More Awesome Than You!

Seemed intriguing, found it on another Sims forum and they found it here:

http://simscout.blogsome.com/mini-challenge-asylum/ (http://simscout.blogsome.com/mini-challenge-asylum/)

Not sure if this has already been posted, but essentially you have one person manning an insitution filled with uncontrollable "insane" people.  The object of the game is to gain the "sane" person's LTW.  And since I'm not the kind of person that wants to make a bunch of people to let them go insane, I was wondering what it'd be like if you teleported some townies in there to be the patients... :D

There are some good (and some appalling) stories of people doing this. One I really liked used some NPCs.

:D This is actually the first challenge I've ever felt like doing.

For a real asylum feel, make all the people you aren't controlling Fortune sims.

Anyone know of any good stories for this challenge?

The Cuckoo's nest by Candi
http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/story_detail.php?asset_id=93108&asset_type=story&user_id=1501957

And this one with the NPCs is also quite amusing.
http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/story_detail.php?asset_id=91965&asset_type=story&user_id=1939150

I started the challenge today and so far I have one sane Sim and 7 townies that I dislike living in a crackerbox of a house with limited seating and sleeping.  Spiffy kitchen though.   ;D

So far I've had:

3 different kinds of aspiration failures
a minigame of "Career Card Random Challenge" where I roll a die and determine whether I pick option A or option B on the random career card thing, and so far I've had 3 people lose their jobs.  I thought that'd be an added touch, and I have $50,000 after starting with $100.   ;D and several promotions (dunno how the heck that happened...)
several people collapse from exhaustion
several people pee their pants
several people refuse to use the shower and are stinky
several people almost starve to death
one person almost burned to death (darn!)
several fires
several fights (Benjamin Long is mean!)
several people bogart the piano, expresso machine and chess set

and so far my "sane" Sim, Miss Yvonne McCay, is a tough lady who can kick any other Sim's *** three ways til Sunday, and is a getaway driver with a LTW to be a criminal mastermind.  Huzzah!   ;D

and the insane people are: Abhijeet Deppiesse, Benjamin Long, Goopy GilsCarbo (dunno how the hell this happened, but he's in Platnum!), Kennedy Long (Fortune Sim apparently, and was the first to lose his job and the first to go into aspiration failure), Andrea Hogan (who sleeps in her undies...wait...all of them do!), Christy Stratton, and Sandy Bruty.   :D

How can 3 people lose their jobs? No inmates except the one controllable should have a job. They're mental patients; they don't go to work.

Unfortunately teleporting townies is a flawed idea because they all have jobs.  But since I cannot control them to quit said jobs, I'm making them lose their jobs by random chance cards or not going to work.   :-\

I need some opinions on something.  I decided to try my hand at this challenge and I'm in a dilemma.  Everything was going swimmingly until the end of day 4.  My sim went to work at 5, and was going to be gone until 1.  At 7:00, a fire broke out for the very first time, and it quickly engulfed the kitchen.  By the time my sim came back, it was all over and now I'm out two uncontrollables, the stove, and the fridge.  I thought that things were going to be worse, but the grim reaper's presence extingished much fo the fire both times he appeared.  The problem is that the rules specifically state that I can only replace objects if they are repossessed or stolen.  So, am I just out of luck on the fridge?

Yep. This is not an uncommon occurance if you read asylum stories.

Wonderful.  I guess I'm going to have to try using lots of pizza.  And the job she needs for her LTW hasn't even turned up in the newspaper yet.  This challenge has suddenly become a lot more interesting. :D

Yeah that's why I have 2 stoves in two different spots of the kitchen...double the firey goodness.   :D

Ooh, can you make a storage shed full of fridges and stoves in the back yard that the sims cannot access or is that cheating?

It's not technically against the rules, but it definately smells like cheating.

Whatever, Mental Insitutions have storage closets. Got to have fresh sheets for all those times the orderly can't get to the patient to let them out of their restraints before they wet themselves. =p

...and fresh refridgerators in case it gets destroyed in a fire?

Sorry, but I'm not following your logic.

That's because it's silly. =p I wasn't being serious.

At 8:11am on a Thursday (Sim time), Yvonne McCay completed the Chee-Z Modified Torture Townie Asylum Challenge.  The results were:

Skill pointage: (divided by 10 because I did not check to see what skillpoints they began with, oops!)= 26

Friends of the Household: 8

Aspiration Points: 141

Number of Days Yvonne was Institutionalized: 30 (what's scarier than an asylum filled with townies you hate? OLD TOWNIES!)

Total points scored: 145

Now what the heck am I gonna do with all these people? Should I send them back into the townie pool or...?  :-[

I thought rearranging was cheating.

Many, many pizzas later, I have finished this challenge.  Yay!  This is the first time I've ever played a challenge and actually followed all the rules, thus this is my first reported score for a challenge ever.

100 points to begin with
+20 for never using influence
+66 for skillpoints of other sims (they would not stop playing the piano!)
+49 for aspiration of other sims (the pleasure sim managed to get 34,000 by himself.  One of the fortune sims only got 500)
+7 for household friends
=242 total earned points

-21 points for 21 days of play
-60 for 3 deaths (2 in that fire, 1 from starvation due to being team-tackled by the ghosts)
-0 for no visitor deaths
=-81 total deducted points

Grand total: 161 points

I must say, aside from that nasty fire and the nasty ghosts, things went quite well.  The only sim to collapse from exhaustion was my controllable sim, all the wet pants were ghost-related, one fire (which happened to eliminate the possibility of another), absolutely no fighting, only three shrink visits (directly after the fire), only minor aspriation failure behavior (only by the two fortune sims, and only for a day or so after the fire), and the pleasure sim's meter went platinum twice.  All in all, I'd say my asylum group (which I made completely randomly in CAS, even randomizing things like their turn ons and turn offs) was a rather sane, pleasant group of people to be around.  The main bizarre behaviours were some obsessive cleaning by one sim (he was like a live-in maid, and my sim barely had to do any cleaning), the constant need to play the piano (when one sim got up, another sat down.  38 creativity skill points were earned by the four survivors), and a few minor cases of "First go to the bathroom, then try to sleep, genius".  I'd say that they're at least five times more sane than the group in that freewill competition I'm working on.  (Speaking of which, I really ought to have been doing that today instead of finishing this.  Meh.)

