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Test Subject
Original Poster
#1 Old 11th May 2021 at 4:25 PM
Default Our Street - A Community Building Challenge **New
Our Street (A Sims 4 Challenge)

I've written a new Sims 4 challenge. If you enjoy Legacy style gameplay, or rotational gameplay, try this out.

In this challenge, you play a small community over 5 generations (10 if you want to get wild). It might be a small, close-knit suburban neighborhood, or a bunch of neighbors in next-door apartments. You tell their stories and see how the neighborhood and its inhabitants change. Do the youth stay a part of the community, or do they strike out on their own? What makes people want to stay? And how strong are the bonds between the community?

I've created a simple scoring system for Sims to determine how attached to the community they are based on their traits, how nice the community is to live in, how personally successful the Sim is and how many people in the community they bond with. This creates some rich storytelling opportunities that happen organically. There is also a smaller subsystem that helps Sims determine major life choices such as whether to move in with a partner, have children or adopt pets. So rather than making all the choices for your Sims, they feel like they have agency, and will sometimes surprise you.

Packs: None required, Seasons recommended.

I'm currently playtesting this, but I'm very busy and also don't often finish challenges, even if I write them. Let me know if you try it out!

Create Founders

- Start by creating your founders. You will need to have at least 3 separate “households”, so begin with 3-8 Sims. There is no household size limit for this challenge, so if you want to use mods to increase your house limit, feel free but just be aware how much more difficult it is to keep 12 or 15 sims happy as opposed to 8.

- Your founder Sims can be any age, gender, and you can use Story Mode to create them if you choose. Extra starting funds are ok, but no cheating. Before finishing, create their family relationships. For example, perhaps your three households are 1) an elderly couple and their teenage child 2) a single young adult 3) an adult sim and their young adult sibling.

- If you are playing Seasons, choose any Season to start. (Spring makes things simpler). Keep your seasons to 7 days each, or a 28 day sim year.

Moving into the World

Move these sims into an empty lot or bulldozed apartment.

- Before play begins, you must make at least 3 separate living spaces with the doors locked for the other sims that don’t live in that “household”. It is also fine to furnish common areas if you have funds left over! As the community changes and grows, you can change each individual house as you like with no limits on spending evenly, as long as the households remain distinct.

- Apartment rules: Apartments are much cheaper to build in initially and furnish. In this challenge, the downside of apartments is that once you have divided the space to create the 3 living spaces, you can no longer change those walls, just as if you were playing a typical apartment. Changing the layout inside your three households is allowed, but the walls that divide the spaces cannot be moved around. So, if you have one enormous three bedroom space, and two one bedroom spaces, you can’t later cannibalize space from the large apartment to make one of the others bigger later on. You can change who lives in each space, but more on that later. The exception to this is Penthouse lots. You may treat these like normal lots.

- Set a day to be your New Year. If you have seasons, simply create a holiday that happens 28 days from the start of play. (If you start in Spring, New Year’s Day lines up perfectly) If you do not play with Seasons, you will have to keep track of the weeks, and choose a day 4 weeks from your start date as the New Year. So if you start on a Monday, your new year will be 4 Mondays from now and always fall on a Monday.

Playing the Challenge

This challenge is very simple. Play through the lives of the inhabitants as you normally would. Jobs, purchasing and upgrading their living situations, making friends. New sims born into the community must have randomized traits, but you can use a legacy trait randomizer to pass traits on to your offspring.

https://simslegacychallenge.com/sim...rait-generator/

- Set lifespan to whatever you want. More kudos for longer lifespans.



Crossroads Roll

Each new Sim Year, (or 28 days) your sims reassess their choices in being part of the community. Using the table below, calculate a bonus for your sim based on their personality and how attached they are to their community. All Sims present in the community at the time of the New Year roll, with the exception of Pets, Babies, Toddlers and Children. Teens roll the Crossroads roll, but their results do not apply until after they have aged up. All rolls are considered to happen simultaneously, so, for example, if one sim rolls a 28, you can’t apply the Legacy Bonus to the other sims (more on that below).

Crossroads Roll Bonus

- Personal Traits
1 Point for each of the following: Cheerful, Self-Assured, Family Oriented, Outgoing, Romantic, Bro (if there is another Bro in the community), Good, Outgoing, Proper, Domestic, Home turf (if they are on their Home turf), Gregarious, Neat

- Lot Traits
1 point for each of the following Lot Positive Traits: Great Acoustics, Fast Internet, Homey, Science Lair, Convivial, Natural Light, Bracing Breezes, Teen Neighborhood, Chef’s Kitchen, Good Schools, Home Studio, Sunny Aspect, Penny Pixies, Party Place, Romantic Aura, Great Soil, Child’s Play, On Ley Line, Gnomes.

