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Everybody and their uncle knows I play a Medieval game, and anybody who knows anything about the Middle Ages in Europe knows that religion was a HUGE part of life. Chris Hatch added religion for Sims to his Angels & Nurses fan-expansion, and graciously extracted Lite and Middle versions for people who want religion, but don't want to install a fan-made expansion pack that would probably break their personal mod suite.Unfortunately, the Lite version of the mod (which is compatible with most other mods) is just cosmetic; you get the fun of making up deities and setting up tenets, but it has no actual effect on your game. Because three of the five tenets of each faith were romantic and sexual in nature, the Middle version conflicts with InTeen, among other things.
I can't do without InTeen until I find a mod or mod suite that fully replaces the features I want (in order, Young Adult marriage and pregnancy, non-student or mixed student/non-student families in a Uni subhood, miscarriage, alien pregnancy for teens, young adults, and adults of all genders (not part of InTeen but I do want it), and Teen pregnancy and marriage), and of course my love for feature-adding mods stems from adding features, not just adding flavor text. Neither strength of Chris Hatch's extracted religion really worked for me.
And then in came Larky, who I no longer know where to find, and who, in a thread lost to one of the many attacks on Garden of Shadows over the years, took my ideas for a religion mod that banned only non-romantic interactions and made it a reality.
This is that mod.
'He says gods like to see an atheist around. Gives them something to aim at.' Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
This is not a small mod, I give you fair warning. This mod can change how your Sims behave and may change how you play your game. I'm going to try to use a couple of terms consistently, and Capitalize Them so they stand out. So before we get really started, a quick glossary:
Deity: The Sim that holds a Religion together, metaphorically, practically, and grammatically.
Religion: The collected Tenets under one Deity.
Tenet: Any one of the five rules of a Religion banning or allowing certain activities.
Faith: Measure of a Sim's belief in their Religion.
Zeal: Measure of a Sim's affection for their Religion.
Place of Worship: A lot dedicated to a specific Religion.
Also, Religion (indeed most Chris Hatch mods) requires Apartment Life or Mansion & Garden. I do not know if other game configurations running on the AL game engine (bundle packs, Store Edition, Ultimate Collection) will run Religion properly or safely. If you decide to test that, you test it at your own risk. ... But also if you decide to test it? Please let me know what happens.
On we go.
The Deity
Each Religion has to have a Deity, for coding purposes. Believe me, I don't want to lock anyone's Sims into worshiping gods or goddesses; the grammar of the mod is meticulously structured to let you name your Deities damn near anything. More on names later.
You can choose the Deity's gender, but they start off as randomly-generated NPC toddlers, so they don't roam the neighborhood and flirt with your mortal Sims. Once your Deity or Deities exist, you can use a teleporter to move them onto a lot, add them to a family, age them up, make them over, use SimSurgery, whatever you want. It will not hurt your game or your Religion or the mod in general to let Deities roam the 'hood, testing the piety of or just sleeping with the locals, depending on your taste in pantheons. If you want cosmetically adult Deities but don't want free-range Deities, pick up Inge Jones's Prison System and slip an Electronic Prisoner Tag into each Deity's inventory. TwoJeffs' Visitor Controller scans for that and doesn't let tagged prisoners roam community lots.
It's probably a good idea not to let a Deity die, just in case.
Tenets
The real reason to install G-Rated Religion is the ability to change your Sims' behavior based on their belief system-- their Religion. For each Religion, you can choose to ban or allow Wrath, Theft, Violence, Indiscretion, and Disrespect. Allow all of them and you won't see any changes (you could probably make an atheist religion this way, if you're careful about your naming). It's more fun, however, to ban stuff, and to ban different stuff for each faith:
Ban Wrath and Sims won't stomp and grumble if they have a pathfinding failure. Instead, you'll see a popup with flavor text alerting you that someone is stuck, no matter a Sim's Faith level (though lower faith-levels may just get a shrug) or age (toddlers try to follow adults a lot, and can't climb stairs).
Ban Theft, and Sims of high Faith won't steal their neighbors' gnomes or newspapers if they'd be otherwise inclined to.
