The passions system is a major new feature which will expand the gameplay possibilities while helping to keep things manageable. Since there are lots of big changes, I'm starting an experimental branch on Steam to iron out any issues. There's also a new channel on the Discord for discussing experimental features.
If you'd like to help test it out, right-click the game on Steam -> Properties -> Betas -> Private Betas -> enter the access code:
iwillbackupmysave
What Is A Passion?
A passion is a long term hobby or interest that your characters want to get invested in. Some examples are child adoption, painting or thievery.
When a character embraces a passion, related activities and educations are added to various sites. For example if you embrace thievery, then the possibility to commit petty theft opens up.
You could also then choose to take on the goal of robbing a bank. A goal is a special activity with a set of possible outcomes - the weighting of each outcome is influenced by doing other related activities.
To increase the chance of a successful bank robbery, you would observe staff routines and scout escape routes until the odds are acceptable.
For a bank robbery in particular, you want to make sure the chance of catastrophe is very low since the consequence is an extremely long prison sentence. Then again, maybe you're willing to sacrifice that useless character with a work allergy for the chance to improve the household's financial position...
Multiple household members can embrace the same passion and contribute to the same goal.
Another example is adopting a child, an expensive process that takes 1-2 years in real life. To represent this, you have to do home safety checks and attend seminars throughout the year before being allowed to meet a potential adoptee.
Then again you could always offer a "donation" to the adoption agency to improve your outcomes...
Each character can only embrace a few passions at a time. They'll need to abandon existing passions (at the cost of some happiness) to make room for new ones throughout their lives.
This system means I can add many more specific activities that wouldn't make sense in a normal gameplay context - for example illegally purchasing guns should not be an option unless you have criminal intentions.
There's lots of other changes to complement passions like the ability to manually hide actions:
Kicking characters out of your household will now put them in your friends list instead of disappearing them into the nether. This means you can use the power of friendship to commit armed robbery by inviting someone into your household temporarily, and then removing them when you're done.
Remember this is only on the experimental branch for now! I will make a separate announcement when it's released onto the main branch.