Ghetto Superstar Challenge

[vcline]

Do a book and the TV count as duplicate cooking skilling items?

[Ellatrue]

Yes, they do. The only ones where it doesn't count as a duplicate is with items where the skilling is completely incidental to the action in question, and it's one of those "learn by experience" things. So you are allowed to own a book and a kitchen counter at the same time. I'm not sure I've explained that very well, is it clear enough which objects are allowed and which are not?

[Zeljka]

hmm,
I have a Chessboard which is one object that gives one skill, though it has 2 seats... not 100% sure it's allowed (there is also the newspaper which could eventually give Logic if you did every crossword) but I figure that if Telescopes are allowed, it should be too...

I also have all 3 toddler toys but don't allow them on the lot at the same time (ie... the easel is gone until the toddler who wants creative points has hit child) though by the rules as stated, I could let my teen paint, put the easel in his inventory while he's in school so the toddlers can gain creative. Not sure what's intended so I do it the harder way.

[Ellatrue]

You can have either the telescope OR the chess table OR the toddler logic toy. I'm not going to count the newspaper because you can't get rid of them and it is incredibly useless and lame. Hmm... maybe it's okay so long as you don't use the newspaper crossword while you own logic skilling objects. But for other objects, you shouldn't even have them.

[Ellatrue]

Okay, potential updates/changes to the rules:

No digging/ sandcombing with BV! It's way too easy to get rich that way. Or maybe it can be allowed if they never sell anything they find, and it only clutters up the house? Hmm.

Under consideration: the house may only be ONE FLOOR, and a 2x1 lot.

I like the idea of making the challenge more fun by adding additional bonuses, although it may just make things more complicated.

Possible changes:

plus 30 for never selling anything, ever- no selling stuff back, no selling date rewards, no selling crafts from the craft benches, or paintings, or anything, ever

Plus 20 for never selling garden produce (but no limit on the size of the garden plots) (this bonus is not cumulative with the never sell anything bonus). This aspect of the challenge is still kind of fiddly, and I'm not sure what to do with it. I like the idea of having them constantly garden and sell vegetables and such, but they can earn an insane amount of money from it. Maybe if it is with tomatoes only? Hmm.

plus 10 for each sim child that maxes out all skills

Plus 10 for the pregnant teen challenge? Is that enough?

Also under consideration: a rule that sim kids can be sent to college, but only if they earn at least 4 or 5 scholarships- and they can't move back in unless they use no 20k handouts.  I still don't think I would want to allow private school, although the scenario might be more interesting. Hmm. Maybe if there were a way to make it more expensive, other than JM's hack?

I could also add a bonus if EVERY child goes to private school (if no child spends more than a single day in public school). But if you fail the challenge, there would be a penalty for every kid that gets in. It would have to be all or nothing.

So, maybe rather than just forbidding private school, it can be like a shoot-the-moon challenge in hearts: -3 for every kid that is accepted into private school, unless ALL of them are accepted (right away when they age to child, although they are allowed to attend public school ONCE after aging to child, provided the headmaster is invited as soon as the kid ages to child). And an additional -1 penalty for a failed headmaster visit.

[Kraken]

Sorry late to the party here, been busy with another challenge.

There is one way of dealing with the shower issue.  Make it so they can only have one shower per sim, per day.  If they use that on a morning and the baby gags on them in the afternoon they are stuck and stinky.  It eases the child stink issue while still keeping it slightly challenging for those unlucky mishaps.

After all running water today is expensive! 

[Ellatrue]

Meh, that's too fiddly, and kind of lame, since they only need to shower once a day, anyway. They'll be stinky enough as it is.

I'm looking at adding a bonus for only one room, and another for only one floor. Still trying to figure out the gardening thing- that's the biggest issue with this challenge. I also need to know if the value of items kept in inventory is added to the family net worth.

I'll be updating the rules today to reflect the current state of the challenge.

ETA: apparently items in inventory are not added to the family net worth. Yay.

