Thanks Peni for a very informative and helpful post. Inspirational too! It's inspired me to play the Greek Houses at LGU. I'm wondering what initiation rites Andy Bellum and I can think up. And who might join. As for makeovers, I already have a Sim, Isabella Garvie, in the main 'hood who is training for the cosmetology trade. She and her husband adopted as Knowledge teen called Wyatt, who got an A+ grade after two days in school; he's obviously university material, and he might be the first teen from the main 'hood to go to LGU.

You did post about Greek Houses in my "Should I or Shouldn't I?" thread, but I think you've given me a lot more detail this time. Quite enough to get me started. I think I'll revive that thread (possibly with a revised tittle) and post about the goings on at LGU there. I know you like to hear what people are doing with your 'hoods.

As for Andrew in Veronaville, I'm pretty sure he'll go to Academie la Tour when he finishes school. I might rename it to University of Veronaville -- I'm sure Andrew won't want to go too far from home. I understand that Academie la Tour doesn't have any Greek Houses, but, with the money they made from the Monopoly Game Town contest, Andrew and Julian will be well placed to start the first one. Before that though, I think they'll spend their first semester or two in a dorm. This is quite common in the UK (where dorms are called Halls of Residence). In general I think dorms are a good place for new students to start as they're bound to meet new people there. As Andrew and Julian intend to go as a married couple, I'm sure the authorities will let them have a double bed in a dorm room. (I had a Real Life friend who married at 18, immediately after leaving school, just before he went to university.)

I think I've played a fraternity just once in my life, it was the female one in La Fiesta Tech... It was nice but too much work at the time! Now I even forget their existance xD when I send my Sims to the Uni hood I usually let them live in the dormitories and I once in a while to the Secret Society. The thing is, I have a mod the shortened the years to a total of eight days (days per semester and one semester per year), so even if I wanted to create a fraternity I wouldn't have enough time to deal with it.

I stayed at home when I went to Uni, so I don't even know much about dorm life. XD Well my sims can do that too with the College Pack, but I do send some away.

I was thinking of keeping Andrew at home with his mum, and using the College Pack, but he read one of Peni's posts about Greek Houses and toga parties, and he was completely hooked!

Revenge of the Nerds is another, but that movie has some issues. There was also an American TV show called Greek. Stomp the Yard shows Greek life at a historically black college.

I went to a US university with a big Greek life presence, but I wasn't part of it. My brother and sister both joined. There's some negative aspects, both real life and quite a few Hollywood/TV movies that make them all out to be devious organizations with murder and subterfuge. It entirely depends on the people; one house on one campus isn't representative of every fraternity in the US. My sister's sorority focused on throwing events to raise money for charity, and both my brother and sister friends for life.

Madam Peni: I gave up trying to translate your Greek houses, but I suppose they are just the names of the "letters" and not something more inventive, like the initial letters of "Stupid Stuckup Stinkies"

Nope, I just wanted to use the Nagard and the Anya. If I could've made a pun with any of them, I would've.

SimHampton University has varied between zero and three (one fraternity, one sorority and one co-edity) Greek Houses, according to student demand. The only consistent one is the fraternity started by Gavin Newsome and his friend whose name escapes me right now. They had high ambitions but very little money, so they originally lived on some furniture on the lawn (this was pre-Seasons, so no snow to worry about, just the occasional funny look from professors who didn't understand the attraction). Sometimes it has as many as six members, and I'm happy to report that when it was last open, members had a nice residential house - although their initiation rite is that all members must sleep in the open air on the first appropriate night of residence (bed and its creature comforts optional, tents banned, ritual postponed if it is winter or otherwise unsuitable conditions are present on initiation). All walks of life are welcomed, and there's no particular clique associated with being a Newsome Greek member. There have been various transient sororities and co-edities, but none have built up the same history.

At the moment, the number is zero, because enrolment is so low (no new students can leave SimHampton right now due to legal proceedings). The Newsome fraternity formally requested that its rights be reserved during this time, and the request was granted, but any other Greek houses will need to start from scratch.

(Incidentally, houses are quite common in SimHampton University, simply because every student eligible to attend under the admissions criteria I set for it is also eligible for the $1000 academic bonus, at minimum. If 8 students are going to university, and they're all carrying $1500 of money with them, that quickly adds up to enough to rent a house. It may even be enough house for all the beds to be indoors...

I tend to put the Maxis fraternity/sorority members in the same mental bucket as townies - I don't play them, and they don't age alongside my sims, and I kind of just live with that. I use them to fulfill any "join Greek house" wants that my playables might roll while at university, but am reluctant to play/graduate them because I'd either have to rope in multiple extra dormies to keep the frat going (leading to unwanted neighbourhood expansion), or would lose the frat as the last of its members graduated (leaving nothing for future generations who roll "join Greek house" wants).

