complexity can come out of such simplicity", which is often how I've felt about the Sims 2 personality system.)

Actually there is a Japanese board game called "Go" that I've played since I was a kid, and it has an amazingly simple set of rules. But yet the strategies in it are so complex. And so from that, I've always been fascinated with the idea that complexity can come out of such simplicity.

So I don't think that the way I play it is that much more extreme than anyone else - in fact knowing this group of people, they may find it exciting. From an outside perspective though, boy, get ready.

Tarot

Somethings that's always a struggle with the Sims is balancing the unpredictable aspects with the predictable -- if the game is too predicatble, it gets boring; if it's too unpredictable, it gets annoying when the game gets in the way of the game play. Because of this Tarot plays in easily to The Sims 2, because the entire idea of tarot as divination is based on a ground of predictability and unpredictability, and reading in little stories to a collection of symbols. If tarot was too predictable, it probably would function for divination or meditation: if the card said "you'll get fired next monday", that'll probably not happen and the thing will be fake. If the card has vague symbolism, it's possible someone will look at the card and think "my boss is so mad at me; maybe this means he'll finally kick me off." Then, wether or not that actually happens becomes psychologically secondary -- the connexion to something true ("I am scared I will loose my job") was already made. This same thing happens all the time when playing the Sims - the game has programming that will make certain wants, behaviours, more likely if certain standards are met, but some things will also basically be random, and the player seldom knows what is what as the code is happening beneath the surface. Similarily, the well-structured nature of the symbolism of the tarot makes the randomness of which card is drawn helpfull since it only help that balance of unpredictability and predictability. The unpredictability makes it so what card is drawn isn't deterministic on other factors; the stability of the symbolism makes it easy to read in stories connected to almost an infinite amount of diffrent situations. That setup makes it perfect for the human brain to read in stories and reasons to things that may or may not be there -- this is true for both The Sims, assuming it's well-programmed, and tarot, assuming the symbolism is well planned out.

So, how does one integrate tarot into The Sims 2 in practice? Well, the way I've been doing it is two-fold: I draw one card for each generation, which gets to decide economic/political/cultural/social standards during that generation. (I'll say though that once per generation has proven too little in my game, I've been thinking of switching it to once per decade or something. At the same time, drawing a "neigbourhood-card" not that often may help to not make the gameplay too chaotic.) If it's a major arcana card (more on that later) it decides major epoch within the game; if it's a minor card, it decides something smaller, sort of like an era, and the epoch-card may still be impactful in teh background until a new major-card is drawn. I usually interpret the cards like this: wands: creativity, magic; cups: social issues, religion, spirituality, how sims treat each other; pentacles, economy, recessions etc.; swords: politics, ideology, war, ideas, etc.

Then I draw a card for each sim, the moment they're born, and a new card for major life happenings (aspiration collapse and finishing sophmore year are the big ones for me; others may be more individual for each sim) that decide how they reacted for that specific part of their lives. What the card they draw means depends first and foremost on one thing: wether it's a minor arcana card or a major arcana card.

Minor Arcana

The minor arcana of the tarot is divided in four suits: wands, cups, pentacles, and swords (similarly to how a common deck of playing cards are dividied into clubs ♣, diamonds ♦, hearts ♥ and spades ♠.) The suits represents the four elements (wands-fire, cups-water, pentacles-earth, swords-air) and in the Sims comes to serve as four basic personality archetypes, or four basic overarching storylines.

Aces are in my game always "new souls", i.e. they have no past lives. They're new energy being brought into the universe. As such they get immediately moved to the second card of their suit in their next life. They usually have the ambition to start something new in their lifetime (basically becoming culturally, politically, socially influential in someway that changes society around them. I've had sims start religious orders or become artist based on this card; radical new politics could also be an interpretation), and if they succeed I draw a new neighbourhood-card.