I pretty much failed this challenge.
My knowlege sim (max 7 skills) probably won't be able to fulfill her lifetime want before she dies.  Despite the rules, I didn't take out my hacks, since most of my hacks make the game harder anyway, and I suspect that's what made my challenge too difficult.
I might try again later.  I like watching the deranged people.

I plan on opening an asylum after I finish my two Bachelor challenges. I cannot decide who will be the sane sim though. Either one of the Fortune sims from the first challenge that kept poking and slapping the bachelorette or the Popularity sim that went into aspirational failure after ATTACKING the Single sim. At the very least he will be a patient.

I might just see though, the second round of the Bachelor challenge (starring the runner-up) might produce some more interesting canidates for it.

I'm running the Asylum Challenge right now.  When it's over, I'll move the permaplat sim and the crazy of her choice into a new house.  (I made all the crazies men and the psuedo-sane one a woman with stink and underwear turn-ons.  So there's perpetually romance in the air...)  Then I'll create a bachelorette, spiff up the asylum with a hot tub and some nicer furniture, and run the Bachelorette Challenge.  We'll see how it goes.

 :D :D :D That's really funny. You should have made them all cheese, too, and put in the ACR. That would be one crazy madhouse of lurve.

I've tried this challenge twice. The first time, my sane Sim had a career-related LTW. It took twenty-one days for the sane Sim's desired job to come up in the paper. Surprisingly, the mad Sims were doing incredibly well - only a few breakdowns, no deaths, no fires. It was boring and I gave up.

Second time, made a house full of characters from my favourite novel and tweaked the rules a little so that rather than randomizing personalities, they got the ones that suited the character. That was a lot more fun. And also extremely creepy because one Sim, Elphaba, developed an obsession with her novel boyfriend, Fiyero, and began following him around unprompted. Wouldn't eat, wouldn't sleep, wouldn't do anything except follow and stare at the poor man. Which, in the end, was making me laugh so hard I couldn't play, and that one died a horrible death too!

Tip for anyone considering it: The Yummy Channel + 'invite (Sim) to join' is your friend. They'll happily watch for some hours, and there will be skill points and less fires.

Are you allowed to 'invite to join'? Pretty sure you're not allowed to initate anything that makes your sim interact with the patients.

I did this one twice and was kind of disappointed, guess I just got lucky with the Sims I rolled?

I rolled all the Sims and then rolled to see which I would control (seemed more interesting that way) and got the only Fortune sim.
Thought there would still be plenty of madness to go around, but by day 3 I had 4 Platinum Sims (popularity sims were thrilled with their new best friends and the knowledge sims were content to clean up the constant mess from the clogged toilet.) Apparently I was controlling the only slob as the place was immaculate. The 'loonies' busied themselves with tidying, writing in their diaries and yacking each other into best friend-hood.

I left the clogged toilet as they enjoyed cleaning up the mess...some had maxed cleaning
had my guy set out gelatin or cereal before leaving for work so the fires started after he was home to put them out, the stove was 2 tiles away from everything so it didn't destroy anything...
also had him clear the easel whenever there was a finished painting... many of them were very high in creative as well... There's nothing in the rules preventing you from inviting them to join, so they averaged 5-9 cooking points...

Second time I rolled a romance Sim. It took forever (42 Sim days) to get 20 lovers, but using the mental patients to up the count made things slightly more interesting as it caused a bit of chaos in the home and fights actually broke out.. however, this also gave the other patients far too many aspiration points and I ended up with almost 300 points, even refusing to pay bills to bring the Repo man and having one death (spontaneous combustion at the stove!?)

Wanted crazy sims...  :'(

I was soooo mad at my crazies.  They would all stand around in the cafeteria and stare at the controllable woman cooking.  (oooooh, foooood...)  Then they would be hungry, but would they eat the pork chops that she had prepared?  NO.  Instead they would all bodyslam each other on the way to the fridge, line up with individual pots of mac and cheese, and take turns burning the kitchen down.  Everyone would freak out at the fire, then fall like dominoes for the resulting aspiration failure.

After a visit from Dr. Freud, they would stand around in their underwear with their clouds of stink around them and cry because they wanted to gain skill points.  The unoccupied skill objects in the dayroom remained... well, unoccupied.

Meanwhile, the controllable one was uncontrollably attracted to all the stinky underwear and walk around daydreaming about all the pathetic sobbing creatures, hearts cascading from her thought-bubbles.

(Aaaaand my spouse just reminded me that people do wierd helpless shit like this all the time in real life.  So the Sims are more realistic than I'm comfortable with...)

No, I checked:

'On the other hand, you may ask them to join you in activities or use influence (or as I like to call it - mind control) to get them to do things. However, there is a bonus if you never use influence.'

Hurrah! Yummy Channel is go.

Fairly often they'll join autonomously when you're watching tv anyway, and then you still get the bonus :)

After reading just these posts, I have got to try this!

Except I am allowing all cheats/hacks.  I cannot live without books macrotastics.

