I decided that the authorities forbid digging for treasure (cause they're the bad guys) so my sims can only do it at night and must fill in the hole before morning. And I'm restricting them to digging only 2x a night. But I have let a couple of them get jobs, with restrictions - they can't work on skills that will get them promotions which limits how high they will go, and if they lose a job they have to get a job in another field, the first different one that shows up in the paper.

I have 3 families in a very small neighborhood - each has just had their first child.

day 11 - trying to get Malachi and Rebekka back into gold, I give them their mutual want to go bug hunting: chased by bees! Relaxing in bed to get their comfort level back up, they (risky) woohoo: Rebekka is pregnant again, and has bad morning sickness
day 12 - Spring has sprung, and it's time to plant the second round of crops; pond still frozen.
day 13 - twins age up; they spend their first day of childhood obsessed with skilling up cooking. Jumping rope and tending the crops are their fun activities. (I've also discovered an unfortunate loophole with the kiddy oven: it doesn't deduct food points from the refrigerator.)
day 14 - Jairus (M) Siekert is born (this is the last planned birth; I was kind of hoping for a girl). True to form, Rebekka rolls a bunch of postpartum GC wants. It's the 4th day of spring and the pond is still frozen over.
day 15 - hordes of AL townies descend to eat he blackened catfish dinner Malachi prepares; the pond unfreezes; another date for the married couple while the boys are at school
day 16 - 69/200; for the past 3 days Darius has been rolling a want to be friends with (adult) townie Alana Dean. If he survives to adulthood, I hope they have chemistry.
day 17 - Jairus becomes a toddler, the family takes out his tessera of smart milk;
day 18 - 66/200; Jairus can walk, talk, and use the potty; there are 2 bottles left from his tessera, but neither parent is in gold.
day 19 - How sad am I that the boys autonomously start a game of tag before I send the whole family to the town hall for the first reaping ceremony? Each boy has two rolls. Daniel: 6, 3. Darius: 4, 4. Daniel has been selected as tribute.
day 20 - Rebekka digs up a treasure chest, but money doesn't mean much when it can't buy a tribute back from the reaping. Daniel starts jumping rope. Jairus learns a nursery rhyme. We lose 2 cucumber plants to bugs, but hunger isn't really an issue at all. The family heads off to "Silly Monument" for the games. Daniel is eligible for a total of 8 rolls (he has 6 cooking, 8 body, 8 creativity points): 5, 2, 3, 1, 5, 4, 1, 5. Daniel has died in the Hunger Games.

Awwwww! :-(

I do want to give this challenge a try, it looks interesting :-) But I am trying to figure out how to make it work for my playstyle - I definitely want to play a whole neighbourhood in rotation and not just one family.

I think I will semi-steal mangaroo's idea for the tessera, except that one bottle of smart milk will count as one tessera, rather than the whole smart milk maker which makes 5 bottles counting as one tessera. Something like smart milk would be so valuable it makes more sense to me that way.

As I will have a whole neighbourhood rather than just one family I will be changing the way the tribute is rolled for, but I'm not sure how yet. I may do the roll for each child as it's suggested here but then if 2+ children roll a three I will either pick one at random (if they're from different households) or pick the eldest one (if they're siblings). On the other hand, I kind of feel like I should roll in such a way that there is always a tribute chosen, as that's closer to how it worked in the books. In that case I'd look at how many sims were in the age range for potential tributes, number them, then roll to pick one. In that case I wouldn't start picking tributes until two sims were in the correct age range, as otherwise the oldest child born in the 'hood would be guaranteed to get chosen. There could also end up being guaranteed tributes at the end of each generation as the youngest sim of the generation could be the only one eligible. Sims will be allowed to volunteer to take the place of a BFF but would be more likely to do this depending on their aspiration (if they're teens) and on their exact relationship with the BFF (i.e. sibling, cousin, boyfriend/girlfriend, crush etc).

I actually gave that a bit of thought before I started. I was looking for a quick, goal-oriented challenge, so I didn't go in this direction, but it seems to me that one way to play a neighborhood in rotation would be to set up 12 households representing the 12 districts and give different advantages/disadvantages to each district. Unfortunately, I don't know the books well enough to flesh this out. Based on what I know: districts 1 & 2 would get actual exercise equipment to train, they could have jobs, and they would be allowed to buy food to replenish the refrigerator instead of farming. Their disadvantage? They wouldn't roll for the reaping; instead, a Sim of eligible age would always volunteer. District 4 would fish (and the lot could set up a home business selling the fish to other Sims...ditto district 11 with farming). District 12 (mining) is the only district that could dig for treasure. (And because I haven't read the books, I have no idea what to do with the other 7 districts.)

