Where'd everybody go? I plan to start playing this brilliant challenge as soon as I come up with the VTOS'd version I've been yapping about since - February is it? - but it just seems like it wouldn't be much fun without someone to discuss it with. Come back guys!

- VT

I've been reading about this challenge for months, but I never actually had the courage to try it (I kept telling myself that it was too complicated and I was too busy and so on), but now I really want to start playing it ^^
And I know this sounds stupid, but ... I'll ask ^^"
So, I read the rules and I also read some other users' stories (I plan on writing about this challenge on my blog too ^^ ), but I still don't understand how you decide who dies and who lives, who gets married, how I decide their aspirations and so on ^^" I saw there are probabilities (I assume they are probabilities ^^" ) about those things, but I still don't know how to calculate them. (I understood the parts about rolling dice, but I can't figure the link between the dice and the probabilities XD ).
Please, can anybody explain it to me?Because I really want to start playing this challenge and I want to do it by the book so everything will be perfect ...
Thank you ^^

Yes, that would be wonderful and I'm sure many users would be thankful for your idea (can't wait to see it), but I still didn't understood how I can calculate (or find out) who survives ^^" Or who gets married or dies ... (I mean ... the formula ... or what I have to use to calculate ^^" ).If you could give me an example ... maybe I will understand.

Okay, looking at the rules, I see that all the probabilities are based on 20, so what you need is a 20-sided die. Your local game store - tabletop games, not computer - will have them and if not you can easily order some on-line.

So when the probability of something happening is 18/20, that means you only have to roll 18 or under on a 20-sided die for it to happen. Modifiers are added to the number you roll in order to increase or decrease the likliehood of an outcome.

For example, if I understand this correctly (and some examples of dice rolling would have helped) the rules say that at the beginning of the Ancient Elder (75 days +) phase, male sims have an 8/20 chance of surviving till the clock runs down while females ones have a 10/20 chance. However, Granny Knott is physically fit, so she gets to increase her chance of survival by 2, bringing her chance to 12/20. If she were unfit, her chance would decrease to 6/20.

This is backwards from the way most games that use polyhedral dice work, where high numbers are good and modifiers are added to the die roll, not the probability, so it took me a little while to work it out. But once you get the 20-sider most of it should become intuitive pretty quickly.

Thank you so much! ^^ You made everything very clear now ^^
I finally can start playing with my families thanks to you

EDIT

I just started playing and I'm having a great time ^^ So, for the beginning ...

The Gaudet family (serfs) Fall 1600-1604
Marcelet Gaudet (Popularity) Neutral
Chrestienne Gaudet (Knowledge) Evil
Born: Jais Gaudet(R.I.P.), Anne Gaudet
Deaths: Jais Gaudet (at the age of 3)

The Valois family (Barons) Fall 1600-1604
Maximilian de Valois (Family) Neutral
Francoise de Valois (Popularity) Neutral
Born: Catherine de Valois, Maximilian de Valois
Deaths: Francoise actually rolled 15 for the birth of her first daughter and 17 at her second birth, but was saved both times (first time bu her husband, second time by a servant).

Lady Scarlet, nice to meet you It's wonderful to have a new face on the forum. Please share pics! We love pics ... and stories!!

Extensa5420, I am sooo glad you're going to upload a spreadsheet. I know many people will appreciate that--it might even get some new people to give it a try

I wrote an MS Access database to keep my own records in, and I had planned to make it available for download, but I can't figure out how to make it useable by anyone else but me--in other words to void all of my own data from it. And I don't really know how many people would prefer it anyway .... it's just that I totally fail at Excel, so I had to do something different. I may, someday, be inclined to recreate the whole thing from scratch, if anyone's interested, but my skillz are not so good and I'm not sure I'd actually remember how I did it the first time. It's pretty cobbled together. I'm still trying to sort out how to do queries so I can pull the data from it in a sensible way ... but I ramble now.

Let me also suggest, for anyone who's interested in finding lots of great medieval cc the following two sites, which are both made of pure awesome:
http://www.medievalsims.com/forums/index.php
http://themedievalsmithysims2.blogspot.com/

But I warn you if you are a cc junkie (as am I) your downloads folder is not likely to survive the awesome it encounters.