*withdrawl*

I can't believe how stupid this was.  With Pescado's realistic world hacks in place, ALL of the crazies hit the dirt except for two.  So, when they die, this will be a place for my sim, who will be becoming a werewolf shortly, to invite unsuspecting people over only to do terrible things.

It really  isn't all that much fun (imnsho, of course) to just sit and stare at sims while they do stupid or boring or even slightly interesting things for the 3rd or 4th time. <gave up on this challenge in boredom after several days/acoupleweeks/I forget how long, I immediately put it outta my head>

It was really, and I mean REALLY stupid!  THey wouldn't sleep in the beds at all!  They just passed out a lot.

I failed.  On the second day in, a fire took my phone and one sim.  Two more died of fright from ghosts, the rest starved to death.  The only survivor was the sim I controlled.  Now I know not to put the phone in the kitchen.

I had lots of fun with this and was successful on my second attempt (no cheats/hacks etc). I even got round to posting it on the exchange:
http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/story_detail.php?asset_id=113646

I'd also recommend playing the Black Widow Challenge which is even more fun if you like killing off random townies/NPCs.

Had a blast with the challenge. Since sims that don't know how to cook are hazardous to the community health, I had a big Yummy Channel party on Day 1. Since everyone's fun bar was low, they watched that stupid cooking show for most of the day and some uncontrollables managed two cooking points. That really cut down on the fiery balls visible from the backdoor (I put the stove out back).

No simmies died in the making of this challenge run and only one visit by the simshrink (the knowledge sim was very afraid of fire and we have two in short order because of clumpiness in the random number generator). I was fortunate in that my controllable sim was home during each fire (there were probably 7-8 fires total and my controllable caused one of them  :)) and only once did she play "moth to the flame". I was able to get her to call the fire department without too much trouble and they always put out the blaze before somebody died.

I put the sink in the kitchen, had three countertops, a fridge and waste bin with the stove outside on the back deck. It worked well and I had several sims who were happy to clean up and keep the place clean. Some of them managed three cleaning skill points -- that's a lot of countertops wiped down!  ;D The bathroom was a pair of 2x2 rooms with the toilet in one and the shower/tub in the other with a connecting door as well as an entry/exit door. There were occasional traffic jams but it mostly worked okay. I had to restart the challenge because I left out the connecting door in my initial attempt. The sleeping area was one room, 4x10 I think, with sufficient room for 5 single beds. For seating, I had a Zecutime sofa, a decent living and two chairs for the chess set. Skill gear was the bass (creativity), cheap mirror (charisma), cheap bookcase (cooking, cleaning, mechanical), TV (for cooking and body), pool (body) and chess set (logic). I had to laugh as the napping sim would snooze through entire concerts of bass symphonies but the TV and the phone would wake them easily. Go figure!

My controllable sim was a Fortune sim with LTW "Become Hall of Famer" and I was able to complete the challenge in 19 days. My final score was 310 and almost all of the uncontrollable sims managed 25 skill points (4-5 cooking, 10 logic, 6-8 creativity, 2-3 cleaning). My big winner was, of course, a Knowledge sim who racked up lots of aspiration points from skill gains. Interestingly enough, my two Fortune sims did quite well. They were able to earn a little money playing the bass for tips and they got some aspiration gains off creativity gain wants and the occasional decor purchase. The Family sim did okay but the Romance sims and the Pleasure sim struggled with serious aspiration problems as they could not satisfy any of their wants. I should've bought a bar with the seed money but I didn't and I bet they both had "Buy bar" as a want pretty much continuously. It was there at the end.

Oh, I forgot to say: I generated all eight Sims and then randomly determined which one would be the controlled sim. I got lucky with her LTW and that helped me finish the challenge quickly. My proudest moment was when one of the Romance sims managed to gain a body skill point in the swimming pool.  8)

This challenge is awesome, i ended up using townies since i got a boatload full of ugly townies that belong in an asylum (one of which is a zombie).  I did however quit all their jobs reset their skills to nothing and randomize their aspirations.  I also didn't remove my hacks simply because it's a waste of time the only ones i got that can make stuff easier i specifically don't use for the asylum (i found out bathroom uses you was more trouble than it was worth when there's only 1 terlet and 1 shower).

I think i've got this challenge more or less won already my sim is half way through her job career and i'm positive each sim has like 20 skill points from all the cleaning, cooking and chess playing they've been doing.  Not to mention the fact that at least 2 must be knowledge sims since i notice the aspiration bar floating up above someone every now and then.  I've only had 1 fire so far and probably the result of the fire hack everyone panicked except one sim who prompty ran over to put it out.  The stove was ALMOST gone since it was completely engrossed in a huge fire ball.

My question is if you can't leave the asylum how are you supposed to get the required friends for the jobs?  After all it's not THAT often that i see sims passing by.

 
Hehe, I was exactly at that point (and the challenge started to get boring) when my controllable sim went to work. Half an hour later, one of the patients started a fire in the kitchen that killed four sims. One starved, and two were frightened to death the very same evening. The controllable sim survived until next morning 3 am, but the non-stop haunting (13 in a row) finished him off ;D.

I had a funny glitch though - one sim just disappeared, no reaper, no tombstone. The asylum was considered empty after the controllable sim's death, but in the neighborhood, the lot showed up as occupied (by the vanished sim). When I let two other sims move into the house, the "invisible" didn't show up in the family panel, but was still a family member, so I could give grimmy a call and bring him back :D. The challenge is lost, of course, but I have plans with some of the patients  ;)


There are many ways to meet new people without leaving the asylum - it's within the rules to have blind dates at home. You can befriend all NPC's that cannot be hired, i.e. order pizza or groceries, call the police, stalk the newspaper girl etc. Adding subhoods increases the number of walk-bys, too :)

Wow to think things went THAT bad for you all of a sudden.  Thanks for the tips on getting friends, i'll have to do the friends part next time though because the stupid townies i moved in along with mine i ended up with like 30 friends.  The friends are slowly whittling away but i think i won't count any friends into my score i may even subtract some points because of it.