I do, however, have one playable Greek house that I quite enjoy. It's actually had two iterations: in my first Strangetown it was founded by the Curious sisters (the half-alien daughters of Pascal & Vidcund, respectively), whereas in my current game it was started up by Johnny Smith. In both cases the admission criteria & purpose have been the same: it's a co-ed fraternity open only to sims of alien descent, a place where nobody will judge you for having green skin or black sclera or a tiny nose. It's called the Epsilon Tau Fraternity.

I pretty much ignore them. If my pixel wants to join one, I have him apply for a charter.

I play to wants most of the time, so most of my sims fail out of school. That's fine. I like have a group of students who work and those who just don't. That's pretty true to life, I think. But, I play one-day semesters so their time at uni is limited. I don't want them to spend a lot of time smoozing up some drunken loser, when they can have all the nebulous advantages of fraternities or sororities without the hassle.

I...don't use them at all.

You slander the premades, smorbie! To a certain extent, so do their bios. And it doesn't take too long to pledge once you know how.

One of these days, I should have someone found a service fraternity. I'd just have to figure out how to simulate volunteer services first. Which is worth doing all on its own.

As for playable character bloat - that's certainly been true for me, because I tend to get invested in each and every sim; but anyone you don't find interesting can just be turned into a townie on graduating. Once your neighborhood is fully established it should be possible to have an all-born-in-game Greek population, though.

I have a fairly quick question. I'm playing the Printer Sisters at LGU, before playing the Greek Houses. JoAnn Gutenberg (perhaps surprisingly) wants to join a Greek House. I've locked the want because it seems an interesting one. She's spending time with Helen Wheels. Is this the right thing to do? As I understand it, she can only join if Helen or Ida invites her. (Remember I'm a complete noob when it comes to Sims Uni.)

I'm a bit surprised, I'd more have expected her to be trying to dissuade Daisy from joining. If she does join, I'd expect Daisy to go too, and Dot Matrix would probably eventually follow. I can't see her rattling round in that big residence on her own. I haven't seen the inside of the sorority yet, but I presume it's big enough to accommodate all 3 Printer Sisters.

Or would it make more sense for JoAnn to apply for a charter herself? It's not a bad place they have already.

JoAnn also has the option to ask Helen if she can join. If she has a decent positive relationship with all members--I think it's somewhere between fifteen and thirty-five STR--she's in, otherwise she has to get her relationship up to that level. She can join without moving in, however.

I enjoy the sororities and fraternities. In my uberhood, they're in-between the exclusionary ALT and regular plebeian students. The Greek students think of themselves as being upwardly mobile upper-middle-class/lower-upper-class. With Inteen and ACR, it has a bit of a tendency to be wishful thinking . . . The ALT students would say the Greeks are just regular middle class. The dormies would say the Greeks are annoying snobs, or they aspire to be them. What I cut out is the off-campus housing on the universities, except in the case of Student Family Housing. The other houses are just scenery where the professors would live if they did live. So my uni students live in dorms or greeks, unless they get married or have a baby while in college. The Greek parties, with bubble blowers and juice and kegs-all banned in the dorms, tend to lead to a lot of Greek students scrambling to move to SFH.

Andrew, when a playable picks up the phone on campus, you may have noticed that one of the options is "Greek." If you choose that, you'll see the options "Apply for Charter" and "Join." If you choose Join, you'll get to choose among all the Greek houses on campus. I did not realize when I built the Greeks, though I should have, that the name provided is the name of the lot, not the name of the household, so make sure you know the name of the lot of the desired house, not just the Greek letters.

All the members will come dashing over, dressed in bedsheet togas, and you'll have a meter, not unlike the meter for the Headmaster scenario, telling you how much have time you have left and the target relationship for each member of the Greek. The time available is about five hours and the relations ship level will vary quite a bit from individual to individual. I've had it happen, if the character was an obvious Greek candidate who laid a little foundation before making the call, or had friends who were already members, be accepted as soon as the members arrived because the target numbers were already met. If Daisy were to pledge, she wouldn't have to work on Helen at all, just Ida Juana, and it won't take five hours unless they start at negatives. The five hours are overkill once you get the hang of pledging, but I won't coach you because with only two members to get friendly with, JoAnn would have to mess up spectacularly in order to not get in during the time frame, even if one of them requires the highest possible score.

I suggest you at least open and look at the Greeks before having JoAnn pledge, so you'll have a better idea of what to expect. There is certainly plenty of room for all three Printer Sisters and their instruments, if they decide that's how they want to play it. But as Sunbee says, they don't have to move in right away. After the pledge is accepted, the other members run off, and the pledge will have the phone option of "move to Greek house." So you can make any rules you want about requirements to actually move in after pledging, rituals of moving, and so on; and you'll also have plenty of time to pack anything you want to take into inventory.