Ban Violence, and your Sims won't start anything under the Fight interaction (Slap, Shove, Poke, Attack) or the Play interactions Red Hands, Punch U Punch Me, and Cops and Robbers, provided their Faith is high.
Ban Indiscretion, and Faithful Sims won't Tell Secret, Gross Out, Belch At anyone, Gossip, or Brag.
Ban Disrespect, and Sims of high Faith won't Nag, Insult, or Annoy.
All of these are autonomous behaviors and a few aren't user-directable at all, so you should see some real differences in Sim behavior-- so long as Faith is high.
While the Tenets were originally chosen so I could have InTeen compatibility, they fall out in such a way that every ban makes your Sims better behaved-- more patient, more polite, more thoughtful, and kinder. While some of the Tenets seem a little redundant, basically Wrath bans or allows angry outbursts, Theft bans or allows taking anything that doesn't actually belong to your Sim, Violence bans or allows aggressively touching another Sim, even if it's all in fun, Indiscretion bans or allows breaches in good manners-- basically, rudeness-- and Disrespect bans more intentional mean behavior.
True, the interactions banned in the basic mod only start to reflect that, but there are expansions available after you download Religion, too.
Faith and Zeal
Faith and Zeal are, according to Chris Hatch, two new types of variable data. I'm actually not 100% sure if Zeal affects this mod (in the original PG-13 Religion, Sims with high Zeal but low Faith could become hypocritical, smacking cheating Sims with a Crumplebottom bag despite being able to cheat, themselves), but if a Sim's Faith is low (testing shows somewhere around 30 points out of 100), they can begin to disobey the Tenets of their Religion, with the exception of the permanent ban on pathfinding tantrums.
Faith and Zeal start out high when Sims are babies, and steadily decrease over time-- faster with misfortune. You can keep Faith and Zeal high one of two ways. Use the new interaction Ask.../About Religion as well as Talk.../Chat, Talk.../Hang Out, autonomous 'seated' conversations (such as when sharing a couch or over a shared meal), and chatting over the phone with a Sim of the same Religion to raise the Faith and the Zeal of both Sims. Spending time at a Place of Worship also boosts Faith and Zeal levels for every hour a Sim is on the lot. Faith-raising stacks if the Sims are Chatting while on a Place of Worship lot.
However, sharing those interactions with a Sim of a different Religion lowers Faith and Zeal for both Sims, as does spending time at a Place of Worship dedicated to a different religion. If two Sims of different Religions are chatting away, and one has very high Faith and the other very low, the Sim with low Faith may end up converted. Sims who haven't been assigned a Religion yet may end up converted, too.
If you want your Sims to socialize but don't want their Faith levels affected, you're going to have to direct the conversation to things like Entertain or Talk.../About Hobby (depending on your expansion spread).
Sims whose households are all of one Religion and who have plenty of time to Chat or Hang Out may never have to go to their Place of Worship. Single Sims, Sims with lots of friends of other Religions, and very busy single-Religion households will probably need to visit their Place of Worship at least once a week-- maybe more often. Mixed-Religion dorms may be the most challenging.
And no, using objects with custom prayer interactions won't boost a Sim's Faith levels. That'd take a BHAViorist, and I'm not one. (However, if any brave BHAViorist out there wants to take a whack at making prayable objects boost faith, for hermits or whoever, let me know and I'll link you to my favorites.) Unfortunately that means you can't have religious hermits, as there's no way to keep them holy.
Places of Worship
When you designate a lot as a Place of Worship (in testing, community and hotel lots worked, while residential, dorm, and apartment lots didn't), Sims will have their Faith and Zeal boosted every hour they're there if they're at at Place of Worship dedicated to their Religion; otherwise, their Faith and Zeal takes a hit every hour. Probably any community lot or specialty lot that starts as or includes being a community lot on its way to specialty can become a Place of Worship. Places of Worship can be owned community lots, as well.
You do not have to make a Place of Worship resemble a church. A park, a shopping mall, a bordello, anything will work-- but it'll work best if your Sims enjoy spending time there.
