I'm down to single digits with the number of lots still to finish for my huge University project (don't get too excited thinking this means you'll see it next week or anything, I still haven't done any of the testing and formatting yet and I'm sure that'll take ages too... ) and one of the lots I still haven't even started is the Secret Society. The university I've most heavily pulled from is Yale, which seems like it should be an easy match since the "Skull and Bones" society is a real-world secret society located there, but once again there seems to be a significant difference between real life and the world of TS2.

This being the case, what do you all do with secret societies? What kinds of buildings do you put them in, what kinds of activities do you have members participate in, etc., etc... What should I be considering before launching into this as one of the last elements of campus to be completed?

The Maxis Secret Society has benefits not normally available to YA sims, such as career and aspiration rewards. They are also really poorly laid out! Since it's supposedly an elite in-group club, when I built mine for LGU I made it an old-fashioned house with old-fashioned furnishings, but also modern socializing conveniences, and scattered career rewards around, with a chocolate machine in the kitchen, a cowplant in a walled-in part of the garden, mood-altering devices such as the noodle soother and bubble blower in a room upstairs, and of course the Bone Phone in the highest tower. My sims always have something more urgent to do on campus than hang around there, but if you include lots of skilling and socializing items you can make it worthwhile.

You can approach the topic from a lighter Sims perspective or go for something creepier, like in real life. You're really dealing with a subject that disguises itself as something very performative but actually has influence and is related to crime and mafia.

Necro-ing my own thread since I'm finally actually working on this at least a little. I agree with Soki that IRL secret societies are genuinely creepy and off-putting, so part of my issue was just that I genuinely couldn't come up with an idea that I wanted to work on (as a general rule I don't like working on "unpleasant" builds)... until I decided to just go in a Sims-worthy absurdist direction, and made it the Noble and Ancient Order of the Grilled Cheese (hence my question a few weeks back about EAxis grilled cheese objects lol). It still lets me make a fancy over-the-top elegant secret society, but doesn't make me feel in any way like I have to take it SeRiOuSlY like an IRL society.

I'm still trying to figure the right gameplay balance though, since it's not really something I actually used much in my game even back when I played (rather than just built buildings for) university Sims. I'm not sure how "complete" people actually want a secret society lot, versus allowing personal creativity in "finishing" a space... usually my fantasy, sci-fi, and community lot builds I go for my own definition of 100% complete, but my normal residential units I try to leave more basic, since I figure people are more likely to want to impart their own Sims' personalities into the space there, and I don't actually know which side of that divide I want a secret society on.

As far as career/aspiration rewards, at this point my intent is to include the chocolate station, execuputter, lie detector, counterfeit machine, elixir of life, and camera (I know the cowplant is usually (always?) included in EAxis secret societies but it doesn't feel right here), but based on gameplay I'm still curious what CC-free ideas folks might have for a good blend of high-society and grilled-cheese-absurdism.

For what it's worth, my favourite dumb thing to do is make a Cowplant cult lol.

One fun thing I did with a Secret Society, which Zarathustra won't want to do, was put a tattoo gun in the one at La Fiesta Tech. Everyone inducted had to get a tattoo.

I wanted to use it more, but the single most annoying thing about the Secret Society is, that you can't put together a group of members to go there for an outing or a date! The limo shows up and only takes the active sim. What is the point of that? Hmph.

Where did you get a tattoo gun from?

Mine tend to be as Peni discusses in post #2, here's some images of one of mine:
https://modthesims.info/showthread....017#post5922017

Are there enough flamingos for them to kick?

You KICK your flamingoes? You brute!

Alas, I know not. The tattoos I have in my mods folder are from Lifa, Morague, and SpaceDoll and I have no more help to give you, I'm afraid. I think the tattoo gun is Lifa's and the other two have crates for the tattoo object, but I couldn't swear to that.

I'm also having conflicting memories, because I distinctly remember putting the tattoo gun in the Secret Society, but also trying to put one in an (unowned) salon and it not being in the Community Lot catalog. So I'm not much help.

This? https://withlovefromsimtown.tumblr....erlays-download

Yup, that's the one!

Wait, sudden important question before I get too far into this and potentially really annoyed if I'm doing it wrong- should a Secret Society lot start as residential or commercial (mailbox or phonebooth) at the outset, before changelotzoning it later on? The three thumbnails for the SSU, LFT, and ALT secret societies all only seem to have a trashcan by the curb, nothing else...

I always use residential to start with, then change the lot zoning to make it secret. You need to lotbin the lot and place it back to make it invisible.