I suspect that it takes an innate talent for story-telling to interpret the computer-generated behaviour of the characters into a meaningful plotline

Oh, definitely, and that's why I usually get tired of the game quickly - my lack of such skills makes playing it not that interesting.

(Apart from that, the basic activity does seem to consist of 'make Sims get married and have babies' for the female players and 'kill off Sims in bizarre ways' for the males ;-p)

I guess both playstyles can be combined in playing a family of cultists that practice human sacrifice. :D Though I'd say that killing sims in inventive ways is a quite gender-neutral thing, and have been tried by nearly every simmer at least at some point.