Hey guys,
a few months ago I discovered the joy of Sim-challenges. My favourites were the Legacy, Prosperity and City Building Challenges. I always had great fun at the start, but never got through one, because after a time the house was built, the money was earned and it was mainly waiting for children to grow up without too much of a challenge.
Reading through different types of challenges I thought about how I could make them challenging longer. I mashed up many components of other challenges here with the goal to keep the challenge changing constantly while playing. It worked quite well for me.

Introduction:
The Rise and Fall challenge follows 10 generations of sims in a changing neighborhood. This means you start as a humble worker with a set of restrictions, and each of the first 5 generations is less restricted, allowing your family to rise. Also the neighborhood evolves with your generations level. But after your family prospered for five generations, fighting their way to the top (hopefully..), the world starts to change.
The political system is overthrown and the neighborhood is in disorder. Your family/families have to put up with new restrictions. Will they still manage in this harsh new world after generations of comfort?

Note: I am playing with CJ's bigger bills (Get it here ) which increases the money you loose by paying bills. You can use it aswell if you want more challenge than in the basic game.

Setup:
Create a single founder Sim to your liking. You can randomise him/her by rolling for his/her traits if you want, but you don't have to.
Move the Sim to an empty 5x5 lot. Now you can start playing the game with the restrictions for each generation and the neighborhood in power.

The aspiration for new Sims is to be rolled:
1: Wealth
2: Knowledge
3: Popularity
4: Family
5: Romance
6: Pleasure (roll again if you don't have Nightlife)

As in the normal legacy-challenge you may only move in Townies and NPCs, not CAS-created sims. You can move in Sims from other families participating in the challenge though, if you play this as a prosperity-challenge with multiple familys.
Your family should have a consistent bloodline over ten generations, as in the legacy-challenge.
The challenge „ends“ when the first child of generation ten is born. Of course you can play till she/he is an adult, but there won't be any new restrictions/changes.

Generation-Restrictions:
Generation-Restrictions apply to individual Sims. Each Sim may only enter careers to which his generation is entitled and only get promoted according to her/his generation. If the Sim gets promoted too much, he has to quit the job.
Rules which apply to the house are according to the generation of the adult Sim with the highest generationnumber on the lot.

Neighborhood-Restrictions:
The neighborhood-restrictions are set according to the generation of the adult Sim with the highest generationnumber in your hood. This means when the first sim of a new generation grows up to adult, the whole neighborhood comes to his generation-level.
Neighborhood- restrictions apply to all Sims and lots in the hood.
Neighborhood-Restrictions are stronger than Generation-Restrictions. For example, if any adult in your neighborhood is Generation-Level seven, this means the Neighborhood-Level is seven. Therefore even your family on level five can't employ a butler. The Neighborhood-Level 7 restrictions forbis this.

Adding new families:
You can play this challenge like a legacy challenge with a single family. But if you want to build a city, you can play it like the prosperity-challenge and add more families.
In general you can move out adult family-members at any time to a new lot of any size.
If you play this as Prosperity/City-Challenge, you have to place them in the neighborhood and cycle them, you may not dump them in the bin.
You may also begin with more CAS-created families as in the Prosperity-Challenge, or you might add them later one by one every few generations, starting them like your founder on a 5x5-lot on founder-generation-level.This makes things interesting, as the neighborhood-restrictions apply to them according to the other families. Therefore their living-conditions in each generation are different from your other families.

Generation-Restrictions

Founder Generation:
- Only available careers are Crime and Military.
- 2 promotions allowed
- No services are allowed, not even emergency services. (Food delivery is always allowed to get baby bottles)
- Your house may only have two rooms and only cover 100 tiles all in all. (mind you, that's the maximum. You're free to build less)

First Generation:
- new unlocked careers: Lawenforcement and Culinary.
- 3 promotions allowed.
- Emergency services allowed.
- + 1 room and + 50 tiles for your house (3 rooms, 150 tiles)
- You may open a home-business, selling only handcrafted goods.

Second Generation:
- new unlocked careers: Journalism and Athlet
- 4 Promotions allowed
- Childminder service allowed
- + 2 rooms and + 50 tiles for your house (5 rooms, 200 tiles)

Third Generation:
- New unlocked careers: Education and Business
- 6 Promotions allowed
- Maid service allowed
- No more room restrictions, + 50 tiles (250 tiles)
- Homes-businesses may sell buymode-goods.

