Legacy by LTWs
Okay, so, I've decided to force myself to play one saved game for as long as I possibly can, and in order to stomach this, I've come up with a set of rules for a bit of a different kind of legacy challenge. I'm sure this isn't the first time this sort of idea has been thought up, but it isn't posted here, so I'm TOTALLY GOING FOR IT.
Here's the setup: your family is a long line of overachievers. When a kid sits down in front of the TV and his dad says he could be president someday, what he really means is he'd BETTER be president someday. This is not just a BELIEVE IN YOUR DREAMS (inspirational music) kind of family; if you do not have your dreams subdued and hogtied in the trunk of your car by 30, you are a failure to your name.
There's no set amount of generations for this legacy. The goal is to see your family fulfill all 32 unique Lifetime Wishes, and no wish can be fulfilled more than once.
To start:
For all intents and purposes, I recommend creating an entirely new, blank game for this challenge. You may use whatever neighborhood you wish.
1. Make a single young adult in CAS. They can be any gender, look however they want, wear however they want, etc. You may choose their favorite food, music, and clothing. The one thing you have to do: you MUST randomize their traits. I'm not talking about hitting the button until you have a set you're fine with, either. I mean you hit that button once and whatever set you get is what you're stuck with.
Since LTWs are the focus of this challenge, you may pick whatever one you want to start with (with one exception, explained under this paragraph). If you don't like the options, you may reroll them. (For those who don't know, to reroll your LTW choices, just go to Choose Traits and close out the window by hitting X or accept.)
The exception is this, and it applies to all generations from the founder until the final one: if your sim has a trait associated with a field of study (such as Genius, Green Thumb, Angler, etc), you MUST pick a LTW associated with that field. (Examples: a sim with the Natural Cook trait must pick the Celebrated Five Star Chef or Culinary Librarian LTWs; a sim with the Athletic trait must pick Superstar Athlete or Perfect Mind, Perfect Body, etc.) The trait-LTW relations are pretty obvious, so I won't list them exactly here. Just use your best judgment.
The exception to the exception: if previous family members have already fulfilled all the associated wants, you may choose something different.
2. You may move your sim onto any size lot, but you must reduce your funds to $1300, the amount leftover after buying the expensive 60x60 lots, in order to make things equal across the board. (If you take the 64x64 lot in Riverview, you may increase your funds to $1300 by using kaching once and then getting rid of the excess funds from that.) This lot is your legacy house, and while non-heirs and spouses may move out at any time, all heirs must live here. You may only move the entire family out of this house if the lot becomes irrevocably bugged.
THE RULES
This is where it gets interesting!
1. No cheats. Seriously. Unless it's to reset a bugged sim or object, or for advanced building (no, motherlode does not count as advanced building), you are to assume you are not to use it.
2. Spouses: Spouses are eligible to add to your unique LTW tally. You may only have one spouse at a time. You may not marry spouses just to bring them in for their money, then divorce them, move them out, and remarry. You may remarry only when your spouse dies. (The only spouse you are allowed to accidentally-on-purpose kill is the one to fulfill the Gold Digger LTW. All other deaths must be natural.) Spouses do not necessarily have to produce heirs, so same-sex couples are totally fine. Spouses are also not necessary, so if you want to play the eternal bachelor/bachelorette sim, that's fine. If you do marry a sim into the family, that sim must take the legacy family's name, whether they are male or female.
3. You must have one blood heir per generation, even for same-sex couples. (However, since you have to jump through hoops to do this, whatever techniques you use to get a blood heir with a same sex couple will be overlooked. This means you can maxmotives to get a cranky man/woman into bed, you can move a woman in to monitor her pregnancy (as long as you move her out immediately afterwards), etc. Also I heard something about men getting pregnant but haven't seen it yet in my game so yeah NO CLUE.)
4. The maximum amount of children you can have for any given generation is 6. Adopted children count toward this limit. Children taken by the social worker also count toward this limit. You are also free to use watermelon/apples to influence the gender of your children as you see fit.
5. You may adopt up to 5 children per generation. Adopted children are not eligible to be heirs, but they ARE eligible to add to the family's unique LTW tally.