So far my asylum design has proved flawless except for 1 single problem, i put a sink in the kitchen and every single day at least 2 or 3 times some idiot wants to have a sponge bath in it and has to shoo EVERYONE from the room, and since the kitchen has no devider it's part of the lounge room and the hallway.  I'm beyond amazed that nobody has peed themselves, i've seen some of them desperate and hanging around outside the bathroom yet they always make it in on time (damn Maxis for making it harder for sims to pee themselves).  Also no one has passed out it seems there is always a free bed which is quite surprising when theres 8 people and 5 really crappy beds.

You should have seen my face :D. Nevertheless, it was a nice twist (for a rather short time, though) - after all that boring skilling/making friends stuff I suddenly had to focus on things that really matter ;).

I had 5 single beds, too, plus 1 recliner, which was more than enough given that 8 sims will never go to sleep at the same time. Having only 1 bathtub was more of a problem, especially because it was permanently broken. On the plus side, my patients gained a lot of skill points for cleaning ;D.

I'll have another attempt, of course. But all this ghost stuff gave me an idea for a "Haunted Hill" challenge which I want to try out first.

I put in a shower instead, baths take extra time to use on filling with water and with 8 people it'd be a huge pain especially if someone decides to play in the bathtub.  If your smart you leave broken objects such as showers since they create puddles constantly then which the inmates cleanup to gain points lol.

Whats the haunted hill challenge?  Do you have a link?

I fully agree - but I prefer atmosphere to convenience, and imho, the claw foot tub has the most asylum-ish look, especially in an isolated tiled room (hydrotherapy, you know ;))


Not yet - I have to work out the objectives first :D.

The basic idea is to start with a haunted place instead of ending up with one, but I only have a rough draft so far. At the moment, I'm busy preparing my sanitarium. Instead of just killing four sims, I play them for a week or two (in-game time) to get a "prolog" to the challenge (because I want to make a story out of it) :)

Yeah i guess the lower baths do fit well for the run down look, i made my place look pretty shoddy especially the bathroom.  All the wallpaper has grime and dirt along it.

So your still working out the objectives eh?  I recently killed off a family of mine so now i got 5 tombstones in the house hidden in the walls, i was planning to later move some sims in and using Squinge's hack to make ghost encounters almost constant see how long they live.  The story behind my ghost house is some crazed lunatic came a knocking and killed everyone in the house, one daughter was drowned in the pool, the other was thrown down the stairs.  The mother was burned to death and the father was stabbed in the bedroom.  At some point the killer got electricuted on the tv in the lounge room.

Honestly if your doing a haunted house challenge it should probably be for a target date, must stay in house for x days.  And scoring you probably want stuff like everytime a sim is scared minus a point and if they pee their pants from fear minus several more points.  Anyway i'll be on the look out for it when it's finished definitely gonna be a challenge i wanta try.

I have several ideas, but there'll be a lot of playtesting first. For instance, scoring will most likely depend a lot on how much knowledge/non-knowledge aspiration influences the gameplay (so playing a knowledge sim, though definitively allowed, will probably lead to a penalty). Also, I think I'll have more than one sim move in (one dies, next comes and has to face not only the start-up ghosts, but his predecessors' ghosts as well), because seeing how fast one single ghost can kill, it might be a very short challenge otherwise.

Oh - all the vengeful ghost stuff towards the end of the asylum challenge that inspired me reminded me a bit of "House on Haunted Hill" (the remake from 1999), hence the name of my challenge ;D.

Sounds good there should definitely be a penalty on knowledge sims like you said since i think the motive drop is half or even less for ghost scares.  Since the next sims have to face extra ghosts they should really be awared bonus points, so for instance each day you spend in the house you get 1 point but it's multiplied by the amount of ghosts.  So 5 ghosts, 5 points, 4 ghosts 4 points, 50 ghosts, 50 points.  I honestly don't think it'd be much of a challenge without Squinge's hack to increase ghost sightings though but i suppose you need to determine that through some hardcore testing.

Finally got around to getting a sim through this trial from start to finish and at a score of 283 i think it's wayyyyy too easy.  To make it harder i think it needs changes like these

Your sim is not allowed to repair any item, for an item to be repaired asylum members must be asked to do so by influence.
Crappy diswasher and garbage disposal allowed so people can break it and get electricuted.
Your sim MUST gamble on every chance card that appears, you cannot use the ignore button.  You also must roll a die to determine which option you choose, 1, 3, 5 is option #1 2, 4, 6, is option #2.
You cannot thraw out sims that have started to freeze to death and also cannot put out sims that are on fire.
You start with 5 seats and 4 beds instead (same rules as normal)

Start score of 0
No bonus for not using influence, let's face it that makes things fun
-15 points for every fire
-30 points for every aspiration failure which requires the visit of the therapist
-10 points for every desperate aspiration action (one guy in my asylum stood outside with his money cup DAILY several times a day)
-10 points for everytime a sim pees themselves
-10 points for everytime a sim passes out
-15 points for every electricution
-30 points for every struck by lighting
-10 points for every fight outbreak
-3 points for every day your sim remains in the asylum
-50 points for every roommate death
-100 points for every visitor death
-5 points for each tomestone/urn each day that is on the lot
-5 points everytime your sim is demoted
-15 points for everytime your sim is fired
-2 points for every skill point lost to a chance card
+1 for every skill point your inmates have
+1 for each friend of the household (this is the friends count used for jobs)
+1 for every 2000 aspiration points your inmates have (total aspiration points count must be rounded down)
+2 for every inmate your sim befriends
+5 points everytime your sim is promoted
+20 points when your sim reaches their lifetime goal

OPTIONAL: On start of the challenge make the mental Institute a nuclear war edition.  Do so by using the weather machine to make winter permenant for +100 points.

