EDIT - August 2013 - It was suggested by some who have played this that it is just as much fun to play with just one family. Consider editing the rules to make the challenge fun for you.

Do you long for those “Good Old Victorian Days”? Then this challenge is for you. The Victorian Age was a time when children were to be seen but not heard; a time when women were masters of their kitchens and men were masters of everything else.

Your challenge is to have your fathers (head of households) successfully meet their lifetime aspirations, raise children until they marry, and maintain peace and order in their homes. The catch to this challenge is that you cannot control or “God mode” any of your Sims expect the fathers. The fathers are to use their “influence” to tell everyone else what to do. With great power comes great responsibility. Fathers can use their power to be a good influence on others, to fix broken relationships, and maintain a peaceful home. Or, they can use their power for evil purposes, to ruin relationships, and to wreak havoc. Only you can decide how each father will use their patriarchal power.

Set-Up:

1) You need Sims 2 Base Game and University Expansion Pack for this challenge. Custom content is a fun way to make the game feel more authentic, but it is optional.

2) Build 4 or more Victorian-Style Homes or buy from the catalog. Price doesn’t matter, since this challenge is about earning influence points and using them to get other Sims to do what you want them to do. [Make note of the cost of each home since you will need to give your families enough money to buy them.]

3) Build 4 or more Victorian families, each with a father, mother, son and daughter (one toddler and one child, you can decide who is oldest). Give each father the family aspiration. Everyone else can have whatever aspiration you want to give them. All other attributes and choices are up to you.

4) Move your first family into an empty lot. Use the motherlode cheat to increase your family’s funds so they have enough money to buy their home. Go back to the neighborhood view and move your family from the empty lot to their new home. [Repeat this step for all your families]

{EDIT: If you just want to see how the influence feature works in the game you can build just one family and interact with the townies.}

Game Play:
5) Play one family at a time for 5 days (or one season if you have Seasons installed). Have the father get a job. The kids can go to school. The mother must stay home and cannot get a job. You can tell her to cook and clean, but cannot control her with any other direct commands from you.

6) Your priority is to have each father make as many friends as possible and satisfy all of his wants, especially those wants with a blue box around them. You can have more kids if the father wants babies. This will help the father to earn more influence points. [right click on blue box wants to save them until you have time to meet them]

7) Remember, you (as the game player) cannot tell any of the other Sims what to do. (except the mother to tell her to cook or clean) You can only use the father’s influence points to have him tell others to do things. The father can also interact directly with his wife and children to help meet their wants and needs, if he wants to do that.

8) Here are some of the things the fathers can tell others to do:
a. Clean
b. Repair
c. Do Homework
d. Garden
e. Serve a meal
f. Appreciate [another sim]
g. Entertain [another sim]
h. Talk to [another sim]
i. Flirt with [another sim]
j. Play with [another sim]
k. Play prank on [another sim]
l. Fight with [another sim]
m. Hug [another sim]
n. Kiss [another sim]

Challenge Goals:
First goal: Have each father achieve his lifetime aspiration before his death.

Second goal: Using each father’s influence, have at least one son in each family fall in love and get married. After all, in a patriarchal age the father would want an heir to inherit his business and carry on the family’s name. [You can control the son to propose the engagement and marriage but must use the father’s influence to help the son fall in love.]

Other goals:
Do you want one father to use his power for evil? What would be his goal? Post your ideas in this thread. If enough folks like the suggested goals, I will edit the challenge to include them.

Cheats (optional):
You don’t have to use the motherlode cheat. You will just need to start with a smaller home.
To increase funds [click all three at once] CTRL+Shift+C
Type motherlode
This will increase funds by $50,000 each time you do this.