Fourth Generation:
- New unlocked careers: Science and Medical
- 8 Promotions allowed
- Gardener Service allowed
- + 50 tiles (300 tiles)
- You may purchase business lots

Fifth Generation:
- All careers unlocked
- No promotion restrictions
- Butler service allowed
- No house restrictions

Neighborhood-Restrictions:

Founder-Status:
- No community-lots

First Generation:
- You may build a community-lot without a house. It might contain chess-games, a fireplace, a grill, a lake, a few benches and the like. You get the idea, nothing elaborate, just a meeting-place for the locals.
- No vacations

Second Generation:
- You may build a a new community-lot, eighter a shop for food and clothes, or a restaurant/café.
- No vacations

Third Generation:
- Vactions are allowed
- You may build the community-lot you didn't choose to build in second Generation

Fourth Generation:
- No restrictions on community-lots.

Fifth Generation:
- nothing happens

Sixth Generation:
- Politics, Military and Lawenforcement Career locked
- No new additions to the house allowed
- No police service allowed

Seventh Generation:
- Slacker, Gamer, Journalism, Dance, Showbiz and Adventurer Career locked.
- No butler service allowed
- No vacations allowed
- Reduce your house to max. 5 rooms. You may only delete walls to do so, not build a new layout.
- Businesses on community-lots have to be closed/ can't be used. Home-businesses are still allowed.

Eight Generation:
- Business, Athlet, Music, Enterainment and Education career locked
- No school for teens, no university
- Only 3 Promotions allowed
- No services allowed
- Buying objects not allowed, you may only use buymode to move objects around
- According, Home-businesses can only sell handcraftet goods.

Ninth Generation:
- Culinary, Science and Medical Career locked
- Only 3 Promotions allowed
- No food delivery

Rules and restrictions of previous generations stay in tact if not stated otherwise.

Gameplay-Rules:
For the joy of the challenge it would make sense to use no cheats at all, if not absolutly necessary because of bugs/glitches.
You may use mods if you think they are fitting/ aren't destroying the challenge
After all it's your game and you should have fun.

Scoring:
I didn't intend a scoring-system because I myself never kept one, but of course you can score this challenge like most legacy-challenges. Or you just try to make your Sims happy anyway by fulfilling their wishes.

Variants
Of course the challenge is open to variants like the handycapped legacy-challenges. Or you might bring in some elements of Build a City or Prosperity Challenges.

Thanks to the Legacy Challenge and the Build a City Challenge which got me many ideas for this challenge.

Now good luck and fun to everybody, feel free to ask questions and make suggestions.

This is really hard. You start with almost no money, once you establish your 2-room, 100-square house, even if you don't put down any flooring, walls or windows and only buy a uni shower, cheap fridge, cheap toilet, and cheap grill. I had to have my sim fish almost the whole first day to afford a countertop to make food on and a cheap sofa to nap on, so much that she missed the welcome wagon. Then, she was constantly in motive failure(hygiene, energy, social and fun...not even mentioning environment, that's a given) for the next 5~ days, so much so that despite meeting a sim she had a lot of chemistry with on day 2, she couldn't find the time to get the relationship up until the end of the week. And that was only because she managed to get a dream date motive boost just as she was about to pass out from exhaustion. Now they've got enough money to afford an actual bed, and things are looking better. But man, this challenge has a rough start!

Yeah, the start really is quite hard. But I have to say that I did quite well in my current run, after two weeks my sim is alread married and had a daughter. I think it's harder if you buy the 100-square house right at the start, because the walls are quite expensive. I started out with a little shed. Oh, and I had the luck to find a 5.000$ treasure while digging right on the second day, which helped A LOT.
Anyways, I'm glad someone tries to do my challenge. Good luck to you!

Oh. I thought you had to build the entire thing at once. Starting with a bathroom shack and otherwise living on the lawn(how I usually start legacies) would have been much easier!