I'm taking that as my cue to open up Challenge Folder III (challenges Q-Z), get out my copy of the Warwickshire rules and Get VTOS'ing Already. I've decided not to adapt it to my old hood, since I'd like to stay a little closer to the original than I could get with my Nuidya Tribe.

I think my strategy is going to involve going through each bit in turn and trying to figure out what sort of things each one could represent. (I might possibly try a Scientific Experiment to see how long I can keep the gender roles as written before devouring the computer in a fit of frustration... maybe...)

- VT

Extensa, Sounds AWESOME! I can't wait to see it! (thinking aloud .... is there any way to get excel to pull data from ms access? they are both part of the MS Office suite, n'est pas? ....)

Photos, photos! ^^ Uuu, this thread is becoming active again ^^
So, I just took some pictures of the families I played until now (only two, unfortunately).I will also upload those photos on the blog (this weekend) ^^ I'll post the link when everything will be ready.


I know there isn't too much (with only 4 photos), but I promise I will write more about every family on the blog ^^

I think you're right--though I can't recall just now where that option is ...



Sounds good. I have organized the Access Database in a similar fashion.
1. Sim Stats, i.e. Resident Information
2. Behaviors & Outcomes: for recording things sims do with intention, like Earn a Badge, for example.
3. Random/Chance Occurrences and Outcomes: for recording chance events like age rolls, childbirth survival, etc.
4. Midwife's Records: tracks births, attending midwife, payments, etc
5. Household Income: to track income and taxes owed & paid
6. Rotation Notes: for story writing purposes
And #7 which is a personal addition, not really part of the formal challenge:
7. Household Assets: my sims pay a once a year tax on all of their owned assets (businesses, ponds, etc--whatever their income source is; does not apply to serfs who do not own anything)

For Social classes, I track that in a Query, which pulls info from the Sim Stats table.
If you separate chance events from behaviors you won't have the blurring of the royal & clerical favor points. The only actions that incur royal/clerical favor are behaviors. Everything else for which you have to roll is considered a random/chance event. To wit:
age rolls, childbirth survival, education, life path, success or failure rolls, etc--there are quite a number of these, but these would be considered events, as opposed to behaviors.




Hmmm .... I like it! Mayhap there could be philanthropic societies to carry out these endeavors, apart from the church, which is the only succor of the poor and wayward right now.

On to the questions! I'll take them up in order, so I don't leave anything out..



Liquid Assets include a sim's bank account and anything a sim can sell quickly to convert to cash--like the items in their backpack, livestock, vehicles, etc. It does not include house, property, businesses.



Yes--sounds right to me. The purpose of the table is to determine whether an unmarried woman may retain the ownership and proprietorship of a piece of property after the death of her husband, or in cases where she has inherited the property from another male relative. Say you have Dowager Albright. She has inherited a large piece of property from her brother after his death. Now Dowager Albright is also a spinster, but she does have a nephew who's very ambitious. His claim to the property might be credible, but Dowager Albright actually has some rights under the law. And maybe she'd rather give her property to her niece, who's much more worthy. To determine whether she is successful in bequeathing the property to her niece, you'll use the charts for "Women and Social Standing."



1 sim day = 1 year. So, presuming you choose to grow up your sim 1 day early every time, then birthdays occur as follows:
Toddler: 2 (days/years old)
Child: 5
Teen: 12
Young Adult: 18 (if you use ACR, age of independent teen)
Adult: 26
Elder: 54




No big difference, just that the lower Gentry are levels 6 and 7, and the upper Gentry is level 8. I don't think that there are any other distinctions as of right now. On the childbirth chart, it does matter what level the mother is to determine the childbirth outcomes.



I hope this helps
I can't tell you how excited I am about this--let me know how it goes.

Lady Scarlet,

Thanks soo much for sharing the great pics. Looks like you're off to an awesome start here. Can't wait to hear some of the stories these folks have.