Keep an eye on the clock when you call to pledge, and do not make it if the prospective member has less than five hours to a final! If it's less than five hours to class, you'll have to make sure she doesn't wander off in the middle of the process.

It also helps to get your relationship up a bit with them before trying to join. If your Sim sees a member of the Greek house they want to join somewhere on campus, have them go over and say hi. Play some kickybag or buy them a coffee.

Not the same kind of "service", but this gave me an idea - I recall BlueAlien mentioning on this thread that the military would pay tuition fees for some sims, and was wondering whether they could go one step further and found a "military fraternity" for those intending to enter the military on graduation. A barracks-style house, with a well-equipped exercise room, and plenty of objects for building mechanical & charisma skills too. More experienced members could help train newer ones, either by the "be personal trainer" interaction on exercise equipment, or by "give lessons" on career reward items (obstacle course & punching bag are the obvious ones, maybe a podium to practice addressing the troops? A surgical station for building mechanical would be harder to justify with the military theme - training field medicine?), and the military's investment (buying/building & furnishing the property) pays off when they get a decent crop of skilled officer-class graduates. Hmm, I'm tempted to build this now, even if it has nothing to do with the current theme!



I hadn't actually thought of turning them into townies! Would I need SimBlender for that? My megahood is of a decent size, but with a fairly low birth rate and 3 universities, I don't always have born-in-game sims at a given uni who want to go Greek...

Sometimes my legacies are pressured to join by their families...the only friend I ever had in a frat was someone I played D&D with whose father kept after him till he pledged. He stayed in the dorm, though.

There's a number of ways to make people into townies. I think SimBlender, which I don't use, is one. The one I use is the simlogical teleporter. Theoretically it can be done with the testingcheats, but I failed when I tried. The teleporter is intuitive for me. You may have to experiment till you find the one you're most comfortable using, but once you find it, it's easy.

I too use Simlogical teleporters to turn Sims into townies, though I've only done it with Sims that I made in CAS for the purpose of becoming townies. I've never done it with a Sim who I've really got to know as a playable.

Can JoAnn just stay permanently in her current house after pledging? It seems an ideal place for the Printer Sisters to live and not disturb others with their jam sessions. There are no near neighbours (though I suppose a reclusive Knowledge nerd might move into that little house next door). That big room is ideal for jamming, and they all have nice double beds for "entertaining" friends. There's even room for a vocalist to join the band and move in. Does JoAnn only become a full member if she moves into the sorority house?

One of the very first things to go in my game was the Uni set.
I play only with empty hoods, and never a full Uni.
The playable YA's all go to college from home. Saves them money and their families headaches.
Or as one pixel parent explained to their child:
"I'm spending this money for you to earn an education, not party all day and night with absolute strangers!"

I didn’t really play with Greek houses before as that isn’t a thing in my country, but I decided to create my own (gender neutral) one when the Strangetown teens were at uni. I decided to put 6 teens (3 couples) in a single house as they had lots of money from scholarships and from their families (I simulated that by buying sculptures and selling them from the inventory when they arrived at uni), so they could afford quite a nice one with expensive furniture and lots of skilling and fun objects (I decided to remake one of the base game bin houses for that). I didn’t really think of making a Greek house until they were near graduation, but in the last year I made Johnny Smith create it, and after they all graduated I keep using it for new students. And, given that it was Johnny Smith starting it, I always try to have at least one alien there.

All the Greek code is attached to the house, so she won't be able to throw togas, visit campus for pizza and stuff, sleep on the floor, etc. I've seen the option "ask to join Greek" appear as an interaction with graduated Greeks, so presumably she'd still be part of the vetting process. I've never pledged anyone without moving them in, as I don't see the point in joining if you won't live there - you don't get the main benefit of forming close ties with the other members if you're not living with them.

I'm glad you like their house, though. It is a pretty good place for a band to live. Almost like it was designed for the purpose.

I like that idea! And I already have a barracks building, so it wouldn't take much to change the doors and add the career reward items.

I hadn't realized Greek houses could be coed, which does away with one of the things I dislike about them. Now if they could just be a little less ridiculous about the pizzas...

I didn’t even know about the pizza thing because I always tend to cancel the interaction to visit campus, I have better things for the to do

Once the ranking goes up they go for pizza less and bring back more useful things, or at least things that can be sold for more useful things - stereos, bonsai trees (it's always a bonsai for some reason, never any other deco), mechanical cars, etc. Unnecessary pizzas will never go bad in inventory, either. Plan for the future!

However, enough people seem to be irritated by the pizza that it strikes me that someone, somewhere, has modded it out or at least adjusted the chances of it being brought back.