The Court Cards

The Court Cards (Page, Knight, Queen, and King) serve a specific purpose in my game. Usually, they're not sims who are on this big simsara journey. Moreso they're sims who are either on a mission to achieve or already have a sort of control of the energy existing within each suit. The royals of the sword suit have a sort of control of this political, intellectual energy; the royals of the earth suit has a control of the economic, material implications of their suit; the royals of the wands suit a control of that creative, adventurous, sexual energy; the cups royals a control of that spiritual, emotional, family-oriented energy. The King-card usually more in an authoritative way; the Queen card usually more in a motherly way, maybe not conserning official authority. The page cards are "novices" of their suit, often dependent on the guidance and modelling of some other sim they look up to, and the knight sims are ambitious, adventorous adolescent sould ready to go on a journey towards becoming the queen/king card. Since the royal cards aren't on a journey in the same ways as other cards, I usually let them "give up" their spirit, or switch between the queen/king card, when they feel it's time to let the knight card become the queen/king card.

Major Arcana

Major Arcana cards are typically interprented as more inportant within divination, and I like to continue this thinking into the Sims. That means that sims born with a major arcana card will play an important part and have a bigger impact in the wider sims-story (if sims draw a major arcana card as a secondary card, I don't interpret them as as important of a sim, usually - I moreso interpret it as something important in their life.) Just like the minor arcana, the major arcana can be understood as a story, stretching from the Fool-card (or the magician, some leave the fool as the last card) to the World-card, and I like to do so meaning the major arcana cards are also on a journey towards the World-card, after which they would stop being reincarnated.

How the Major Arcana cards are to be interpreted is difficult to say, but I can give some examples based on the cards I've played this far:

• The Tower: This is a card representing the crumpling of everything that has been built. Think the Tower of Babel, just a complete divine shut down. In tarot it's usually considered the chaos card or the worst card of the deck. I've had sims loose their entire family when they're born with this card, or some equal disaster. I like to have it so that they're put on a missing for revenge for what happened: if they succeed, the consequences may be so big that I draw a neighbourhood card.
• The Empress Reversed: The Empress usually represents motherhood and positive magic; being the third card of the Major Arcana, it also carries the connection to the Trinity, this self-rejuvinating, overflowing and creative force. As such The Empress is "the mother nature", who just gives and gives. In the reversed position, I've had this represent a witch that cannot have children on her own but may terrorize other people's children; think the witch in Coraline, sort of the opposite of a creative force -- instead a force that can just consume the world around them.
• The Hireophant Reversed: The Hierophant can represent organised religion (in some ways organised society in genreal.) There's many ways you could interpret it upside-down, but the way I've done it in my game has been making essentially a "false prophet", set on organising a new religion/cult that may or may not be more focused on the founders interests. You could also interpret it as someone who's very negative towards existing organised religions.

Relationships

Something pretty intuitive if you've read this far is that sims, depending on their cards, should develop specific relationships. For exampe, what's the relationship between the Page of Wands and The Queen of Wands? What's the relationship between two brothers with the same card from different suits? What's the relationship like between two cards just after one another, like Five of Cups and Six of Cups? What's the relationship between The World reversed and the Hermit? I'll leave this to the reader since it gets too complex to sort out every relationship, especially if you count in the specific in-game circumstances where the different cards exists (what age are they in relation to one another? Are they related? Etc.), but that's also what gives the chance for so much variety and complexity. Another aspect I find important is that while sims may not remember their past lives, they may feel some sort of connection to cards that meant a lot to them in past lives: friends, enemies, lovers, family, etc. Some cards may develope a sort of intertwined story in each others lives.

Summary

If anyone were to be inspired by this, I'd love to know! I've never found someone who play the game like this, and I do feel it's probably something someone else with a different perspective, more experience with the tarot or something else could expand on even more. Just like The Sims 2, it feel like a growing-ground for creativity and creation.∎

Links:

• My gameplay rules for The Sims 2 (she's crazy your honor) http://edition.cnn.com/chat/transcripts/2000/12/1/wright.chat/
• Meditations on the Tarot: Introduction to Christian Hermeticism by Valentin Tomberg