The way I deal with the calculation of ages is to enter their birth year. Year 1 of Challenge is 1600, so determine their birth year by calculating their age at the time of the challenge start. I always grow up sims 1 day early. I don't think it matters as long as you're consistent--I use a five day season, and every start of season is a year ending in 0 or 5. So, I keep track of what year it is by how many days are left in the season. Of course, that decision is up to the player--I think there is a lot of flexibility built into the challenge, individual players can decide what they want to do about this. Basically, I keep track of the year, rather than the sims' age category. Also, I think I don't face these issues as much because I hand enter data and just keep track of things as I go. So, for the difference of ages, I would simply figure that out for the two sims when the event occurs--don't have any idea how to tell a spreadsheet to do this. But, if the spreadsheet used birth year, I don't know why that wouldn't work ... Hmmm ... elixir of life? I don't use it. If you wanted to use it, I think just stick to birth year--so you add three days to a sim's life--fine--but it doesn't change the year they were born, right? Just the number of age days left before the next birthday. The reason I don't like the elixir is because it erases years, rather than adds them. Wonder if there's a way to change that .... dunno. But again, I think keeping records by year of birth is the way to go.

Adultery only applies to heterosexual relationships. There are reasons for this, which I won't go into here ... but suffice it to say that the concept of sexual orientation did not exist before the 19th century. Yes, people had homoerotic relationships, and yes, they were frowned upon, but they were not "adulterous" which specifically refers to extramarital relations. This behavior/consequence is designed to reflect the bias of the medieval system, and does not reflect in any way upon my own views on the matter. There is a reason I have my sims struggling against an oppressive system, after all.

Yeeeeey! ^^ Weekend! ^^ I can finally play this challenge (I've been thinking about this the whole week).
So, I just ended playing with the second family (I think they'll be my favorite ones) and my blog is also ready ^^
This challenge is great! ^^

Oh, and ... this is my blog ^^
http://dark-ages-stories.blogspot.com/

Lady Scarlet, love the blog--I am the first follower on your site (yay!) I am Heloise there, as I am over at the Keep and elsewhere. Your families are really great and I love how you give the little details about their back stories, etc. You have inspired me to start working again on my site ... so many things to do! *head spinning*

A good place to start reading is the Wikipedia page on sodomy, which describes any sexual acts that were considered illicit acts. Of course, it is no longer politically correct to denounce someone's sexual orientation as illicit, but that was not the case before modern times. Considering that the idea was that you had perverted a law of nature, hence acted "against God," then yes, both parties would lose the clerical favor points. Though it would require another set of variables to keep track of, it makes sense to me that only devout believers would actually lose those points. I sort of picture clerical favor as being in the heart of the believer--their relationship with their faith, or perhaps with the church--but I don't see the loss of clerical favor as punitive so much as a loss of faith. I don't know. I think that's up to the individual player to determine--but there it is. Certainly, a person's relationship with the Church was a large part of medieval life, which is why it is in the challenge. RFP and CFP are earned individually by each sim, but families may pool points in certain cases, like to plead for someone who is facing trial, for example. This way you can have influential families, even if the sim in question is not so powerful on their own.



Nope. Sorry. The "evil" behaviors are meant to describe the "unnatural" acts, i.e. those which go against the "natural order," so any one who violates them is equally guilty (according to the established order). And as I said, I don't really see the loss of points as a penalty--more as a consequence. What I mean by this is, you can support the system or work against it. You can accept what you're taught and do what you're told, or you can question it and work against it. Any time someone works against an established hierarchy there are going to be negative social consequences. That doesn't mean they aren't worth it. The challenge allows for all sorts of transgressions, which tax and trouble the system, and which aim at interrogating its rules. That is the point.

So, if you wanted that married man with a homosexual lover--go for it. Heck, why not two, or three lovers? He can buy his way out of those liasons by purchasing indulgences, or doing other things that earn clerical favor. It wouldn't even be that difficult to offset the "negative" behavior scores with "good" behaviors. The whole thing comes down to the social economy ... and somehow managing to work past the system ... at least that is the question the challenge is designed to ask.

M3g7e, I'm so glad you like my blog ^^
So, I've been playing more (I'm enjoying this challenge) and I also wrote more ^^

Currently, I have a new favorite family ... I really enjoy playing with my Monarchs ^^ But I have a new question ... Does the same surviving rule apply when the Queen giver birth?