I would also synchronize reaping. If you randomize family size at the start of the game, and have any CAS teens, then the first reaping would be on your second game day. Play a one-day rotation to set up the households, then (from neighborhood view), roll for each household to see if a child inside has been selected. If anyone is reaped, play another one-day rotation to skill them up, then play the Hunger Games (again from neighborhood view).

You could just give each tribute the number of rolls they've earned to see if they survive the games, but the problem is that only one child should survive per game, so we really need a more directly competitive method. I would probably roll as normal per tribute to see if any of them survive. If more than one does, I would probably select the one with the most skill points to be the ultimate winner, but you could also roll dice and the one who rolls the highest number wins.

Play a 2-day rotation and repeat.

Edit: oops, I was writing my mini-novel while you were editing. I like your plan to play the whole neighborhood as one district and require a tribute be selected in each reaping.

We don't get much detail on the other districts in the books; world-building wasn't Collins's main concern. Some of them would have to be manufacturing.

If you're doing it for a neighborhood, the rule in the book was two tributes from each district, one male and one female. If you have only one household per district, though, that runs through your kids awfully fast!

The one lot isn't the whole district. It just represents a household in the district. So their children might be reaped or not. If no one is selected (or volunteers) from the playable lot, then the narrative assumption is that other households from the same district are supplying the tributes that year. (At least, that's the way it works in my head for the version of this challenge I'm not playing.)

I think I'd still keep the other tributes as non-existent - so whether or not the tribute survived would be decided by die rolls. I would play with the entire 'hood as one district, and only have one tribute because otherwise I think that early on in the game I'd run out of eligible tributes and may not have enough survivors to continue with the next generation. I plan to play it so that it goes on for quite a few generations - in the books it took a long time before anyone stood up to President Snow, after all, and part of the enjoyment of it for me would be developing the 'hood.

I suppose that if I really really wanted to go all out I'd have the main 'hood as the Capitol and 12 shopping subhoods as the 12 Districts, plus another one as a District 13. And I'd develop different rules about farming/fishing/money making etc for each district, and have them all pay taxes (in the form of stuff) to the households in the Capitol, and recruit Peacekeepers from some of the 'hoods, send them to uni to learn to be Peacekeepers and then move them to the different districts, where they'd be given food and clothes and so on as bribes by the people who lived there. And I'd work out how to make the Hunger Games direct competitions between all the tributes rather than just based on die rolls & a little bit on skills. Much as I'd kind of love to do this, I don't think I have the patience..... :-(

I may incorporate Peacekeepers into my 'hood though. I like the bribes idea. They could be in the Law Enforcement career. I also want to make a little area with really nice houses, and any sims who are the victor in a Hunger Games will get a motherlode and their household will move into a nice house and then they'd be encouraged to take up an interesting hobby (painting, robotics, baking etc) and earn money through it. So many ideas!!


Hehe, sorry :-) I never seem to get quite everything I want to say in a post the first time so I often go back and edit unless someone's replied within about 10 seconds of my posting! I enjoyed reading your mini-novel, it was interesting :-)

If I made all of the districts as subhoods, I think I'd do them as follows:

The Capitol - Can have proper jobs at any level, sims may choose to become Peacekeepers, sims may attend university if they can afford it. Some sims would be "travelling salesmen" and would travel between districts buying and selling the products that those areas specialised in. Maybe they'd have shops in some of the districts. Groceries can be ordered.
Districts 1 & 2 - Can have proper jobs at lower levels, Peacekeepers recruited from here. Groceries can be ordered.
District 3 - Robot Making (symbolising making military equipment, though I think that in the books Districts 1 & 2 did that), Peacekeepers recruited from here.
District 4 - Fishing.
District 5 - Pottery.
District 6 - Sewing (& Knitting?).
District 7 - Painting.
District 8 - Toymaking.
District 9 - Floristry.
District 10 - Something?! (Maybe keeping animals? Any ideas?)
District 11 - Farming.
District 12 - Digging for treasure ("mining").
District 13 - No interaction with Capitol or other districts, don't send tributes.

All Capitol households and households from Districts 1 - 12 would have a cheap TV. District 13 sims would live in apartments rather than houses (to mimic the bunker living as put forward in the book) and would not have TVs. Some sims would have paid jobs (in military, education, medicine, science, natural science) and others would specialise in farming/fishing/making things.

