The Asylum Challenge?

[snowbawl]

To make this challenge really interesting, you need to run it more than once on the same lot.  My first Asylum had four deaths...I kept the grave markers and ran another round of Asylum.  I have had four deaths again, and only one was due to fire...the other three, death by ghosts/fright.  So much fun!

[rohina]

Short intro to my characters.

[spaceface]

This weekend I started my challenge. I have so many extra sims lying around that I decided not to use CAS but to use those premade Maxis sims I only put in my 'hood because I had just started playing and didn't know better. So the Larsons are inmates, and Chester Gieke. That that guy with the dog, whose name I simply cannot remember, is my playable sim. The balance of the crazies are a bunch of teen spares that I don't want to bother with any more.

I have all the EPs and I left my downloads folder untouched, so I am playing with the MATY hacks including BUY.

It is definitely more interesting using a range of sims, some who have jobs and some who do not. None have been fired yet but they often come home and pass out.

It took my playable sim about a week to find the job he wants (his LTW is to be a criminal mastermind). The Larsons only talk to each other, Chester Gieke spends most of his time passed out on the floor or in aspiration failure, and there have been about 3 fires. I thought it would be interesting to see what happens at an asylum built on a beach lot. As is expected, the crazies like to sunbathe and build sandcastles in the snowy depths of winter. I find "call over" from inside the house can be used to save them but I expect a few deaths when my playable sim is at work.

[MadameUgly]

I did a celebrity asylum, with my self sim as the controllable character. 

http://madame-ugly.livejournal.com/tag/asylum+challenge  (scroll to the bottom for the oldest entry)

It was quite entertaining to watch Tom Selleck (complete with thong wearing hairy ass) jumping in a puddle.  And my self sim got skinny (and got to honk Courtney Love's butt).

[spaceface]

I read that, it was hilarious. 

[professorbutters]

Mine is not just an Asylum.  It is a warning not to do dumb crap with Boolprop.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Incidentally, I forgot to include skill points in my final score of 212.  I had some basic fixes in from MATY, but the only one I can think made the remotest bit of difference is the phone hack with Autoyak.  I suspect Seasons makes this challenge much, much easier.

PB

[neriana]

MadameUgly and professorbutters, quite funny! The romances in MadameUgly's story are absolutely hilarious (no, I don't expect to see that particular pairing anywhere else), and I really like the idea behind professorbutters' asylum.

[MadameUgly]

Thanks to all who got a laugh over my asylum challenge.

[torawashi]

I recently started an asylum that was fairly nondescript for this challenge except for one thing. For shits n' giggles, I added a Servo as one of my inmates. After the standard start (two fires, the second of which started before the fireman from the first one even left the house), the servo promptly went berserk, frying inmate after inmate with electric shocks. He finally calmed down, and after my controlled Sim nearly killed himself twice trying to repair him, he called in a professional.

Within 2 hours of being repaired, the servo went berserk again. I counted 13 electrocutions in less than 24 hours. It was glorious. Amazingly, no one died. It's only been a day since Servo's last rampage though. I say we give him time.

[Aggie]

Har! Sounds like it's not one of those quiet, non-descript asylums. 

[DrNerd]

Wanna know what's really fun?  Making the seven uncontrollables Legacy villains.  With the outlier removed, the average number of nice points is slightly less than two!  Total number of fights = 33.  Which is more than one fight per day.

Oh--and the playable's LTW is to Max 7 Skills.  With no Rewards.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

[sloppyhousewife]

Oh--and the playable's LTW is to Max 7 Skills.  With no Rewards.

Easiest LTW ever - especially in an asylum challenge, as your playable doesn't even have to have a job for that. Hence, s/he is always present to extinguish fires, order groceries etc. Booooring.

[professorbutters]

No doubt I'm biased, but I read it and it didn't seem boring to me.  I didn't even get to see any Aspiration failures in mine.  Two deaths by fire, it's true:  Repo Man seems to have decided that he couldn't live without a Bar Worth 1,000 Simoleans and took Mrs. Crumplebottom with him, and after that we had some cranky ghosts.  But other than that, nothing too bad except for the Social Worker beating up the Social Bunny, day after day, and the Grim Reaper freaking out because the shower was busted. Dr. Nerd had, what?  Fourteen Professor Von Ball episodes with the same sim in a short space of time?

Anyway, I loved playing an Asylum Challenge.  Maybe I'll do another someday, or I'll round up all the female Sims my prissy asexual Fortune Sim Romanced when he was out of his mind and put them all in a Bachelor Challenge with him in the same house.  Slapfests ahoy! Tuck in a few more beds and hot tubs, kick Grim and the Headmaster out, and Bob's your Uncle, you have an insto-BC with two angry ghosts.

PB

[sloppyhousewife]

No doubt I'm biased, but I read it and it didn't seem boring to me. 

I just meant the LTW per se - not the story.

[DrNerd]

Oh--and the playable's LTW is to Max 7 Skills.  With no Rewards.

Easiest LTW ever - especially in an asylum challenge, as your playable doesn't even have to have a job for that. Hence, s/he is always present to extinguish fires, order groceries etc. Booooring.

