#i was just spitballing on number 4 but i might just actually incorporate that plot

[armoricaroyalty]

hi! do you have any tips for a new/just starting out royal simblr? anything you can tell me is greatly appreciated.

also, one more thing: any tips for how to place/adjust tiaras using the hat slider? i’m seriously losing my actual mind over here trying to position tiaras and i don’t even know if i’m doing it right 🤣 ty!

You know, a while ago I actually started writing a guide for new royal simblr but it ended up in my enormous pile of "projects I'll return to when my free time returns from the war!" Here's some of the highlights.

Know what you want to get out of your story... Are you telling a story because you're excited about the community aspect, meeting new people, participating in community events, and making friends? Are you looking to challenge yourself and grow your skills as a story-teller, pose-maker, or editor? Do you want to dress your sims up in pretty clothes and make them smooch? Figure out what you want to accomplish with your story, and prioritize the parts of it that enable you to do that thing.

...but don't do it for notes. There's a big difference between joining a community to make friends and enjoy your shared hobby and joining a community with the intention of building a following and getting a lot of likes, comments, and asks. We all like it when the numbers go up, but focusing exclusively (or almost exclusively) on the numbers is a great way to kill your passion for your story. Comparison is the thief of joy. Write for yourself, not the audience you think another simmer has.

Start small, start simple. Your story will naturally develop in complexity as you revise your outlines and edit posts. The stories you follow might be packed with intricate drama and lots of moving parts, but they (probably) didn't start out that way. Don't feel like you need to roll out a complicated story with a cast of dozens and extensive family trees...you'll have a hard time keeping track of it, and so will your readers. Some of the best story-telling advice I ever got came from a tabletop roleplaying game manual via an actual play podcast: draw maps, leave blank spaces. Know the shape of your story but leave yourself space to improvise and embroider later on.

Pick a good entry point. Expanding on the point above, (imo) the best way to get started is to have a small core cast with clearly-defined relationships reacting to some kind of status-quo altering event, and then building the plot and world out from there. For example: what happens when the elderly king's only living child dies? Does he divorce his also-elderly wife and marry his 20-year-old sidepiece in the hopes of producing a new heir, or does he reconcile with his estranged brother and declare him heir? That's a cast of four (five if you count the dead son) with a lot of baked-in drama and intrigue. Readers are going to want to know what happens next. I want to know what happens next. Someone write this story and send it to me.

A lot of the rest of the guide I have drafted is just me tiredly making a case for making sims who don't look exactly identical, so I'll save that for another day.

ETA: no tips for the hat slider, sorry. i’m constantly fucking that one up, too.