When a lot is designated as a Place of Worship, the community lot populator makes sure to only summon Sims of the appropriate Religion to come hang out, although you can send your current playable Sims anywhere you please. Non-playable Sims on the Place of Worship lot get their Faith levels boosted, too.
Sims who have plenty of time to talk with Sims of their own Religion hardly ever need to visit a Place of Worship lot, while Sims who lack that kind of time (because they're busy, live on their own, or live in a mixed-Religion household) will need to visit more often to keep their Faith high enough to affect their behavior. Once a week seems to work well for most Sims, but holding a mid-week Myshuno game couldn't hurt, either.
The Sister
The original A&N/T&A religion feature came with a Guardian Angel to help designate Places of Worship, and an optional sexy nun named Sister Cheeky. The medium-strength separated version just came with Sister Cheeky, as the angel was connected to some deeper afterlife-based modding that Chris Hatch didn't want to separate. Sister Cheeky, in the original mod, is a Romance Sim in a Sexy Nun costume, because that's what Chris Hatch wanted in his game. Larky remodeled her into a Knowledge Sim and renamed her The Sister, and I stripped her makeup, changed her face structure, and put her in a traditional white nun's habit. (Same as the Mrs. Crumplebottom white default replacement Classic Habit, in fact, so she and The Sister can be from the same order.) Her skintone is S2, and she will of course pick up your default replacements. She has black hair, genetically.
The Sister will turn up at every Place of Worship; talking with her boosts a Sim's Fatih and Zeal no matter what Religion they belong to.
Since she's a custom NPC, you may want to install a copy of NPC_Unique_TheSister_G-RatedReligion.package into each Neighborhoods/N###/Characters folder for every 'hood where you've played with Religion. Otherwise, even if you decide to uninstall the G-Rated Religion Mod, you will have to leave NPC_Unique_TheSister_G-RatedReligion.package in your Downloads folder. Uninstalling custom NPCs will corrupt any neighborhood that ever used them.
You can make over The Sister! I've only used Pescado's Clothing Tool and the Plastic Surgery station to do it, but Sim Surgery should work, too. I'm less sure about renaming her, but I suspect if you copy her made-over .package file to the appropriate Characters folder, you could give The Sister a fresh makeover for each neighborhood. I won't swear to that, but I suspect it. (If you test it, tell me your results?)
Getting Started
After you install the mod, enter any residential lot. After ten in-game minutes (to let the lot fully load and allow for any other load-on-lot-load mods to run), you'll be prompted to set up religion.
The first question you'll be asked is about how many Religions you want in this neighborhood. You can choose anywhere from one (which will then be given to all families in the 'hood) to five (the maximum number of townie-enabled Religions). While you can create as many Religions as you want (and there is a way to create them later, more on that in a bit), only the first five will be townie-friendly.
After that, you'll be asked to start setting up your Religions, beginning with a gender and name for the Deity of Religion #1.
And here's the thing; basically all I could contribute to this mod myself were ideas and writing. Ideas are easy, they never stop (for all they don't always fit together cleanly), but I worked very hard on the writing for this mod. While you certainly can have a god or goddess as the Deity of a Religion, you are absolutely not locked into that-- especially since, after setup, you never see a Deity's picture again. The language is gender-neutral and only minimally anthropomorphic. I even did my best to avoid using apostrophe-possessives. It might be a little stilted at times, but your Sims can believe in anything.
Here are some sample phrases from the mod itself:
According to [DEITY]...
Followers of [DEITY]...
To devotees of [DEITY]...
By decree of [DEITY]...
I'm extremely devoted to [DEITY].
I believe in [DEITY], at least on a good day.
Can [DEITY] show me the way?
What would [DEITY] advise?
It's frustrating that [DEITY] won't allow...
I'm angrier at [DEITY] than...
As long as you can swap out [DEITY] with your potential name and have the grammar for those phrases flow reasonably well, then you have a name that will work for your in-game toddler-god. Any proper name will work, as will a lot of titles, most concepts, the occasional plural, and damn near anything starting with 'the.' The only caveat I can think of is that I did use commas in the text occasionally, so a name-comma-title Deity name like 'Thor, God of Thunder' limits you to either awkward comma splices as-is, or occasional double commas if you try 'Thor, God of Thunder,' instead. 'Thor (God of Thunder)' might work, but it does look a little silly.