Wrong--you still have to have a job, unless you plan on letting everyone starve to death.  No way to Max 7 Skills in the four days it takes 8 people to empty 2 fridges.  And with job-related LTWs, you need to gain somewhere around 27-29 skill points total (fewer, depending on the job), and you can date to keep Platinum (and make friends), so you could theoretically get promoted every time you go to work.  Reaching the top level of a job is easily accomplished in a normal adult lifespan without Rewards.  Ever Maxed 7 Skills that way?  It's not technically difficult, but it IS a grind.

[professorbutters]

I played a Romance Sim who conveniently rolled Celebrity Chef.  Now that was pretty easy, because most of the skills you need for that are fun (which was helpful for my very Playful Sim.)  It was also easy to keep him pretty tanked up and happy with dating.  The only skill that was a bit tricky to earn, ironically, was Cooking, because the Yummy Channel just wasn't Fun enough for him and he kept turning it off.  It was better to make him skill with the bookcase and switch to the DJ Booth when he needed Fun.  (Curiously, DJ Booths are specifically allowed.  I'm surprised more people don't use them.  Patients love 'em.)

PB

[Jack Rudd]

Oh--and the playable's LTW is to Max 7 Skills.  With no Rewards.

Easiest LTW ever - especially in an asylum challenge, as your playable doesn't even have to have a job for that. Hence, s/he is always present to extinguish fires, order groceries etc. Booooring.

Wrong--you still have to have a job, unless you plan on letting everyone starve to death.  No way to Max 7 Skills in the four days it takes 8 people to empty 2 fridges.  And with job-related LTWs, you need to gain somewhere around 27-29 skill points total (fewer, depending on the job), and you can date to keep Platinum (and make friends), so you could theoretically get promoted every time you go to work.  Reaching the top level of a job is easily accomplished in a normal adult lifespan without Rewards.  Ever Maxed 7 Skills that way?  It's not technically difficult, but it IS a grind.

The Seasons and Free Time options are your friends. The rules say nothing about perpetual autumn, which should speed your skillbuilding up. They also don't forbid the "fast skill-building" perk. A pond should provide you with all the fish you need to make sure your sims never go hungry. And you can build a nice little vegetable garden and harvest eggplants after a few days. Mmm, free skill points from eggplant juice.

[DrNerd]

The Seasons and Free Time options are your friends. The rules say nothing about perpetual autumn, which should speed your skillbuilding up. They also don't forbid the "fast skill-building" perk. A pond should provide you with all the fish you need to make sure your sims never go hungry. And you can build a nice little vegetable garden and harvest eggplants after a few days. Mmm, free skill points from eggplant juice.

I don't have FT, but I did set the seasons to be perpetually Fall, which was the only reason I was able to Max 7 Skills in the length of an adult lifespan.  I did have a pond, but none of the inmates fished autonomously (and towards the end of the Fall seasons, sometimes it does freeze over), and time spent fishing is not time spent skilling.  If you can score a lucrative job right away, and get a couple of promotions, you can easily get enough money to quit and just buy groceries, which takes less time away from skilling than fishing.  And inmates fishing doesn't stock the fridges--they can feed themselves if they choose to, but won't necessarily Serve meals for the others.  With the eggplants, you'd have to set the Asylum up with a greenhouse to begin with, and garden enough to get a Silver badge, and then Tend like crazy, because if the eggplants aren't Mouthwatering, it's a waste of time.  It could be done with Eggplant Juice, but I'm not that big a gambler.

[sloppyhousewife]

Wrong--you still have to have a job, unless you plan on letting everyone starve to death.  No way to Max 7 Skills in the four days it takes 8 people to empty 2 fridges.  And with job-related LTWs, you need to gain somewhere around 27-29 skill points total (fewer, depending on the job), and you can date to keep Platinum (and make friends), so you could theoretically get promoted every time you go to work.  Reaching the top level of a job is easily accomplished in a normal adult lifespan without Rewards.  Ever Maxed 7 Skills that way?  It's not technically difficult, but it IS a grind.

I only have 1 fridge, and it's doable without a job. I don't use any uber-features like eggplant juice or snapdragons (and certainly no FT features as I don't like them), but I do make use of the "Make many.../" option from OfB. So, the first thing I do is to send the playable to the fridge and make group meals until they run out of food (with a bit of luck s/he doesn't get interrupted by face-stuffers more than twice or thrice). For the next few days, I feed the patients out of the inventory. Meanwhile, as I have to skill anyway, I let the playable paint and sell the paintings (you're not allowed to buy anything, but it's not forbidden to sell). By the time the inventory food is gone, you should have enough creativity points to not only being able to afford food, but to pay the bills as well.

ETA: You don't need a greenhouse for mouthwatering eggplants. Place a garden plot, plant tomato, water until you have silver badge, scrap tomato, plant eggplant, water until mouthwatering.