- Friends
One point for each neighbor they are friends with

- Rewards

1 point for each reward or aspiration trait they have earned.

- Character Trait
1 point for each positive Character Value Trait (Parenthood)

- Family
1 point for each family member living in the community.
(Extra bonus +1 if that family member is a Community Rock)

- Negative Personal Traits
-1 point for each of the following personal traits: Gloomy, Hot-Headed, Unflirty, Adventurous, Erratic, Slob, Evil, Hates Children, Jealous, Loner, Mean, Non-committal, Paranoid, Self-Absorbed, Dastardly.

- Negative Lot Traits
-1 point for each of the following Negative Lot Traits: Quake Zone, Mean Vibe, Cursed, Grody, Gremlins, Filthy, Spooky.

- Enemies
-1 point for each of their neighbors they are enemies with

- Deaths
-1 point for each friend in the community that dies. If that sim is an aquaintance, there is no negative.
-2 for each Family member who dies.

- Negative Character Traits
-1 point for each negative Character Value Trait (Parenthood)

- Hard Times
-1 point for each time utilities have been cut off in their lifetime

Calculate your Total Roll Bonus

Crossroads Results

Use real dice or a virtual dice roller to roll a number from 1 to 20. Add your sim’s Roll Bonus number to the roll. If your result is:

10 or Lower:
Your sim is feeling like they need a change and decides to leave sometime before the end of the next Season (7 days). These Sims are no longer part of the community and do not follow the community rules or add to the bonuses in any way. If you have two sims that have children who both decide to leave, they take their children and pets with them.

11 - 15:

Your Sim decides to stay in the community, but they are not ready to make a major life change. Perhaps they just want to work on their career, or they haven’t met the right person!

16 - 20:
Your sim decides to bring a new sim into the community! This can be a spouse, children or pets. Note: Your sims can have partners and children outside of the community even if they do not roll higher than 15.
- Optional: Roll to decide what type of sim they bring into the community. I like feeling like my sims are making decisions, instead of deciding for them what their lives will hold. You make 3 rolls, one for partner, children and pets. Each roll will be a number from 1-6. 4 or above means that outcome is chosen, 3 or lower means it isn’t.
Partner Roll - +1 bonus for Family Oriented, Outgoing, Romantic or Alluring , -1 for Unflirty, Non-Committal, Mean or Loner
Children Roll - +1 bonus for Family Oriented, Domestic, Responsible or Childish, -1 for Hates Children, Mean, or Self-Absorbed
Pet Roll - +1 for Cat/Dog Lover, Animal Affection or Loner, -1 for Squeamish or Neat, or living in an Apartment
If you end up with no positive results, re-roll all of them again. If you have sims that are in a family together, and one rolls wants children/pets and one doesn’t, you can trade points between the two of them to change the result. If you don’t have enough points to give, the pair chooses not to have children/pets.

21 - 25:
Your sim is a Community Rock and they have a deep love for their community and instill it in their family. Their children and family members get a bonus point for their Mid-life Crisis Rolls. They also can get the outcomes of the +15 Roll.

26 or above:
If they roll higher than 25, your sim wants is so invested in the community that they may add a Legacy by selecting a Positive Lot trait from the list! They also can get the benefit of the +15 Roll and +20 Roll.

Less than 5:
For whatever reason, your sim has a very negative relationship with the community, and does permanent damage before they leave. Add a Negative Lot trait. (This can only be erased if you need to add a new Positive trait and there are no empty traits left.)

Example of a Crossroads Roll

Lizette is a young adult sim. She is Self-Assured, Paranoid, Creative, and a Quick Learner.

She gets +1 point for Self Assured, and -1 point for Paranoid.
She has no friends yet in the community, despite being here for a big part of her life. She does live with her sister, so gets 1 point for her bond with Brooke.
Her apartment has only the Historical Trait, which offers no bonus or negative.
She has no aspiration rewards, or character traits. The utilities have never been cut off.

She Rolls a 20 sided dice, with a total of 1 for her bonus. She has no particular ties to this community, and while she hasn’t had any life failures, she has had no positive life changes either.

Lizette Rolls a 7, which only totals an 8. She decides that it might be time for a change and moves out a few days later.

Her sister Brooke on the other hand, also a young adult, has made more connections in the community.

She is Cheerful, Family Oriented, Cat-Lover, Collector and Night Owl. She gets a +2 from her traits. She also has Night Owl, a reward trait. Another +1.
She is friends with her elderly neighbors, Donnie and Kamila, who are in the apartment next door. +2. She also gets a +1 for Lizette still being in the community. She also has no Character Values.

She rolls her New Year Roll, with a +6 bonus. She gets a 20! Wow! With her roll of 26, she can add a positive Lot Trait (Legacy Bonus), add a new family member, and give all her future family members a bonus to their rolls.