Oh dear no, 100 is just the upper limit! Of course that would make it much harder, walls are so expensive.
I just reached the next generation and have 50.000$.. Done too much fishing, I guess. First generation is married, Second generation is on the way, and the founders are elders. I guess I'll be rebuilding the house a bit now.

Hey there! I just started this challenge because it looked very interesting. I built my founder's house and it's 44 squares so far. He just got married, and his wife is finally pregnant! I'm excited for when the first generation comes!

I have a few questions though.

Are we allowed to get food delivery before the Eighth and Ninth generation?

If not, I think that it would be difficult for the founder to raise a baby without it getting taken away by the social worker. I don't know any other way to get bottles other than restocking the fridge.

I'm trying to fish so that my adults will have more food (I've been grilling fish and saving leftover serving plates, it works wonders!)

My other question was more out of curiosity.

Why is there no school for teens on the eighth and ninth generation? (That part's going to be the hardest for me to play because I am a stickler about sending my sims to school.)

Generation 9 is going to have a rough upbringing. 8D

I'm going to try.

Nice to see someone else try this challenge! And congrats to making it to the next generation.

I didn't think about the food delivery because I usually just buy a new fridge (lazy me..) but they are allowed as there is no other way to provide baby bottles. Thanks for pointing out!

After the eight generation the whole neighborhood is in chaos, and as all institutions crumble, there's only a basic primary school left.

As far as the university, can we send our Sims there on maybe generation 5, when there are no community lot restrictions?

Also, a progress report:
Since I'm doing a simple no-cheats run, this challenge has been on hold, but my first generation grew up into a child. It's time for her to start making connections with potential townies to start the second generation.

So far in the house it's...

Devin Figaro (founder), Gretchen Figaro (his wife, the townie Gretchen Chin) and Anna Figaro (first generation, child).

I'm having problems keeping my sims asleep. One of them always wants to turn on the TV that Gretchen's friend gave her as a gift, and the noise wakes them up. I have to remember to have my sims turn it off. I can't wait until Anna's an adult, so I can put a wall between the bedroom and living room.

I'm also looking forward to doing the hand-crafted business, since I'll finally have another way to earn simoleons besides my single working sim.

I got lucky with the job roll. Military career came about my second sim day.

I interpret the coming and going from the military as Devin going off to fight wars and then coming home.

Oh, I completly forgot about university! I think 4th generation would make sense, as medical and science careers aswell as community lots are unlocked. I'm gonna add that.

I have the same problems as you with sleeping in the living-room. I'm always so happy when I can add the next room. And I also love to do my own interpretations of the events, it just adds atmosphere.
I played my Prosperity Challenge for the last few weeks, but I guess I'll return to this one soon. Maybe add some other families, I've never tested it with neighborhood-circling.

It almost feels wrong to have my first generation marry a townie that was an adult while she was a child. It feels like child grooming, but it may be necessary from a gameplay perspective.

I think I'm going to have her join the military or law enforcement, because those are the highest earning. I'm having my Sim who was born into the family work while their spouse/partner stays home (and does the home business, when that's allowed.) That way I have a good mix of males and females with earning power and it's not just the stereotypical "stay at home mom" scenario.

I'm thinking University should be restricted on generation 7, just to show the breakdown of the educational system.

So in Generation 9, the only career is crime? What about music and show biz? (I think entertainment and dance are others, but they're in the Freetime EP which I don't have.)

Oh sure, music and show biz should be restricted too. Forgott to add them as they weren't specifically unlocked.
Thanks a lot for being so attentive about the rules, it's quite hard to type what you have in mind for other people, I realise.

I love that you're breaking out of the mothers staying at home, I often get into that scenario because I have my mothers crafting while they're pregnant.

*sigh*

I started with a 3x3 lot with Devin's house, so I had to make another family to follow the rules.

I tried to move him onto a 5x5 and build it from scratch, but it didn't work.

Today hasn't been my day.

So far, I've made some progress with my new family, the Smiths.

The founder is Linda Smith, and she married Marcel. He got her last name. I can't remember what his name was before.

During my last save, they had a baby.

*Update*

Linda and Marcel Smith now have a toddler that's about to grow up into a child! I am excited for the independence that children have over toddlers.
She learned to walk and use the potty because she had a parent home with her. I'll see if little Veronica can learn to talk and keep that aspiration bar platinum.