Did you read my mind? I'm actually going to build Panem in my game, pictures will eventually be on my LJ. (minus 13 because, I don't have Al and I really didn't like 13 at all) I'm such a HG addict, so I think it'll be bearable.
For district 10, with the animals, aren't there chickens that lay eggs or something? I think it was brought up on the farm thread. It's not exactly livestock, but better than nothing.
Anyways, I'm interested in trying this challenge, along with my own version of a Hunger Games I thought up. It'll definetly be a whole different way of playing, with a lot of death and such. It's kind of like a twisted legacy challenge.

day 21 - Darius becomes a teen (Fortune/Popularity); Jairus becomes a child
day 22 - Darius's second reaping. He spares his family by going to City Hall alone. This time he alone bears the weight of the family's 3 tesserae, but it only takes two rolls: 5, 3... *sigh* So sad that he just met the first female teen (2 bolts!) to appear in the game, Lillian Keyes.
day 23 - Darius starts jumping rope; while their sons are at school, I send Malachi and Rebekka to bed for one more risky shot at a child...no luck. This is Rebekka's last fertile day, and I suspect the challenge will end in a loss. Darius brings a girl home from school (another 2-bolter). Oh, game, are you trying to break my heart? I send Darius off to Silly Monument, but he has only earned 3 bonus rolls (6 cooking, 6 logic, 6 creativity). He autonomously starts to jump rope, and I decide if he can get his body skill up to 6 while I am rolling, I'll give him that extra roll. Not necessary!! His first roll is a 6. Thank you, dice gods! The victorious tribute returns home, and the reaping calendar is reset for his little brother's first reaping on day 27.
day 24 - Refrigerator levels: 63/145(fresh). With all the woohooing and skill-building, I've been slacking on farming and mining, but the Seikerts are in no danger of starvation or the Repoman (§8000).
day 25 - a first date for Darius and Lillian Keyes. I figure a victorious tribute is entitled to go on a date at a community lot, so they head to Baskerville's playground for a dream date.
day 26 - the ghost of Daniel emerges for the first time. Lillian drops off a vase to celebrate the awesome date.
day 27 - Malachi gets fat from all the fresh food points. Time to jump rope, sir. To torture myself, I lock Jairus's "Grow Up Well" want before sending the entire family off to the Town Hall. My plan is for Darius to volunteer if his little brother is chosen, but to be honest, Jairus is in the better position, having already locked in the skills for 4 bonus rolls. Like his brothers before him, Jairus faces 4 rolls: 4, 4, 6, 6. Jairus will live to see teenhood.
day 29 - Big birthday day. The founders become elders and Jairus becomes a teen (Romance/Popularity). The pond freezes over for the winter.
day 30 - Jairus's second reaping: 1, 2, 1, 4. Wow, Jairus is going to live at least long enough to date. His strongest mutual chemistry is with Marian Raines, but I suspect that's because she's a romance Sim. Marian does a lot of autonomous flirting that both brothers have shot down. His strongest solo chemistry is with Jasmin Winston. I would love to pursue this because she was Jairus's best childhood friend whom I aged up at his teen transition, but (when asked if she likes what she sees) she rejects his entire being. It's not just his red hair or lack of a job or high logic she doesn't like; she rejects all of him.

How about for District 10 "forestry"? There's choppable trees at Affinity Sims. I believe on page two of "Animated Objects."

Wow, sorry guys, just found this after a few weeks... glad to know so many of you are trying it!
Now, I'll try to answer some questions :/
@Vladora - your skills ideas are great! It would make a great addition to the challenge I'm not 100% how they would fit in, but I'll try to find a way and update this soon.
@Peni_Griffin - Woohoo is totally fine.
@grammapat Ok, I admit, I *haven't* tried the challenge yet (bad move, i know) but I HAVE had a family survive only on fish, crops and digging for treasure. And the occasional painting too.
(also, sorry about my bad grammar - by 'dice' i meant 'die', my bad...)
@mangaroo - 1). I wrote this to be a short-ish challenge, but please feel free to have multiple generations!
2). I haven't got freetime, so I'm not too sure about the add-ons. If you think it will be acceptable, please go ahead and use them!
3). You do not have to reach a certain level of the military career.
4). Ah. I forgot about smartmilk. If you feel like playing a difficult game avoid it. you may use it if you wish.
@Selly_2009 you roll once per child. the one who gets a 3 goes into the games, if there is more than one you may choose only one child to enter.
sorry, i've tried to answer as much as i can! thank you for all the feedback, though.