[DrNerd]

I only have 1 fridge, and it's doable without a job. I don't use any uber-features like eggplant juice or snapdragons (and certainly no FT features as I don't like them), but I do make use of the "Make many.../" option from OfB. So, the first thing I do is to send the playable to the fridge and make group meals until they run out of food (with a bit of luck s/he doesn't get interrupted by face-stuffers more than twice or thrice). For the next few days, I feed the patients out of the inventory. Meanwhile, as I have to skill anyway, I let the playable paint and sell the paintings (you're not allowed to buy anything, but it's not forbidden to sell). By the time the inventory food is gone, you should have enough creativity points to not only being able to afford food, but to pay the bills as well.

ETA: You don't need a greenhouse for mouthwatering eggplants. Place a garden plot, plant tomato, water until you have silver badge, scrap tomato, plant eggplant, water until mouthwatering.

But you're not allowed to buy anything--including garden plots, after the start of the challenge, unless it's replacing something repo'd or incinerated, so you'd still have to set yourself up with a garden at the start, and if you're doing that, why not make it a greenhouse to eliminate bug infestation?  And again, if you were planting enough tomatoes to get yourself a silver badge via tending/watering, you wouldn't have enough $$ to pay the bills or buy food, unless you were working or selling paintings, which takes time away from garden-tending/badge earning.

The issue with the easel is that any Fortune inmates you have can't gain Aspiration from selling whatever paintings they make, unlike Performing on an instrument.  From a scoring standpoint, given that you get points for their Aspiration points at the end, it makes sense to provide skilling items that will allow them to gain Aspiration points themselves.  I sent my controllable to work perhaps 5 times, got 3 promotions, and scored enough money to quit, at which point I didn't need to do anything to earn money, because the crazies were getting mad tips from each other on the piano at that point, in some cases, more than they'd have gotten from selling a Masterpiece, and my controllable didn't have to do anything but skill, pee, shower, eat, and drink espresso and pee again.  And one of my Fortune Sims kept herself out of Aspiration Desperation by collecting her tips, which she wouldn't have been able to do with an easel.

[Kchan]

I had a knowledge sim with the 7 skills LTW in an asylum. It was going really well - a couple sim-weeks in, and everything was fine. She left for work cause they needed money... and a fire started. At the end, there was only one other sim left. That made it really boring, having just the two of them in the house.

So I was mean and sent a whole new batch of patients in to live with them.

In the challenge I'm playing at the moment, everyone keeps slapping each other around with fish. It's... strangely appropriate. And one idiot committed suicide by exercising until she starved to death. At least that's what I assume happened - she fell of the exercise bike and Grim appeared.

[sloppyhousewife]

And again, if you were planting enough tomatoes to get yourself a silver badge via tending/watering, you wouldn't have enough $$ to pay the bills or buy food, unless you were working or selling paintings, which takes time away from garden-tending/badge earning.

You only need one tomato plant.

The issue with the easel is that any Fortune inmates you have can't gain Aspiration from selling whatever paintings they make, unlike Performing on an instrument. 
...

I don't use instruments exactly for that reason. Where in all the world would funny farm inmates get the money to tip someone? I like at least a *little* bit of realism in my asylums. Besides, I prefer aspiration failures - way more fun to watch.

[professorbutters]

I like trying different strategies.  I seem to remember some restrictions on the Seasons rules, at least as they appear on Boolprop.com:

Oh, yes, here it is:

"-Fishing is allowed

-Your chosen sim maybe a graduate from college however if your sim graduates "cum laude" or higher take away 10, 20 or 30 points from your score

-Garden Plots and/or fruit trees are allowed but you can't use the juicer."

So there's no point in growing veggies for skill points if you can't use the juicer, though fish might be a helpful addition to the food supply. 

My original plan was to open a home business in the front part of the asylum.  My playable truly is that mean--"roll up and see the crazy people!  Five cents, one nickel, the twentieth part of a dollah!"  I figured if he had an LTW like 20 WooHoos or Twenty Lovers, he'd have to meet them all some way.    It just never became necessary.

PB

[sloppyhousewife]

My original plan was to open a home business in the front part of the asylum.  My playable truly is that mean--"roll up and see the crazy people!  Five cents, one nickel, the twentieth part of a dollah!" 

That's just mean - I like it

[DrNerd]

And again, if you were planting enough tomatoes to get yourself a silver badge via tending/watering, you wouldn't have enough $$ to pay the bills or buy food, unless you were working or selling paintings, which takes time away from garden-tending/badge earning.

You only need one tomato plant.

The issue with the easel is that any Fortune inmates you have can't gain Aspiration from selling whatever paintings they make, unlike Performing on an instrument. 
...

I don't use instruments exactly for that reason. Where in all the world would funny farm inmates get the money to tip someone? I like at least a *little* bit of realism in my asylums. Besides, I prefer aspiration failures - way more fun to watch.

I can't imagine trying to get a Silver Gardening Badge with ONE tomato plant.  It would take a while.

Oddly, I had an inmate that ended the challenge with 4,000 Aspiration Points--after 29 days--and NEVER went into Aspiration Failure.  I have no idea how he managed that.  Someone who had 2 Aspiration Failures finished with 40,000.  Only one Sim ever got Aspiration from busking, and she was one of the least-happy of the inmates overall.

I sort of like the idea that crazy people pull money from the ether.  The world just works differently for the headcases!