The goal is to get over minus or zero points as a final score.

And the topic lurches out of its grave, zombie-like, shuffling its feet and groaning...

I agree. Been reading a bunch of stories today and while the multiple sim deaths were quite amusing, I think I can see loopholes in the rules for almost everything that caused them. I came up with an "interesting" modification of my own, so now I need to decide whether to go with your harder rules or leave it as it is with my evil twist ;D. Or possibly combine your harder rules with my evil twist, but that could be messy.

Out of interest, those of you who've been doing the Challenge: what hacks have you been playing with? I know the rules say Cheats/Hacks – not allowed, but I really don't want my game exploding in a big fiery ball visible from space, so there's no way I'd remove Critical Fixes or the Lot Debugger. Also, I see no point in removing hacks which are entirely irrelevant for the challenge, e.g. the various business fixes. I intend to remove only those hacks which actually modify sims' freewill behaviour.

FFS hacks which modify freewill behaviour: antifoodnap, firemod & noeatcrap definitely need to be removed. I'm not sure about Macrotastics, dontwaveatme and lesswhiny - you wouldn't be allowed to use Macrotastics as it'd be cheating, but I don't know if it needs to be removed as long as you can withstand the urge to use it. As for dontwaveatme and lesswhiny, I think the point of the challenge is to have fun and laugh at the stupid sims, not get so frustrated you throw your computer out the window and have to buy a new one.

TwoJeffs hacks which modify freewill behaviour: Always Flush Toilets, Food Already Available Fix, NL No Indoors Kicky Bag Control Freak (*sob*!), No Autonomous Napping. I'm not sure about No Whining at Missing Objects or Visitor Snacking Fix - as you guessed, I have issues with sims whining.

Crammyboy hacks which modify freewill behaviour: No Force Watch Fight. Not sure if that needs removing.

Inge and syberspunk hacks which need removing: none. Although I have several of Inge's No Autonomy hacks, they're irrelevant for the challenge (e.g. No Autonomous Video Games, when computers aren't allowed to the inmates of the Asylum).

I suppose I should probably also remove the Insimenator, as it's such a big hack it's bound to conflict with something. Although it does have a handy "Make Unselectable" feature... hmmm.

Hehehe... oh, the plotting ;).

Hmm, it's Dumb Baratron-type People. I wonder if I should add you to the Torture Pool. Are you going to be around to be interesting? I think your schtick should be your allergy to everything. Any other suggestions?

Blimey, he sounds almost pleased to see you Baratron.  ::)

I agree with the idea that only "freewill affecting" hacks be removed,  mainly to get more fun out of the hapless inmates.  I'm definitely going to build an asylum and try this challenge.  Looks like great fun, even though none of the other challenges have ever interested me (too much like work to keep score through 10 generations, etc.).  I am keeping critical fixes and probably fixes for some of the more ridiculous annoyances, but I think it would add to the feel of an asylum if inmates always went to look at new stuff, whined a bit, left coffee cups lying around, etc.

...I think I've read that if you make them unselectable with inSIM, they'll wander off the lot when they start to get miserable...

I was afraid of that too.  I've opted to leave the other "inmates" as selectable, but just not look at their details. 

Have played 18 sim days now, and have had 3 fires and only one death (not directly related to fire) so far (she collapsed in exhaustion and probably just starved to death).  Things are getting interesting.  I was bored stiff with an asylum full of people just happy to have pillow fights.

Allergy to "everything" - oh man! *lol*. Go for it, heaven knows my real life is annoying enough at times. What will you do, make me randomly collapse vomiting if I eat something containing dairy products, or give me fits of sneezing if I do gardening? ;D

So far my Asylum Challenge is going to hell in a handbasket, principally because I was an idiot earlier today. Although the official rules do not say "No quitting without saving & reloading if something you don't like happens", that's how I play Challenges, as otherwise it's just too easy. Today's fire - the second since the Challenge started - was my own fault for not noticing that bloody Goopy had put pork chops into the oven before I walled off the kitchen to stop the sims going in there five times a day. In my defence, I had clicked on the oven with my controllable sim, but had only got the options "Make..." and "Make Many...", nothing about "Get Pork Chops" (it seems you have to hit exactly the right pixel on the screen to get that to come up). Goopy started the first fire too, and this despite him having acquired at least two Cooking points in a Yummy Channel Marathon (tricky to arrange without Macrotastics, as my controllable sim has entirely the wrong personality to want to watch TV).

Honestly, it's terrifying how much sims will over-eat given only Maxis free will and unlimited access to the fridge - as well as the sim who started the Challenge fat (Mickey Dosser, from La Fiesta Tech's fraternity), Dina Caliente and Andrezj Centowski (cow mascot) are now waddling around. It will not surprise anyone who's learned about Efficient Sim personalities that 5 of my 8 inmates have less than 2 Active points. It has surprised me how much the sims seem to prefer fish fights to using the Fun-building items in the house - so far I've seen the two Active sims using the chessboard autonomously, and Goopy using the easel, but apart from that it's TV or fish fighting. No one has used the exercise equipment at all.

I've cloned my Strangetown for the purpose of strange Challenges that might break the game. (It was pretty easy using the Batch Renamer that JadeElliot, I think, posted a link to here a while ago.) Depending on how long this takes to play & how much time I have, I may make an Asylum that is entirely... well, that would be telling ;).