P.S. New posts ^^
http://dark-ages-stories.blogspot.com/

*Gives exhausted look* Do you have any idea what a wild goose chase you just sent me on...? I followed the link to the breastfeeding hack and it told me there was no such existing link, so I searched the site for any hacks that were even close and found a reference to Squinge's mod, but I couldn't find that anywhere... Literally. And now, after an hour of searching, I've found it and downloaded it, but now I'm almost too tired to start the challange... I'm going to anyway, but still... *Sighs* Okay. I'm better now. I needed to vent and my mother would have killed me if I mentioned the Sims again... Im 20 and she still freaks out when I wander down to the kitchen after she gets home from work and start with: "So I had a baby today..." or "So I got pregnant...*SMACK*!!!" ...Yeah... She thinks "That game" is "Giving me ideas"... And the tv doesn't!? ...Sorry for rambling... Anyway, the point is I don't want to say "I FINALLY figured out how to breastfeed!!" ...So, off to the challange...

P.S.- For those also looking for the breastfeeding hack: http://www.insimenator.org/index.php/topic,8084.0.html

Lady Scarlet, Extensa is right. Just follow the rolls for nobility when rolling for the Queen. If there is a midwife present, she'll have a 16/20 (or 80%) chance of survival for first baby and 19/20 for second and subsequent babies (up to 10). Looks like your story is progressing nicely. You've got some very interesting sims Keep it coming!



The "Natural Chances of Survival" are those given on the chart titled as such. So, a male toddler peasant will have a 65% chance of survival (13/20), whereas a male peasant toddler will have a 70% chance of survival (13 +1/20 = 14/20), and so on. Although as I look at it now, with the benefit of the midwife at +2 and the rank adding up, it looks like noble's children are guaranteed survival. Hmmm ... that will never do! Perhaps the point added for rank should be only +1 added once for every sim above gentry class. That would mean serfs, peasants, and merchants roll at 13/20 for no midwife (15/20 with midwife) and gentry and up roll at 14/20 for no midwife (16/20 with midwife). That would also make calculations easier for the spreadsheet I should think.



Yes, that is correct. As the description indicates: "Though the Church is NOT a social class per se, it does have powerful and important people within it who wield social status and influence ...." So, the level of Cardinal is commensurate with a Duke, though they may not necessarily hold a title. So, yes, the number indicates social rank.




They need to be specific to the actual rank held. This is because there are several places where it matters, like in the case of adulterous affairs.

Horser01, are you aware of Boiling Oil's Nursemaid Hack? It is a tweak of squinge's mod and allows for nursing other women's babies. Highly recommended for those royal babies you're likely to have Here's the link: http://www.medievalsims.com/forums/...php?f=101&t=177

Good luck with the Challenge: hope you enjoy

Thank you very much for the explanation ^^ And no, I don't delete the tombstones, even if ghosts really piss me off.I just put them into a sim's inventory ^^ And yes, the poor girl just died of an illness, but I like inventing stories that fit in that periods of time ^^ I just searched on the Internet for some illnesses that were common among babies in the Middle Ages and I choose from there.
Well, in a strange way, I'm glad that my Queen has great chances of survival while giving birth, because I grew really attached to her (she and Francoise de Valois are my favorite ones until now) ^^

I just finished my first roll with the Royal Family and all I can say is that it was a very pleasant one.No tragic death, no illness, no fights.It was the perfect break from everyday dark-ages life ^^
Now I have two more families to play with and then I have to start all over again.

Fall 1600-1604 in the Royal Family
http://dark-ages-stories.blogspot.c...00-1604_09.html

Well, I'm not French, but I love reading stories about that period in France (and about French monarchy) so I decided to create a Medieval French Neighborhood.In fact, all the names that I used are French ^^
About their story ... Well, maybe I'll write one the next weekend, but I didn't exactly thought that far away until now ^^" Maybe when I'll finish writing about every family (I have two more).