[Ellatrue]

Okay, today the challenge has been MASSIVELY UPDATED, taking into account the suggestions received so far in this thread. New, improved challenge is now the first post.

This mini-challenge under consideration.

SPACE SAVER:
Sim houses may only have ONE ROOM, on one level/floor. Objects may never be sold back to the catalog, ever, for any reason. Sims may not keep anything in inventory.

If you are going for the no dating rewards money bonus, dating rewards may be placed in the sim's inventory ONLY at the END of the challenge (along with uneaten fish outside the fridge), so they won't be included in the family net worth. If you end up with duplicate skilling items from dating, you will fail the challenge.

Questions:

What do you all think of the new bonus points for various things? The new mini challenges? What about the new rules for private school and going to college?And should sims be allowed to return from uni if they come back with no money or anything in their inventory, or does that just make everything too complicated (because it would have to be time-synced, etc.)? Finally: the gardening thing. Argh!

And I'm still trying to figure out the impact of BV. Should I allow vacations? What about only allowing children to dig for treasure (or fish, maybe)?

I'm also thinking of just banning ponds and changing the duration of the challenge, so that it ends when the first sim dies of old age. I'd kind of like it to last a little longer than that so as to achieve maximum chaos in the house, but I feel like waiting for the youngest child of the first generation to age up might just take too long. Between those two, I don't see a good point to end the challenge--by linking it to the second generation--which couldn't be easily manipulated so that the duration wouldn't be the same for most players (because there's always a point at which the sim can no longer breed). On the other hand, shorter kind of simplifies the challenge and prevents the neighborhood from being overloaded with sims from this one family.

Modified original post again for greater clarity. Most important rules sorted to the top, more FAQ nitty gritty type stuff toward the bottom, so hopefully the challenge concept is conveyed better and the bonus type stuff feels more optional. And I think I'll add a little thing at the top for flavor.

[Kazzandra]

I hope I'm not doing a very bad thing, but I wanted to report my results and show off a little story. Please keep in mind that I use the Sims 2 as a character development tool for my writing, so some things might need more introduction than I give them. There are lots of lulz to be had, if one is patient. I write novels, so short stories always come out long for me.

Here's Kara Bikfoh, the mother of a friend of one of my main characters. I figured she was quite usable, therefore.
Kara started out on a very small lot, with two houses and an ally in which to live. The doors were locked to the impoverished houses. Kara started life on the streets in autumn, with a pile of leaves for her bed. There were also some decorative objects of random trash for atmosphere. This picture was obviously taken well into the challenge!

Kara got right to work, getting pregnant with the first (potential, non story-crushing) guy she met. I allowed a double bed in one of the houses that she could only use to woohoo on. After she was pregnant, the door was relocked. The original meaning, I guess, to "I wanna take you home."

Kara focuses on her next task-- freestyling for tips making money by begging off the streets. Lana looks as if she has never seen poverty before.


Smelly tramp Kara greets everyone that walks by, and begs for money from everyone. It's not long until she has a little party made of many different Klans. Lemida herself shows up for the "fun."

Lemida steals the spotlight, and makes my Fee look more like a fairy. All of that muscle, and he is beaten down by a nekromanser!

To stimulate bits of food found in the garbage while she is waiting for her first day on the job, Kara gets some buyable cookies that leave lots of trash and gives little health. Also, everyone joins in her "feast."

Here's the result. And she was so close to her pile o' leaves, too...

Accidents will happen, and so it was when Kara got a day off from her job that pays her less per day than a random person off the street! But being away from her work means she has no private place to do her business.

After the guests leave, the mess stays. Suffice it to say she had a red environment bar. She also picked up a nasty case of food poisoning that never cleared up, simply from from eating her scraps. That, on top of being pregnant...

So, what could make this scenario worse? How about a late fall fire to tank her hygiene and comfort?

Things are not going so well for Kara anymore.

And Calypso is born right in time for winter! I didn't have a medium skin for the Klan mixing, so I will change Kalypso's skintone as a child.