Sorry for posting in a thread that has been inactive for so long but I felt that I might have found a useful loophole to get around the issue of stove/fridge loss due to fire. I don't recall seeing a restriction mentioned anywhere on buying the buffet table so instead of ordering pizza or Chinese food constantly you could just keep filling up the buffet table instead.

Actually, the rules state quite clearly that there must be an accessible stove, so that the inmates can start fires.

Money really is short if you play this challenge correctly, so the buffet table is not a clever option at all.

Loophole: No rule requiring the presence of a fridge, only a stove.

No rule saying that the buffet table is outlawed, and there's no reason money would be short if you're managing it right.

Starting with an adult CAS sim, entry level jobs... aaargh. When I played this challenge, I spent every last penny on bills and groceries.

I think I will play it again soon  :D

I think I did it wrong the last time I had an asylum - not nearly enough peeing on the floor, aspiration failures, fires, etc. and only one death.  My "playable" inmate reached the top of his career and was released through several lucky choices on chance cards and went on to father 3 lovely children with a pretty walk-by he met during his time as an inmate.  Altogether too happy an ending.  I was hoping it would end in chaos.

Perhaps I should try it again as well.

Heh. I am tempted to set one up with MATY sim-selfs. Volunteers?

I will, just cuz I've only been in like two MATY stories.

Sure, torture meh.

ooh, use me! I don't recall EVER being in a MATY story, not even to be tortured

Since you asked, sure.  Self-sim is now in Made-up-animals.

Cow-row, you are already in my hood.

Heh, I'm already there, too.

I am? Awesome! I'd like to thank the academy...

All this has finally got me going on building a MATY hood.  Can't get link to work on SimRohina in Made-up-animals (link was to 4-shared account).  Rohina, I can haz, plz?

I'm assuming Rohina wouldn't mind if I made it available again, but just in case, I'll PM you a link.  :)

PM a link with good clothes, please, or can I has a nice purple dress from Parsimonious?

Pescado also has it if you ask him nicely.

I sent a PM with your original purple dress. No worries. :)

Will check what comes out on my game - if current purple dress (which I want to keep) is not compatible, you can haz first refusal rights on anything simRohina would wear (noting preference for "nice purple").  Sounds like dress comes with sim, or am I wrong?  If there, simRohina keeps.

It's easy to make money, even with this challenge and since what you buy and place on your lot is restricted for me at least there was plenty of money to go around so being able to afford to refill the buffet wasn't an issue. I still had a stove and even a fridge on my lot I even gave my Sims a microwave so they had two ways to start a fire in fact since I didn't see any restrictions on microwaves. I just had my Sim fill up the buffet table once a day for the other patients.

I enjoyed this challenge but I was disappointed that it didn't turn out to be more chaotic. I only had one Sim pass out on the floor once and no one peed themselves until they turned into elders. A fun challenge and the first one I've ever managed to complete actually but too easy.

Did you try it without idiocy removing hacks? I'm tempted to do so with all the excess spares in this generation of my legacy (stupid Family sims).

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!

Short intro to my characters. (http://matyasylum.wordpress.com/)

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.

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).

I read that, it was hilarious.  ;D

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

 Chapter One  (http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/story_detail.php?asset_id=194852)

 Chapter Two  (http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/story_detail.php?asset_id=195264)

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

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.

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

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.

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

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 (http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/story_detail.php?asset_id=226082)
Part 2 (http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/story_detail.php?asset_id=226710)
Part 3 (http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/story_detail.php?asset_id=227472)
Part 4 (http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/story_detail.php?asset_id=228535)
Part 5 (http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/story_detail.php?asset_id=229032)

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.

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

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

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 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

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.

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.

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.

You only need one tomato plant.


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 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

That's just mean - I like it :D

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!

Not really. It doesn't really matter how many plants you have. Skillinator can max out gardening on only one plant simply by repeatedly watering it. This is slightly bad for the plant, but overwatering actually grants a short-term health boost.

My interpretation of the rules was that any hacks that would make the challenge easier had to come out.  If I'd had No Friends for Promotions, for example, I'd have pulled it.  The only ones I left in that had any impact on the challenge were the Coffee Cup Hack (and I'm not sure how much of a difference it would have made had I pulled it, given that I had no end tables and 3 Sims with 10 Neat), and the Fight Club, which I left in precisely because I knew I was going to have a lot of fights.  I'd have pulled the Skillinator if I had it.  Ditto Bathroom Uses You and Macrotastics, and I DID pull noeatcrap, Autoyak, and the Phone Hack, which hurt.  Oddly, I think pulling wfsanity actually HELPED, because they'd roll bizarre Wants and then get Aspiration for fulfilling them.

I forgot about just watering the hell out of one plant.  Although if you're going by the rule that there's no using juicers, there's no point to gardening in the first place.

If you grow a big enough garden, you should not need to buy groceries. Then maybe you will not even need a job, if the LTW doesn't require one.

I have to admit that I left the phone hack in.  I don't think I had BRY or BUY, or even Macrotastics in at that point. The only thing I pulled was my ice cream file, because when ice cream is available, sims always choose to fix themselves some.  No cooking skills needed and a disappointing reduction in the chance of fiery death, so. . .

The coffee cup hack is unlikely to have matter.  I had a lot of Neat Sims too, and they valiantly kept trying to Clean Up all the cups until the dishwasher broke and they couldn't keep up with them all.  That was when they really got unhappy.  As a reward for finishing, I bought them all a dishwasher and you should have seen the big smiles!

http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t50/professorbutters/asylum/snapshot_f4507aa5_74525c04.jpg

Well, SoWo and the Headmaster don't smile much and Grim kind of doesn't have a face, but I'm sure they were all smiles inside.