6. You may only have one heir per generation, so no double-heir families. Spares are not allowed to be married as long as they remain in the house, nor are they allowed to have children in the house. (They may sow their wild oats out in town however you want, but those children don't count towards the family.) If a spare has a child that is added to the household, the spare and the child must be moved out immediately and that spare is no longer eligible to add to your LTW tally.
The heir must be chosen before the first child reaches Young Adult status. Spares are eligible to add to the unique LTW tally until they reach their Adult birthday, at which point they must be moved out of the house and fulfilling their LTW will not count towards the tally. (This means they have their entire Young Adulthood to work towards the LTW; you don't have to move them out the second they transition from teenager.)
7. The heir MUST have a unique LTW. Any child who has a LTW previously fulfilled by another family member is ineligible as heir.
8. Each generation MUST fulfill at least one unique LTW. This criterion can be met by any eligible member of the family: the heir, heir's spouse, and spares. Just as long as it's unique and someone within that specific generation.
9. You cannot fulfill any single LTW more than once.
10. Heir-swapping: under most circumstances, once you pick your heir, that sim is your heir for good. However, you may pick another heir from among the spares if you meet one of the following criteria:
--You thought your heir would end up with a unique LTW at some point, but did not. At this point, you may pick another heir.
--If your heir dies and DID NOT HAVE A SPOUSE, you may pick another heir. If the original heir has any surviving children, the heir to the following generation must be picked from them. If there are no surviving children, the children of the new heir are eligible to be next generation heirs. Otherwise, the spouse basically acts as the new heir.
11. You must randomize the traits for every single sim when you're allowed to pick a new trait. You are only allowed to hit the button ONCE; whatever you get is whatever you're stuck with.
12. You're only allowed to buy the Change Lifetime Wish reward with the heir, and you may only use it in a last-ditch effort to pick up a unique LTW. You can reroll your choices just like in the CAS screen by buying the trait, then clicking the X; you may do that as many times as you wish, as long as you are not spending the points. If you cannot get a unique LTW this way, you are SOL.
13. Anything that extends your sim's lifespan may not be used, such as the death flower to stave off grim, ambrosia, etc.
These rules are subject to change based on the feedback I get, so let me know if I missed any holes, etc. I'll be amending holes I find as I play the legacy.
THE FINAL GENERATION
Your legacy ends when one of the following happens:
1. You win! When you have all 32 unique LTWs fulfilled, you've won the challenge and your legacy ends.
2. You don't have a blood heir. Whether it's because you never produced one in the first place, or your heir candidates have died and you're unable to produce more, your legacy will end with no one to inherit it.
3. One generation does not fulfill a unique LTW. Maybe your family dies tragically in a house fire save for an elder spouse, and that spouse totally can't fulfill that LTW in time. Maybe you've reached a point where, like in card games or Mah-jong, you simply have No More Available Moves; if you can't get a unique LTW to roll up for the life of you, your legacy is done.
SCORING
+100 per unique LTW fulfilled.
+10 per $50,000 of family net worth.
+20 for each time someone reaches the top of a career NOT associated with a unique LTW.
+1 for every skill mastered NOT associated with a unique LTW.
+5 for every child born. (+15 for twins, +20 for triplets)
-100 per LTW fulfilled more than once.
-50 for every child taken by the social worker.
-50 for every unique LTW that isn't fulfilled in time. (The sim dies, the spare hits adulthood and moves out, etc.)
-100 for every accidental sim death. (Old age does not count. The point penalty does not apply to your Gold Digger sim's spouse(s).)
-30 for every demotion.
-50 for getting fired.
-10 for every fire or burglar.
All points are calculated for NORMAL LIFESPAN. If you play on a different lifespan setting, tally up your points and:
Short (25 sim days): multiply point total by 5.
Medium (50 sim days): multiply point total by 2.
Long (190 sim days): multiply point total by .40.
Epic (960 sim days): multiply point total by .09. However, if you actually finish this legacy in one capacity or another on epic lifespan, without cheating or prematurely killing your sims, I will buy you a keg and a trophy.
The list of LTWs can be found:
here and
here
Broo has been kind enough to provide a
Lithuanian translation of the rules! Thanks Broo!
Let me know what you guys think!