If you are playing 12 households for 12 districts, there is a "Fight Club" mod you can download that is based on skills and personality. You could fight 6 pairs of 2, then 3 pairs, then fight the last three. The one who wins 2/3 survivors. Then kill off all the losers... There are many livestock on Affinity Sims, including cattle, pigs, and chickens. (There are also two or three from other sites out there) Peter (?) had pigs in the movie, and she sold pigeons and deer she hunted, so raising crops and livestock or selling goods would be okay even if it wasn't your districts specialty I think... As long as it was subtle.

I want to try this. However, I think I'll alter the 'Reaping' system a bit... I mean, it happened at the same time every year in the movie, right? So instead of them all rolling on different days, the siblings all roll on the same day as the eldest... So if you have two kids, the eldest rolls at 2 days to teen, and the other is 4 days to teen, the youngest doesn't roll until the eldest's next roll, when he is 1 day after teen (assuming he survives), and the youngest is 1 day to teen. ...That sounded simpler in my head... Alternatively, you could just pick one day of the week, or two days of the week to roll.

And the survivor who wins will recieve a $50,000 prize that they can use to fix up thier district, and are given the right to choose a mate out of any other district as well!

Edit: Just reviewed my post and smirked when I noticed my catch phrase matches Hunger Games perfectly with the whole "no underdog" thing...

What a cool idea for a challenge. All the discussion has made me decide to try this with several of the ideas posted here, and a few of my own. I, too, like the idea of having multiple neighborhoods, each serving as a district, and taking tributes from those. But instead of having 12 districts, I think I'll just have 6, otherwise, one playthrough will take too long. I was thinking of the main 'hood housing the Capitol (which I really won't play but where the games will be held), and districts 1 and 2. Then 2 subneighborhoods for the remaining 4 districts. I adapted my own district specialties, and have assigned each district a color and a particular skill to study based on their profession of each district. So sims from each district will have more of one skill then another which may or may not give them an edge in the games - it sounds good in theory, though. In my game I'll have:

District 1 - Luxury - assigned color is white and main skill will be Charisma, although the children from this district might be able study more skills than the other districts - haven't quite decided yet. This district will be allowed to have jobs.

District 2 - Military - assigned color is green and main skill is Body

District 3 - Robotics - assigned color is black and main skill is Mechanical

District 4 - Fishing - assigned color is blue and main skill is Logic

District 5 - Agriculture - assigned color is brown and main skill is Cooking

District 6 - Textiles (sewing) - assigned color is gray and main skill is Creativity

I assigned colors and skills to the districts to make it more interesting for me and to also easily tell during the games which teen is from which district.

I was going to skip winter (like have Spring, Summer, Spring, Summer or something) so that everyone has the opportunity to produce their product all year long. Otherwise 4 and 5 would have a big disadvantage.

The families will sell whatever their specialty is to make money, and I like the idea of having the Tessera for families that are struggling.

I was thinking of rolling up families like I was starting a Prosperity challenge which will give me a variety of different sims to choose from and enable the Games to start right away.

I'm going to make 4 families per district so there's enough people to be leftover after a reaping and enough people so the neighborhoods can grow. But because I have half the districts, I'm only going to take half the tributes - so only 6 will be chosen, 1 from each district. I may change that later, once the neighborhoods start getting bigger.

I was only going to let teens be eligible for the Reaping, because I just don't want to deal with kids doing it - this makes it easier for me. I'll have a reaping once per week or once per season - haven't decided yet.

For food, only District 1 can buy food. Everyone else needs to grow their own. District 4 will fish, of course, and 5 will grow crops. What I was thinking of for the other districts is that the children of the family would tend an orchard or grow crops (since they can't participate in the family's specialty yet anyway, like sewing or robotics) - that way valuable time isn't being taken by the the working family members to grow food and they can focus on their craft.

As far as the actual Games are concerned, I'll roll randomly to see which teen from each district is selected. I love the idea of The Fight Club! I was wracking my brain for days trying to think of a way to approach the games. And now I'm eager to get started.

There will be a lot of setup involved, but I think it will be fun to play. Thank you, simzo10 for such a cool idea for a challenge that has sparked so much discussion and to all who have shared their thoughts and ideas. Looking forward to starting!

Oh wow, this challenge is really well thought out and the color of it is fantastic. I'm kicking myself for *still* not having seen the movies or read the books, but this makes me want to!

i thaught it would be like the sims 3 version of the challenge .

very nice

I think I might have to do it again to get the full experience, I went through the whole challenge with none of my three kids up for the Hunger Games lol. That's good though In the end because I got REALLY attached to them