Cassandra, the point is that if you can't use the juicer, there is no point in growing eggplants for their skill building properties.  DocNerd's asylum had a Max All Skills LTW; mine was indeed a career LTW; in either case, the eggplant wouldn't have helped. 

PB

Eggplants are basically of no use whatsoever in gaining skills, because the effort involved in farming them represents a net loss: It will take more time to farm them and consume them than it will to just gain the skills normally.

The only way this would be worthwhile then is if you want the sim to gain gardening badges and the eggplants would simply be a bonus by-product of the activity then.  The primary goal would not be skillinating in this case.

But you can't even PLANT eggplants without a gold gardening badge! This means that if you're trying to gain a gold badge, you'd never get ANY eggplants. Besides, the customary method of gaining gold gardening is to drown a tomato plant. A SINGULAR tomato plant. It actually produces thriving fruit if you finish growing it, but tomatoes don't produce any useful products, so you'd just dump it as raw FPV anyway.

Oh, well.  To hell with it then.

Silver badge, actually.

Unless somebody creates a new spin on the Asylum Challenge, there's no real benefit to earning badges.  The final score is calculated on how many days you were incarcerated--the fewer, the better--the skill points of the inmates, and their final aspiration score, minus deaths, using Influence, etc.  Sims won't autonomously earn badges on a residential lot that I know of.  I suppose if you wanted to do a home business "roll up and see the crazies!", your playable might eventually earn a Gold Sales badge, and that might be a fun money maker if you didn't have a career LTW.  But I don't think you could assign the non-playables to business-type tasks, and that's the only way I know of getting non-playable Sims to earn badges.

It would be interesting to try the home business angle.  I archived the lot I created--the Count Fosco Home for the Distraught--which was set up for this.  Maybe I'll run another asylum and do it if my playable rolls one of the WooHoo or Friends wants, or even "Earn 100,000."

BTW, some people buy a double bed if they have a Romance Sim.  Forget about it.  Those lazy inmates always want to *sleep* in it.  My Sim wound up WooHooing in the car, which seems to be allowed.  I was never able to determine if hot tubs, photobooths, etc. were allowed.  But if you want your playable to WooHoo, don't count on the bed.

PB

My gut reaction when someone suggested eggplants was that it was essentially a zero-sum game: too much work for something that could be more easily achieved by other means.

My only hesitation with a home business would be in allowing the customers access to the kitchen.  There's a rule against locking doors in the Asylum; maybe you could fudge that and lock the kitchen for Household Only, which would enable the inmates to feed themselves, but would ban the customers, but then you'd still have to worry about the negative stars that would happen from inmates committing Suicide By Pancakes.  My experience with playing Club Dante for the first time was that it took about five minutes for a Townie to light the place on fire.  The kitchen at Club Dante was summarily replaced by a hot tub.

Huh.  Some of those rules are *definitely* new--I played mine in November.  There used to be all sorts of rules about locking the door to pets, which are now gone:  the rules about no locked doors now say "but the patients can only access the beach from T-Th, so lock the gate to the beach at other times."  I don't see how you can have no lockable doors and yet lock the gate to the beach.

My plan was to have a front of house, essentially the parlor, with one door that allows or does not allow entrance to the rest of the house. I planned to make that door Household Only.   It's the same design I used for De Beers' home art gallery.  There was a microwave in the front, and a mini-fridge, which is also possible to light on fire.  I just didn't want townies eating the asylum food, using the toilet and probably breaking it, etc.  The dance sphere was also behind the locked door, as I didn't want townies to bogart it completely.  I also went for a "splendidly Victorian and yet somehow still wretched" look.

(http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t50/professorbutters/asylum/asylumaerialview.jpg)

My reading on the locked doors rule was that you couldn't save any goodies for yourself.  So the patients had to have access to the kitchen:  you couldn't just cook and leave food out for them.  And you couldn't have a claimable room with a bed in it just for your playable.

The rules for FT also now state that you can only Tinker with the car but not drive it.  This puzzles me, as there was never an explicit rule against the car in the first place; only against leaving the lot for any other reason than work.  As it happened, I never opened the business, and the car was only a WooHoo mobile.

Oh, yes, and who cares about negative stars?  The idea was to attract non playables my Sim could WooHoo if he wanted to.

PB

I might be looking at an old copy of the rules; I didn't bother to look at the BV rules, since I don't have BV installed.

Sure, if you were using a business to lure Townies for WooHoo, negative stars wouldn't matter, but if you were using it with a Fortune Sim...  You know how they freak when someone loses a star or the business loses a rank.

Where can one find updated rules?

I'm pretty sure Prof and I were looking HERE (http://www.forums.boolprop.com/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=14792) when we did ours.  AFAIK, SimScout hasn't updated his/her rules since the original.

I did a little experiment with the architecture for the Asylum Challenge,

I made the house open planned meaning no walls on any of the rooms except for the exterior (Of course the rooms are outlined with rug dividers in the PETS ep to break off the bathroom, the living room, the kitchen and the bedrooms) which surprisingly was the most simplest to do as I didn't have to fuss with the wall toggle and my PC would be as laggy as heck.

Edit: Yeah I hate unnecessary walls of text too

Dude, that is a crazy long unfinished sentence. What are you on about?

I think it's that he was using rug dividers instead of walls to separate the areas, so he could see all of the Asylum, all the time, and the patients didn't have trouble with naked people in the bathroom.

I did something similar with areas of mine, masking off the phones with rug divider, so they didn't wake up a couch-napper when they rang, and masked off the shower/tub so that the shy Sims would use it with a roomful of Sims.  Not sure if it acts as a firebreak, though.