Yet, despite everything, Kara manages to make a lovely introduction to mate #2. Lanse doesn't seem to be too put off by her greeting.

Now, Smelly Tramp has never known hygiene, she's pregnant again,  a fire has tanked her aspiration, and she is food poisoned. Could life get worse? Why, yes. A seldom seen robber could come and take not only the "trash" in the ally, but her ballet bar, which was the only thing keeping her from freezing solid while guests were freezing!

There still isn't a breast feed hack, or I would have waited to buy a fridge, and bought something else, instead. Kalypso should, in fact, be dead.

So... could Sim life get any worse for Kara? Why yes; it could snow.

Kara now officially hates life, and cries at a passersby for extra hand-outs.

Kara is now a pregnant mother of a toddler. They have finally managed to buy a pot to piss in. Still, no bath tub.

I seriously fear for little Kalypso. She has become frostbitten from the cold, but Kara has enough money that she can now afford a little block of house. But things are still quite miserable.

Kara finally manages a toy for Kalypso, but she finds it less interesting than watching her mammie be sick.

Here comes baby #2, Sirsa

Welcome to the neighbourhood, little one! I hope you survive!

Directly after her sister's birth, Kalypso transitions into a child. I give her a skin that's a better match of both her mother's and father's traits. I keep meaning to geneticize things...

With another pair of hands, they save up enough money for a BATH TUB! It takes the place of the barrels that the robber took in the alley.

With a little help from her new-found hygiene, Kara meets mate #3, an Ambrozian soldier.

Pregnant once more!

They only have enough money to have the one toddler mat, so the newly born Hektor has to sleep on the floor while the now toddling Sirsuz gets the mat. The rabbit toy is the only thing that stops them all from committing suicide, as it is their only source of fun.

Sirsuz grows into a child. She's quite a handful, but now things are steadying out. She wants a lemonade stand, and she has the money to get one! Now the money is really pouring in, as someone is always there to sell lemonade to anyone who walks by. $$$$

Hektor grows into a toddler. Kara is still food poisoned, but she can deal with things better now that they have a basic support system. She can't afford another bed for Sirsuz so she gets to take turns with Kalypso sleeping outside in mom's old leaves.

Hektor's a much happier child than Kalypso, though it would be difficult indeed to be a less happy toddler than she was.

And the challenge is over. Kalypso transitions into a teen just in time for them to be able to afford an instrument.

So all and all, they only bought--
A double bed
A place to piss
A bath tub
A ballet bar (stolen)
A rabbit toy
A baby mat
A white owl
A refrigerator
A coat hook for clothes
And a drum made from a barrel.
They had $500 when she transitioned. Still, this potential tragedy ended very happily!

These are the one that apply to me, and I will add how I modified the rules and my score in in purple so that this challenge could take place in an impoverished, medieval city:
+1 for every thousand simoleans of the family net worth Bwahhaha! I had my Sim take the Peasant career from MTS2, which pays a juicy $10 dollars a day!
+4 points for each child born +12 I could have squeezed in another, but I have a larger plot to which I must pay attention.
+10 points for each sim that maxes out all skills With *just* enough money to survive, we only got enough money for a ballet bar. And then, that got stolen!
-4 for accidental deaths (by fire, disease, lightning, etc.)
-1 for each accidental promotion, including chance card promotion
-4 points for each child that doesn't reach the age of teen—you lose those child points from raising them if they die or move out.
-20 for each child taken by the social worker
-1 for each aspiration failure (when the shrink comes) -2 I had aspiration failure at red in during this challenge, so I saw the shrink about 5 times.
+1 for trashed aesthetics, arbitrarily awarded by me.
BONUS MINI CHALLENGES:
+5 points for never visiting a community lot, EVER +5 Why would you want to watch your needs drop even quicker!
+5 points for playing the entire game without a phone +5 Read "medieval"
+5 for never eating leftovers or storing food in the inventory
+15 points for never selling date rewards +15 No problem. No dates.
+10 points if the sim never gets a job
+15 for never selling/deleting anything, ever. If you end up with redundant skilling items, you are screwed, sorry. +15 I was too broke-ass to afford anything better than the basics.
+20 for never selling garden produce +20 I read this as ghetto superstar challenge, and the whole little lot was covered in stone. So, yeah, no gardens.