It’s a good thing that Lizette moves out, because Brooke has been dating her girlfriend Taylor for awhile now, and they need that extra bedroom for Taylor’s son, Danny.

The following year, the couple has a conversation about where their lives are going and makes their next Crossroads Roll.

Brooke is still Cheerful, Family Oriented, Cat-Lover, and a Collector. She gets a +2 from her traits. She still has Night Owl, but now she is also Observant and a Creative Visionary, so for her reward traits, another +3.
Donnie has passed away, -1, but she is still friends with Kamila, and has also befriended Gavin, the eccentric bachelor who lives down the hall. +2
She gets a +1 from the Sunny Aspect she added during her last New Year Roll, and +2 for her girlfriend Taylor and her step-son Danny.

She now has a +9. This time she only rolls a 10, but her total is 19! She wants to add to the family.

Taylor is a Genius, a Geek, Loner and a Quick Learner, and also a Night Owl and a Mentor. She gets a -1 for traits, and a +2 for reward traits. She is also friends with Gavin, +1. She gets a bonus for Sunny aspect +1, and her bonds with Brooke and Danny, +2. She also gets an extra +1 because Brooke is so enthusiastic about living here (Community Rock).

Her total is +6. She Rolls a 7, so her total is 13. She wants to stay here, but not necessarily to add to the family.

In this case, Brooke and Taylor want different things. Brooke can give her extra points above 15 to Taylor to try and convince her. Brooke gives Taylor 2 points, bringing Brooke down to 16 and Taylor up to 16! They talk it out, and decide to adopt a cat. If Brooke had only rolled an 18, she wouldn’t have been able to convince Taylor to make this life change. This also applies if one Sim in the pair wants to leave the community, and one wants to stay. If you can trade enough points, you may change the result of one high roll and one low roll to a medium roll, where both Sims stay, but do not add any more Sims to the community.

Sims that are added to the household make the New Year Roll when the next New Year comes around.

Other Rules


Filling empty homes. Sometimes you will end up with an empty home. In the example above, Donnie and Kamila were elders when the challenge started. They had a young adult son, named Neelesh, but when Donnie died, Neelesh got a -2 on his roll and subsequently didn’t roll high enough to stay, which from a storytelling perspective, just makes sense. Kamila stayed in their apartment until she also passed away. Then the space became empty. If your sims naturally spread out into the space, (Perhaps Brooke and Taylor’s son grows up and moves there), that’s fine. You can also rent the space out to roommates, or invite townies to move there if your sim rolls high enough on their Crisis roll. This is just how the community changes over time. You may not annex the space to make your other homes bigger if you live in an apartment.

Reshuffling households. You are allowed to switch which families live in which homes. In the example above, Kamila is left alone in a large, two-bedroom apartment after Donnie’s death and Neelesh moved out. Gavin, the bachelor down the hall, has a one bedroom apartment, but wants to get married to his girlfriend. Kamila doesn’t need the space anymore, so she switches with Gavin. I like to swap all their stuff and redecorate the place too, but you can do whatever you want there.

Moving Lots - You are allowed to move lots, but you must still create at least 3 distinct households homes. When moving to a new apartment, you may draw the walls between the homes before starting play, but after they are drawn, they may not be moved. Lot Traits you have in play do not transfer to the new lot.

Cut Short - Sometimes, your sims will make choices to change their lives and die before those changes are possible. This is just a sad part of life. For example, Kamila, our elderly founder, has lost her husband Donnie. When her New Year roll came up, she rolled an 18, and then rolled to add a partner to the community! However, before she could get out and start mixing, she also tragically passed away. Her dream of remarrying dies with her, and no new sims are added by her to the community.

Long Life - You can spend aspiration rewards to extend sims lives, if you have the points. However, this does not count as an aspiration trait and offers no benefit to the New Year Roll, except that your sim might still be alive to make the roll.

Filling up the Community - What happens when everyone in the community rolls to add a Sim to the Community, but you already have 8 Sims? There are two ways to go about this. Consider installing a mod to increase the household size. Obviously there will be limits on how many Sims you can manage without going nuts, but that’s up to you and will give you more wiggle room. You can also create a Spinoff, where you move a whole family into a new lot and continue playing them using the same rules. This works very well in Apartment buildings if you want to evict the neighbors and take over a whole floor, or a whole building. In this case, friendships between the two lots still count towards the Friend bonus. If you have a full house, you can also impose a full house penalty on all of the Crossroad roll (-5 to each roll) to keep only the most passionate and determined Sims in the community. You will probably find that as you add Sims to the community, it will become harder to keep them all making friends with each other and achieving their life goals, so Sims will naturally leave as a result.

Losing: If all of your Sims die or leave the community, the challenge is lost.

Scoring:

The community changes and grows. There is no score, just the story.

What story will you tell?

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