Thank you again for reading my blog ^^ And I'm sorry if my English isn't perfect ^^"

Lady Scarlet, your blog is pure awesome! It has inspired me to go back to work on my website. I now have all of the birth records up to date and am planning to get started working on death records later tonight. Not to mention putting in character profiles, etc. I really like how you have a little vignette for each family. I did that with my first stab at Warwick--that nh died suddenly in February, but it was a flawed attempt anyway--and this second time round I had gone with a more story telling approach. I don't necessarily regret the decision, but I do think it loses something from the challenge aspect. At any rate, I am going to work on the website again. YAY!

I still don't know what I'm going to do after over eight months of trying to puzzle it out. (Having a bad cold keeping me in bed for a while hasn't helped much.)

Boy, is it hard trying to adapt this sort of challenge to my playstyle when I absolutely loathe history, male supremacy and discrimination against non-humans... and as an ardent fantasy enthusiast, one of my most hated tropes is what I call the "copycat culture": any society designed to deliberately resemble or reflect some past society from Earth, especially medieval Europe... maybe I'm in the wrong thread?

- VT

Right now, the overall design of the challenge is broken into these categories:

Introduction & Description (pp. 1-2)
Political Philosophy and Structure of the Society (pp. 3-15)
Behaviors and Outcomes (pp. 16-30)
Royal Appointments (pp. 34-41)
Clerical Favor (pp. 42-43)

I will say that those first 15 pages have quite a lot of information packed into them that is not federated into subcategories, but I would hesitate to say that the whole thing is not "very disorganized." There is a logic to the presentation of the information ... and it is a logic I would likely defend, not to say that I am impervious to outside reasoning on the matter. So, we'll see.

And yes, I think VT and I have discussed this enough by now ... she knows that she's welcome to come up with whatever world she likes.

Ah, yes I agree. It sooo would. That is not so much a problem of disorganization as of presentation--pdf's don't actually work that way. Sooo, are you planning to convert the doc to html Extensa? Hmm? Pretty please? (I don't know how to ask more nicely!) :D

Well, how else to embed hyperlinks if not to convert it to a website? What did you have in mind?

All this Excel talk is just going way over my head, I can make little hood databases but that's about it. As far as my personal attempt at this challenge goes, though, I've come up with a couple of things:

1. I am going to start with the seed idea first this time and rewrite what doesn't work with that, rather than trying to find a setting that fits the challenge.

2. I am also going to create a challenge of my own using some of the ideas from the Warwickshire Challenge, to play with my Nuidya tribe. If anyone's interested in that I could post it here once I've finished it, but I don't expect it to be any time soon.

3. Speaking of the Nuidya, I'm thinking that with my class-based rewrite (what I'm going to be doing with the Nuidya is not technically a rewrite, just me borrowing and adapting some of the non-class-based ideas) I might design the plot to reflect what happened with that hood about 60 years (Sim time) ago:

The tribe was founded by Sena, a green lizard alien, and her husband Benjamin, who was not a green lizard alien. They planned to create a new nation based on the principles of justice and freedom and that sort of thing, and it went pretty well until Sena died and her eldest daughter took over as chief.

At first, the daughter, who is now known as the Arzep (Arzep means "nameless" in the Nuidya language) was a good leader, but as time went on, she became paranoid and started to suspect everyone of conspiring against her. She started passing oppressive laws, preaching hostility towards outsiders, limiting the rights of anyone who couldn't prove to be descended through the female line from the founders of the tribe, banning sons from inheriting property and raising a small army (very small - it's never been a big tribe). The Nuidya village almost became a police state. And then the Arzep died of fever.

That was two generations ago, and only five Sims who lived during her rule are still alive now. Even though most of the population don't remember those days or even know what the Arzep's actual name was (even I don't say it now!) the legacy is still there. The Nuidya of today have no actual laws (unless "respect for all life" and "treat others as you would have them treat you" count), no concept of social status and generally don't like being too restricted. The D&D term "Chaotic Good" pretty much covers it. The only thing that was carried over from what is now known as the Dark Time is that most Nuidya still have difficulty trusting outsiders.

So, if I based my scenario for the rewrite on what happened while the Arzep was chief of the Nuidya tribe, I might just have the basis for an interesting storyline and setup... maybe I could add something to do with rebel forces or something? Then it might become a three-way struggle... lower class trying to beat the system, upper class trying to maintain the system and rebels trying to create a new system... hmm. *goes off to think*

- VT