ARCHITECTURE:
+ 5 points if the house has only one level (floor). +5 Again, I laugh. I would have never been able to afford what she got had I not built it as part of her atmosphere and required her to have actually possessions before she could move in.
+ 10 more points if the house has ONLY ONE ROOM +10
+ 30 more points if the one room is so big, it has NO WALLS AND NO TOILET (a la EMAIL: -80 points if a sim has an accident!) About this-- I misused the rules here and made up for it with my $10 a day job. Medieval things are often cheaper in the catalog, and her first Bed was the CS leave pile at $10, for instance. Her only toilet was a invisible pee anywhere spot, and that came on her first day off, after her first accident) I also have had since it came out the ZOMG! period hack, making my planning for pregnancy really important and making Kara's comfort and hygiene plummet.

Total: 85 points.

[Ellatrue]

That was interesting, but yeah, 0 points for the actual challenge. Massive cheating disqualifies you. The social worker normally comes if the baby gets cold, and the objects you did buy were almost all practically free. You also cheated to let the sim get pregnant before she could afford a bed for that purpose. And what's with requiring her to start with possessions? And was she the only sim on the lot? Generally, you lose this challenge when your single sim freezes and there isn't another sim to warm them up.

I'm glad you had fun with it, but you don't seem to have followed a clear set of rules, just done whatever and then decided that it balanced out. It could be nifty as a medieval challenge thing, but it has to be consistent, not random sim torturing.

One question: did the lack of objects/gardening make it at all boring?

So:

+1 for trashed aesthetics
-200 for MASSIVE CHEATING

[Kazzandra]

The social worker normally comes if the baby gets cold

The only thing I have that affects warmth is wamthfixes, and while I was warned by a pop-up box, she must have warmed up before social worker is cued. I admit, I found that odd, too, but I did nothing to prevent the social worker from coming, hack or otherwise.

And was she the only sim on the lot? Generally, you lose this challenge when your single sim freezes and there isn't another sim to warm them up.

The ballet bar kept her from freezing. She had enough money to buy a 4x4 by then from all of her free styling, and being that that was just about as much a ballet bar, I decided to let the robber *have* it.

And what's with requiring her to start with possessions?

I wanted her to have what seemed like a "city" (ghetto) around her.

I'm glad you had fun with it, but you don't seem to have followed a clear set of rules, just done whatever and then decided that it balanced out. It could be nifty as a medieval challenge thing, but it has to be consistent, not random sim torturing.

True. BUT HER JOB PAID $10 A DAY, so yes, I figured her possessions costing very little seemed right. After she got fired and was pregnant, all she ever had was freestyling to bring her through.

One question: did the lack of objects/gardening make it at all boring?

Short answer: HELLS NOES! Sorry you thought it might be boring; I guess my story failed to entertain. <sigh> I was too busy keeping everyone alive to care about possessions.

So:
+1 for trashed aesthetics
-200 for MASSIVE CHEATING

That's fine; I did it for the lulz and because it fit into my larger plot anyway. I was hoping someone else would find it amusing, but I phailed.

So I'll justly macro myself:

[Ellatrue]

No, it was entertaining. But it's a concern I have with balancing the challenge properly, which is why I wanted to know. I feel like they can get an awful lot of money from gardening (too much?), but I like the idea of it still being allowed.

Poor frog.

[Kazzandra]

Well, gardening doesn't sound very ghetto-like to me, that's all. And yes, that would have been A LOT of money. Heck, WE SURVIVED ON FREESTYLE TIPS (though fridge cost 300, bed 200, leaves 10, etc.)  Now what does that say to you? Had she had a Maxian job, and used normal items, I would see the challenge in skilling everyone up, etc. I might just do it by rules with another family *if* I can still have a city with objects around my Sim. Because I WANT A GHETTO!