Marcel brought a lot of money with him when he married Linda, and I found the 5000 simole treasure. My home is pretty decked out with good beds, plumbing, and a bookcase that adds to environment. I even got an exercise machine and an outdoor chess table.

I'm tempted to get a telescope, just to see if the neighbors harass my sims. Normally Mortimer Goth comes over to yell at my sims spying on him, but he's not here in my new desert neighborhood.

Screencaps are coming soon! They're on my other computer.

All right, here is an update of my (new and improved) Rise and Fall challenge, this time using a 5x5 lot as I was supposed to. I kind of tell a story with my pictures.

[1] Meet Linda Smith. She's my founder, and wound up with the family aspiration. I thought the glasses and the outfit kind of gave her an "old timey" look.

[2] Linda found that a life of crime was the only way to survive. On the side, she hunted for treasure. Finding this chest of gold helped.

[3] She was soon overwhelmed with the bills though. The tax collectors weren't going to show her mercy. She needed a plan.

[4] [5] The plan of course, was for marriage. Linda even used her treasure to buy a nice double bed for her potential partner. After having bad conversations for days, Linda finally found a man named Marcel. He was dressed odd and didn't always say the best things, but he wasn't a bad person.

[6] [7] [8] [9] After a few dates and positive interactions, Marcel and Linda became the best of friends. Over time, they became even more than that. It was love.

[10] [11] So Linda finally popped the question. Marcel was nervous at first when he thought about the engagement. But once the wedding rings were exchanged, he was happy as can be.

[12] With 20k simoles that Marcel brought to Linda's household, they were able to upgrade many of their things into something better. The two of them also bought a changing table and a crib, because a baby was on the way!

[13] There was more than enough money for things on the outside too. An exercise machine, two easels, a small fishing oasis and even a palm tree were added to the homestead.

[14] Not long after, a baby was born! The two new parents decided to name her Veronica. Linda had also dyed her hair from brown to red, because Marcel fancied women with red hair.

[15] [16] [17] The happiness was short-lived when Linda was drafted into the military. Marcel stayed at home with their only child, and prayed for his wife's safety every day. On quiet days, when Linda was on leave, the two of them painted together when the baby was asleep.

[18] With her parents' love and care, Veronica grew into a toddler. She had her mother's natural hair color.

[19] Linda and Marcel spent so much time with their baby and each other, that the paperboy stopped coming by! It was time to recycle some of the old wads of print.

[20] [21] Veronica grew to love books. Marcel often read to her. Both her parents even taught her how to walk on her own two feet!

Now only two days remain before the first generation of the Smith family grows up into a child. Can she learn to walk? And will Linda's military service come to an end? Find out on the next update.

Awww, great to see your family.
I love your house and the bit ancient look everything has. I also plan to start my next Rise and Fall legacy about 1900 and get a bit more modern with every generation.
Great luck to marry such a rich guy.
I guess I'll have to start the challenge again myself, with reading your updates I really got in the mood again, and I think it's always nicer to play a challenge along with some other people.

I'm glad you like the Smith family so far. Taking screencaps and posting my Sims stories is one of my favorite hobbies now. I have a sim story blog on tumblr, if you want me to share it.

The last time I played on this file, the game crashed shortly after Veronica grew up! I had to start over and I don't remember what else I did. So Veronica's outfit is going to change between screencaps.

I'm glad to have inspired you. Running a challenge with someone is exciting.

I forget to take screencaps half the time, and the other half I forget to post them, though I'd always love to post the stories in my game and my challenges.
I'd love to see your Simblr, I'm thinking about creating one myself. Maybe I'd be a bit more active with posting on Tumblr (I'm just sooo lazy uploading stuff on photobucket etc.), and it looks like fun.

And argh, crashing games are so annoying, bad luck
Maybe I'll start later today and also set up a tumblr. I have to study a bit for my exams at the moment, so less time for simming.

Oh, so screencaps aren't really a requirement, eh? Well, I think they're nice if I'm able to take them. But snapping pictures does get a little tiring after a while.

My Tumblr is here. http://lynns-sims-stories.tumblr.com/ I didn't put the Rise and Fall pics up yet, but I may do so in the future.