Well, I just completed this challenge. I found it fairly easy; I lost one Sim to a fire while my controllable sim was at work, though.

My controllable sim was Knowledge with a LTW of becoming chief of staff. That was fairly easy. I ended up romancing a co-worker and getting him to give me promotions.

It did take 31 days, though.

I had six fires.
One patient kept beating up on two girls. The girls ended up being best friends... shared misery, one supposes.
Every patient but one--a Popularity sim--was in constant aspiration failure. I've never seen the flour baby before this. Kind of cute, actually.
Four out of six surviving patients actually maxed out their Creativity.

My controllable sim actually got abducted by aliens! She was female, so no babies. (Thankfully. What's the rule on alien pregnancy in this challenge? Do you have to let the social worker take the baby, or can you try to raise it?)

There was one big hurdle. Because I used the money cheat to build a nice, roomy asylum (it worked wonders--the sims almost never got stuck in traffic jams), I also had the rule, "You may not buy anything else during the game except to replace stolen or repossessed items." There was nothing mentioning replacing destroyed items--and wouldn't you know it, somebody let in a stray dog on the first day who promptly ate one of my beds! And during the third week, just after my fatal fire (after which I removed one bed and one chair), it happened again!

I ended up spending nearly two weeks with two beds and seven Sims. Surprisingly, there were only six collapses.

The ghost of the dead Sim wasn't very troublesome.

I got my last promotion on Tuesday of the fourth week, making 31 days total. Afterwards, I passed out while the kitchen caught on fire and two patients had nervous breakdowns.

Scoring:
20,  never used influence
138 total skill points on surviving patients
33 for 33,000 aspiration points (most of them from the aforesaid Popularity sim--three of the surviving patients had zero!)
6 friends of the household. I had eight, at one point, but had a habit of keeping them just above friend relationship.
-31 days institutionalized
-20 for one death

Total score: 138

Oh, and this is my first post, so hi, everybody.  ;D

Edit: Hmm, this would have been easier with the modified rules. Being allowed to lock pets out would have saved my beds...

Finished the challenge again. I could have had no aspiration failures, but I let two happen by letting a wolf in and not paying bills.

Total score, 193. Don't think I can do better, so that's the end of that.

Snapshots. (http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/story_detail.php?asset_id=238209&searchPage=exch&search=1&asset_type=story&key=&order=UPDATE_DATE+desc&nrows=8&storyCat=Satirical&locality=&country=&view=new&hideFramework=&languageCode=)

Babies aren't allowed. Period.

I would suppose that in the extremely unlikely event of a baby, you'd have to let it be taken by the social worker.  But I'm puzzled as to why there was an abduction at all, unless you didn't have any other logic-building items (i.e. the chess table.)

PB

I chose the telescope as my logic-building item. There was no chess table.

So I suppose you either have to have all female sims or not have an expensive telescope, or else have a rule that you have to let the social worker take the baby.

Second time around I used the chess table... I got a higher score (193), but I also cheated on the personalities to make them all randomly extreme rather than random star signs... So I don't know whether it was the extreme personalities, the difference in equipment, or my having learned how-to that made the difference in the score. Or just luck. Probably just luck.

Do you have to use the easel to build creativity? I used instruments both times; but they have high Fun ratings and I'm not sure if that's allowed, whether the Fun>7 just applies to the TV or not.

Another observation: I think it's theoretically possible to complete this challenge without any aspiration failures because of how the aspiration bar stops dropping automatically when it hits that last line before deep red. You would have to prevent fires, sickness, and anything else that a Sim could possibly fear, plus have a healthy dose of luck.

If you had an expensive telescope and an uncontrollable male Sim who got abducted, he wouldn't live long enough to have the baby.  Because of the way they generally choose to take care of their Motives, he'd do whatever was Fun until that bar was maxed, and consequently starve to death, or else he'd stop having Fun to eat, and fall asleep in his plate when his Energy motive finally tanked, and starve to death.  You can Call Household To Eat, but there's nothing to make him go to bed, or pee, or shower, and if he has to pee, he won't eat, and if he's smelly, he won't eat or sleep, and if he has to sleep, he can't eat, and if he's bored, he won't care that he's tired, stinky, and starving...  He'd never survive for the baby to be born.

Even if he did survive through the birth through some miracle, unless you have antibabyharassment, you almost wouldn't be able to get it taken away, given the baby coding.  Even if you had your playable leave it outside, as soon as one of the uncontrollables got hungry, they'd run out, grab it, and feed it a bottle, and you wouldn't be able to stop them.  It'd be stinky, unless you made your playable change its diaper, but the uncontrollables would be cramming bottle after bottle down its throat.  As a toddler, you might be able to get it taken, if you left it outside in summer or winter, because the toddler coding is so much less aggressive, although the uncontrollables would probably still feed it and take it inside.

I'm guessing that's why people choose the chess table over the telescope, aside from the fact that the chess table also builds relationships, where the telescope doesn't.

You don't have to use the easel.  If you have Fortune Sims in the mix, the instruments are a better bet, because they'll fulfill the Earn Some Money Want from collecting their tips, but they can't sell the paintings they do (unless you have that hack and leave it in), and busking is pretty much the only way Fortune Sims have of earning money in an Asylum.

I had three Aspiration Failures, all fire-related.  At some point, you just have to assume that there's going to be a fire, or a mess leading to roaches, or someone's going to pee themselves or green-fume or pass out or fall off the Dance Sphere, and that'll be all it takes to bring the Sim Shrink around.

Yeah, you're right, I didn't even think of how pregnancy would affect an uncontrolled Sim. They were barely keeping themselves alive as it was--the third day would kill them if the first two didn't.