[Ellatrue]

I've mostly been doing it with the lots they are next to, like putting them next to a dump I downloaded and some urban looking buildings. Then it's kind of like a vacant lot, or camping out in the city park.

I like the idea of doing it as a rural thing, too, though, with the subsistence aspect, and having them garden a lot to keep things interesting and give the sims something to do, because that was a problem with another version of the challenge. I want it to be hard, but still fun, and not have it end up with everyone meditating all the time (email) or just constantly painting stuff with the easel, or have them get money too quickly.

Ideally, if you do it the normal way, it does end up looking awfully ghetto, because you have a ton of sims in a very small space.

[Zazazu]

Because I WANT A GHETTO!

Do it on a 1x1 and build imposters (unoccupied lots) around it. Easy backdrop. Also, another method for keeping a sim warm is taking a hike. Obviously not valid if a baby-child is at home without another teen or adult to care for them.

I also noticed you gave yourself +10 for having no job, but she really did have a job. A crappy one, but it existed.

[Kazzandra]

I also noticed you gave yourself +10 for having no job, but she really did have a job. A crappy one, but it existed.

+5 points for never visiting a community lot, EVER +5 Why would you want to watch your needs drop even quicker!
+5 points for playing the entire game without a phone +5 Read "medieval"
+5 for never eating leftovers or storing food in the inventory
+15 points for never selling date rewards +15 No problem. No dates.
+10 points if the sim never gets a job
+15 for never selling/deleting anything, ever. If you end up with redundant skilling items, you are screwed, sorry. +15 I was too broke-ass to afford anything better than the basics.
+20 for never selling garden produce +20 I read this as ghetto superstar challenge, and the whole little lot was covered in stone. So, yeah, no gardens.

ARCHITECTURE:
+ 5 points if the house has only one level (floor). +5 Again, I laugh. I would have never been able to afford what she got had I not built it as part of her atmosphere and required her to have actually possessions before she could move in.
+ 10 more points if the house has ONLY ONE ROOM +10
+ 30 more points if the one room is so big, it has NO WALLS AND NO TOILET (a la EMAIL: -80 points if a sim has an accident!) About this-- I misused the rules here and made up for it with my $10 a day job. Medieval things are often cheaper in the catalog, and her first Bed was the CS leave pile at $10, for instance. Her only toilet was a invisible pee anywhere spot, and that came on her first day off, after her first accident) I also have had since it came out the ZOMG! period hack, making my planning for pregnancy really important and making Kara's comfort and hygiene plummet.

I don't see that I did, Zazazu. But I did fail to subtract 80 points for the accident. Hence, I still fail.

[Zazazu]

Oh, your purple words were your scores. Ok. I thought the whole list was the points you were giving yourself.

[tgcgoddess]

There still isn't a breast feed hack, or I would have waited to buy a fridge, and bought something else, instead. Kalypso should, in fact, be dead.

I used to use a mod from Squinge, feedbaby...haven't had it in my game for a while, so I don't know if it works with freetime, but its at the Sims2 Graveyard.  Go to downloads, find Squinge's name, look for "yateenkidbaby_stuff", and the files are there.  There is one for ladies only, and one that includes the gents as well (ewww!)

[Kazzandra]

I used to use a mod from Squinge, feedbaby...haven't had it in my game for a while, so I don't know if it works with freetime, but its at the Sims2 Graveyard.  Go to downloads, find Squinge's name, look for "yateenkidbaby_stuff", and the files are there.  There is one for ladies only, and one that includes the gents as well (ewww!)

I used to have that, but I yanked it when BV came out. I don't know if it works-- though I'm pretty sure it doesn't. <sigh> It sure was nice-- wasn't even badly animated.

[Ellatrue]

I haven't really played since BV, although I suppose it's legal with the tent. There's no rule about them, anyway, and it seems kind of stupid to make one, because it just makes the challenge more fiddly. Hmm.