Need some examples as to workable Deity names? Good, because I really wanted to make a long list showing off everything from the classical to the thematic to the ridiculous:
PROPER NAMES...
Yeshua
Odin
Hera
Coyote
Mother Nature
Eris, Goddess of Discord
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Robert Downey, Jr.
Captain America
Bilious, The Oh God of Hangovers
Sir Terry Pratchett
Anne Hathaway
Alistair Crowley
Optimus Prime
Indiana Jones
Albus Dumbledore
STARTS WITH 'THE'...
The Oracle at Delphi
The Mother Goddess
The Flying Spaghetti Monster
The Grim Reaper
The Lord Wright
The Watcher
The Peteran Church
The Jacoban Church
The US Constitution
The Law of the Jungle
The Great God Om
The Muppets
The Rules of Acquisition
The Seventy Maxims of Highly Effective Mercenaries (that might be a bit long)
The Ninth Doctor
The Covenant of Primus
The Art of War by Sun Tzu
The Code of Chivalry
The Social Contract
The Witch from next door
GROUPS (SOMETIMES STARTING WITH 'THE')...
Lady Sif and the Warriors Three
Sims 2 Religion Mod Mods
Rogers and HammersteinThe Stars
The Upstairs Neighbors
My Proud Ancestors
Eight Sentient Spiders
Tiffany Zarubin and the Gardening Club
I CAN'T BELIEVE THAT WORKS...
My Own Moral Code
You Know Who
She Who Must Be Obeyed
Every Webisode of Monster High
Polite Society
My Fear of Clowns
A Love of Grilled Cheese
Capitalism
My Local Homeowner's Association
Gyromancy
Now that you've assigned your Deity a name and a gender, the setup will ask you about the five potential Tenets, and whether you want to allow or forbid them. Once again, those Tenets are:
Wrath
Theft
Violence
Indiscretion
and
Disrespect
Allow all of them and your Sims behave as normal, no change beyond Zeal and Faith going up and down (with attendant text changes). Forbid everything and watch your Sims appear calmer, kinder, and more patient, even if they're actually seething bundles of Furious rage.
I heartily recommend writing down the details of each Religion you want before setup. Scribble it into a Notepad file or onto a Post-It or something. If you're making more than one Religion, it's easy to blank out as you go along.
If you selected one Religion during setup, it will be distributed to all Sims in the neighborhood. If you selected more than one, you'll be asked to choose a Religion for each household as you first enter it until every household has a Religion.
AND! If you add a new Sim to the household straight from the Sim Bin, when you enter that household you'll be prompted to choose a Religion for the household again. If you have a new baby, save, and exit the household, the next time you enter, you'll be prompted to choose a Religion for the household again. If everybody in the house is already the same Religion, this is no big (I don't know if it resets Faith levels, though). If you want to keep a mixed-Religion household, or just don't want to have to bother clicking the thing every time, you have a couple of options.
One, I did enable the Heaven and Hell fairy for use by all ages, including boolprop-selected babies. You can use that to 'baptize' your babies, or if you don't want to bother with boolprop, don't exit the household until your babies are toddlers, and then use the H&H Fairy to give them the Religion you want. For CAS-made Sims, before moving them to an existing household, move them onto an empty lot and use the H&H Fairy to give them the desired Religion. (If you like to use mods like the Sim Blender or Batbox to do things like randomize skills for new adult Sims, it's a good opportunity to do that, too.)
The Heaven and Hell Fairy
The Heaven and Hell Fairy (which I did not name) is effectively the mod controller. Available in the General/Misc section of the Buy catalog for $0, the fairy is needed to turn a lot into a Place of Worship, create a new Religion, remind you of a Religion's Tenets, display information about the selected Sim's Faith and Zeal levels, edit a Religion's Tenets, take a census, and with testingcheats enabled, remove all Religions and Faith data (in case you want to uninstall, or in case you want a clean slate) or randomly assign townie-enabled Religions to all Sims in the neighborhood (because presumably, you'll only need to do that once). It might also be able to ban or allow The Sister from turning up on community Places of Worship, but I'm not sure that option carried over from A&N/T&A to the Medium strength version.