Are you too impatient to work to earn influence points for your fathers?
To increase a father’s influence points [click all three at once] CTRL+Shift+C
Type boolprop testingcheatsenabled true
Then while holding the Shift key, click on your father Sim
Spawn the sim modder (it will create a fake baby in your game)
Click on the fake baby and select to max influence
Delete the fake baby when you are finished
Type boolprop testingcheatsenabled false [you need to do this so you don’t get glitches]

Want a downloadable copy of this challenge? Visit my site to open a Google Docs version. Anyone with the link can see the document. Victorian Mini Challenge

Thanks for the feedback. I made a few edits based on the current game players' suggestions and questions. 4-21-13

I'm in this challenge! I think I would try it on just one family, though.

I think it was just yesterday when I created an eight-Sim household in Strangetown - all of which are adults - and built them a shack in the empty 3x3 pre-existing lot in Strangetown. Out of the eight Sims, I tried to control only one of them - sort of like an Asylum Challenge - but I freely influenced everyone, and everyone was allowed to get jobs, because it was assumed that everyone was sane. I just pretended that the Sim that I was controlling was me, and everyone else was uncontrollable. There was only one bathroom and one kitchen and eight beds in the tiny shack, so there was a lot of foot-stomping and bladder failures in the house. Crazy! I can't wait to apply the same concept to a Victorian-esque family! I also have recently made a set of Victorian-esque coats based on the base game ambodypirate mesh and a set of pretty gowns for adult females.

This sounds intriguing. I really like the idea that one of the father's can use their power for evil, another for good. Sounds like each family could be known for a certain way they are. I am horrible for God modding so I'm not sure if I could handle letting them run free. The stupid things the sims do when they have freedom can be frustrating. I think I will start with one family and if after 5 days I like it add the rest.

Ananias Veramuch


Sapphira Veramuch

I like this couple. She looks very serious and capable of managing a house. He looks like he runs a successful business. Let me know how things go in the challenge.

Why FOUR houses? You don't mention them interacting.

@grammapat: I think the OP suggests four houses, because having four houses+four families is a way to have a community? I suspect that the OP has a Victorian community in mind, and in order to have a community of folks, the OP suggests four. Yeah, I know it's an arbitrary number, which is why you are allowed to play with only one family/household.

I'm gonna try this right now

Rather than Victorian, I made a Vietnamese family. Dad Tog Van Tran is a traditional man who moved to America with his wife Po Thi, his daughter Sang, and his toddler son Thom. He worked with the Americans in the old country, so he speaks English well; he's educated and very driven to become a business tycoon. In this picture they have just moved into their 2nd house; with a new baby, the first one was too small. He managed to teach his son to walk and use the potty, and works with them every night on homework; he knows how important education is!. He expects his wife to stay home and tend to her duties, but even with his influence and nightly "come to bed" she's not doing well.
(Unfortunately, I found only Chinese & Japanese clothes.)

You don't have to make them wear ethnic clothing, if you don't want to or if you cannot find the right clothes on the Internet. Besides, even in real life, Asian immigrants actually don't wear ethnic clothing unless for special occasions like Chinese New Year, and even then they may just wear what everyone else wears in the United States.

Edward and Eleanor Bissell moved to Vernonaville with their two children (Alfred & Victoria).

Edward is working hard to move up in his career (Education).

Both Eleanor and Edward want as many children as possible and have been trying to grow their family.

Eleanor has been racked with pregnancy complications.

Twins were born about 11 years after Victoria, they were named Jane & James.

The complications continued but about 7 years later, a final son (Edward) was born.

The elder Edward has been slowly rising in the Education ranks and the family is popular and respected.

Love your family! So appropriate. And where DID you get those clothes?

I like your idea of an immigrant family adjusting to a new culture. How is Po Thi doing?

I get a lot at All About Style, they have a Victorian section

http://www.all-about-style.com/index.html

Cool game, DitzyEkko. How did you make your sims have miscarriages? Did you just kill them as soon as the babies were born?

Oh no! That would be terrible. I have the InTEENimator and the optional flavor paks and one of them is miscarriage. If the mother's motives get too low she can miscarry.

Being that during this challenge I couldn't control the mother, her motives would get out of hand during the week and she was easier to manage on the weekends. That spaced the successful pregnancies out about 5-7 days.