If you so much as click on the Heaven and Hell Fairy while building a community lot or uninhabited residential lot, the Live Mode button will suddenly un-gray-out, and you'll be given a thousand-simoleon budget. Why? Because if you click through to Live Mode, The Sister will turn up, summoned by the clicking, ready to be the controllable Sim you need to turn a community lot into a Place of Worship. If you save and exit the lot, then re-enter, everything will be back to normal again. (That's why I re-priced the Fairy and moved her from her original spot in Deco/Sculpture, right next to the garden fairy she's cloned from. In General/Misc, she's harder to click by accident when you're looking for a cute fairy statue and can't remember which one's which.)
Although she's cuter than the Batbox, the Heaven and Hell fairy is easily hidden with other mod controllers, in attics, under foundations, inside one-tile 'pillars,' or in tall landscaping.
CompatibilityNaturally, this mod does NOT play will with Chris Hatch's original Religion Mods, whether Lite (basically just the text and Sister Cheeky) or Middle (which affects romantic interactions). You'll have to choose G-Rated or the original PG-13 versions, and if you've got Angels & Nurses or Tits & Arse installed I don't know how you could manage to use this version instead.
Also, because of how banning and allowing Tenets are set up, when you run the HCDU, you'll notice the mod conflicts with itself. That's totally normal and nothing to worry about.
Otherwise?
This mod was designed for maximum cross-compatibility with other mods, but it's still possible to find a conflict. The only ones that came up during initial testing were for Squinge's Single Slap, Pescado's Fight Club, and Syberspunk's Harder Grades. Single Slap and Fight Club have Religion-Friendly versions coming; I'd do the same for Harder Grades, but it's fancy so I can't. The only BHAV in Harder Grades that conflicts is Grade - Update, so load Harder Grades after Religion and accept that good grades won't boost your students' Faith levels (but bad grades won't lower them, either).EDIT: Jadesim found a conflict similar to Harder Grades in TwoJeffs' Triplets and Quads hack. Sims' Faith levels are affected by giving birth, so once again, you'll have to choose between giving birth affecting your Sims' Faith levels or having multiple births.
ANOTHER EDIT: Veetie found out the hard way that BoilingOil's Phone Makeover conflicts kind of a lot-- you won't be able to set up Religions or Tenets and constant resets on any lot with a Fairy-- I'm not sure what the conflict is or if there's a fix for it. You'll have to choose between a tidied-up phone system or religion.
I'm going to keep using this space to list mod conflicts that I can't either update or share instructions on how to update, and since this soup already has three cooks I invite anyone who wants to pull apart BHAVs to try their luck at making things play nice. But now back to conflicts.
TwoJeffs' Visitor Controller also fights with Religion a little bit... but only as pertaining to Hobby Leaders. The current quick-and-dirty solution for that issue is to use Pescado's No Hobby Spam alongside the Visitor Controller to only see the Hobby Leaders when you visit a Hobby Lot, rather than having them barging into your house every time you cook a food or play a video game.
However, if you have a mod that changes the pathfinding tantrums, newspaper or gnome theft, the slap, shove, poke, attack, Punch U Punch Me, Red Hands, Cops and Robbers, Tell Secret, Gross Out, Belch At, Gossip, Brag, Nag, Insult, or Annoy interactions, this mod might conflict with it. Mods removing the autonomy of any of those interactions can be replaced by this mod, which effectively lets you kill their autonomy on a Religion-by-Religion basis (but could be loaded last if you just never want to see that behavior again, no matter the Sim's Faith level). No Fight Dust mods and pathfinding improvement hacks like Paladin's Get The Closest Plate, Stupid are compatible with G-Rated Religion.
Because I don't know enough about modding to know if it's a problem, I feel it's only fair to warn you there are some regular in-game dialogue strings included in Religion. I don't think they should cause a problem, not if things were done right, but it's possible they could conflict with text default replacements. If a text default you want to use affects...
Sims complaining that they're in a bad mood
New household members moving in (and any failure notice about moving out, IE, only adults and elders can move out, the only adult or elder in a lot full of kids and teens can't move out on their own)
Notices that the Uni Class Performance meter is full so stop studying
Pay for your danged meal and other NL dining-out notices
'You stood me up!' and 'don't stand up your date/group!' notices
End Date/Stay Here dialogue strings
Business lot and Deed purchase dialogues
Business rank notices
'You're buying more food than you have fridge' notices
Employees complaining they're too tired
Vacation home purchase dialogues
Hotel check-in and check-out dialogues
... Please let me know so I can change this text to let everyone know about the conflict. The general solution, if there is a conflict, is to copy those text changes to the religion mod's appropriate Dialog Prim String Set in SimPE, and chuck your default replacement.
On the other hand... that's honestly probably it as far as conflicting mods go. It won't conflict with any romance or teen-pregnancy based mods, and is in fact fully compatible with InTeen. Although I will say, using this mod, Inge's Annoying Games Suite, and ACR all together means you may need to make sure your Sims have ways to entertain themselves besides woohoo.
I've included Larky's instructions on adding a custom interaction to the ban/allow list-- not for adding new Tenets, but for adding other interactions under the existing five Tenets. For instance, if you want to file the Deadly Neck Bite mod for vampires under 'violence,' you can manage that in SimPE in a couple of minutes. (I've also included my streamlined version of Larky's instructions. Hers are well worth a read, but sometimes it's easier to have a numbered list instead of paragraphs of 'Okay, do this, because that,' especially when you've done it before and just need a refresher.)
Pros and Cons
Still on the fence?
PROS:
Hey, a great big set-it-and-forget-it feature adding mod that affects what your Sims can and cannot do autonomously!
Make your self-Sim a Deity and finally get the worshipful respect you deserve!
Sims 2 Religion Mod 1.7.10
Cut down on newspaper thefts and gnome drama!Never watch a grown Sim stamp their foot and grumble and wave because they can't walk over a stuck ghost tip jar ever again.
If you don't like my super-neutral flavor text, all the entries have handy dandy descriptions to help you re-write it!
CONS:
Yet another thing you have to manage.
There's a danger you'll uninstall the mod and forget to leave The Sister where she is, starting the process of 'hood corruption which will, as we all know, eventually end in a Big Fiery Ball Visible From Space.
Instead of the stamp-and-grouse you've learned to ignore, now you get an annoying pop-up when certain religious Sims can't step over the ankle-high obstacle-- or when toddlers want to follow adults and realize they can't climb stairs.
YMMV:
Households where everyone in the family shares a Religion and have plenty of time to Chat and Hang Out may not often need to visit their Place of Worship. Single Sims with plenty of friends of different Religions may need to visit more often. Due to a lack of faith-boosting prayable objects and the fact that residential lots can't be Places of Worship, there is no way to keep a hermit holy.
Infants have the highest possible Faith and Zeal levels. Implications may be weird.
Thanks and Credits
First big thank-you to Chris Hatch, for first extracting religion from T&A/A&N in answer to a request I made, and then for giving permission to lower the rating and increase compatibility. Next, of course, I have to thank Larky, wherever they may now be, for their invaluable coding skills and willingness to turn the ideas I couldn't juggle into something that functioned. Without Quaxi there would be no SimPE and without SimPE there would be no mods, and I definitely have to thank Gayars and Veetie for testing this bad boy while I was in reduced computing circumstances, and Tienelle and Lauratje86, who also volunteered to help me test things.
Download
Sims 3 Religion Mod
Quick reminders:Requires the Apartment Life Expansion and/or Mansion & Garden Stuff
Do not remove The Sister's NPC package if you uninstall
Five Tenets per Religion
Sims start to break their Tenets at a Faith level around 30 (out of 100)
Places of Worship on Community lots (and BV hotels) only
Only Basegame interactions are banned under vanilla-Religion Tenets
Okay, sounds good.