Edward & Eleanor are now elders

Alfred married Carla McCullough for her money. Turns out she didn't have enough, so he has begun to wander.

Victoria is also an adult.

Jane & James are teens.

little Edward is a child.

Richard is a toddler.

I've moved all the children from Victoria to Richard out to be used as marriage partners in my RKC. And to make room for Alfred's brood.

No, I meant that you could just wait until the baby is born, make it selectable, and then kill it boolprop testingcheatsenabled true/false. Then, in the actual story, you could write that the baby somehow died in infancy. Maybe you could write that the baby had some fatal congenital disorder or lethal mutation that prevented the little one to survive. I don't think that is any different from spontaneous abortion (aka miscarriage). Children may also die of sudden infant death syndrome. The said method can be done without mods at all.

Didn't know you could kill a baby even with testingcheat...
In my Vietnamese family dad Tong Van is working his way up the Business ladder, and trying to make friends. But it's really difficult to create an impressive home to entertain people , especially since he got demoted - twice! He's also trying to follow tradition by honoring the old gods, writing poetry, and painting. Managing his wife is not that difficult, although she often doesn't DO much, and constantly begs him to come to bed & make a baby. Another daughter, Yoko, is born; but Po seems to be more worried than ever. Tong threw a party for Sang's "coming of age" party, and invited many of his friends. He is honored in this Asian community, and tries to get Sang to lean the fine art of "smoozing", but even having a pleasant conversation with a CHILD seems too much for her.

Hoping to find some more friends (and a possible teen boy for Sang that he would find suitable), he takes her to a little fair. But the place seems to have a strange effect on people first he tries to impress Tara DeBateau only to enrage her husband (how was he to know the blond guy was her husband?). And now he has a happy little memory of "having an affair" with her; he didn't DO anything, how old-fashioned can you get! Then a second marriage goes up in flames: one of his Chinese friends (dressed for some reason in formal wear) flirted with Cassandra Goth in front of his wife SueLin (AKA Cleo) Skibiku.

And the last one of the day (I need to grow other kids up to teen): as usual Tong fixes diner and calls everyone to eat. The baby Yoko is now a girl (clearing the table), and Po is finally pregnant. His son Thom is about to become a teen and the difficult business of arranging a marriage for him will begin.

P.S. Sorry if I've gone over number of pics allowed, I have asked a question about that. And I would like to post bigger pictures of some of the faces I really like...if I just could remember HOW.

I love your photos. I clicked on them and was able to see a little more. You are very good at storytelling. How is the challenge going? Have you found friends for the kids?

I'll try out this challenge. I have a lot of random victorian junk in my game, so I can finally make some good use out of it :P.

Do your sims in the Sims 3 have the same "Influence" as the older sims, because I'd love to play this on the newer game!

Also, I've added a couple of rules for myself, to make it interesting:

- All the first Daughters are oddballs. Like, one of my families is really athletic, and the daughter is a bookworm.
- All the second Sons are gay. And the dad has to influence them to flirt with a boy.
- At least one family member has to reach *****Celebrity.
- The first Son has to do whatever his Dad's lifetime wish is, even if he has a different lifetime wish.

That's all I've come up with so far, really excited to play it!

I like the idea, but not the victorian setting, so I´m trying something similar in modern times. One question beforehand: Are we allowed to look at the family members´ motives and wants? The family head doesn´t read minds, after all, and in real life when we ask "how are you"/"what do you want" we do not always get the true answer.

I think of starting with a polygamous immigrant family, only the game (and thus the government) does not support this, so dad and his 3 wifes start out as roommates. Therefore I cannot make dad a family sim as is stated in the rules, because he would want to marry one of his wifes. So I was thinking of fortune, which would allow him to roll wants related to his children´s upbringing at least. Also the wifes will be allowed to get jobs if they want (especially if their LTW is career-related), that´s why I rule out money cheats.

I could definitely try this but no Victorian setting. Then I wouldn't any modern tech in my house

Do the kids have to go to school.