The Prison Challenge
This challenge was created by James from The Sim Supply a while ago but his forum is closed now and so I'd like to
create this thread as a place where players can meet, share pictures and stories or ask questions. You can find the
original rules here, I modified the rules here and of course you are also welcome to make your own modifications.

Challenge Goals

• Rehabilitate 15 Prisoners
• Earn 50'000 Simoleons from Prisoners in your Workshop

Game Setup

• Turn aging off for the active household.
• Create one warden with any aspiration and traits you want.
• Use the 'freerealestate on' cheat to buy a lot, then spend a maximum of 20'000 Simoleons to build your prison. It
  has to have at least one cell, shower area, yard, canteen, solitary, workshop and a place for your warden to live.
• Enter the cheat ‘testingcheats on’ and then the cheat ‘money 1000’. You must start with $1000 no matter what.
• Once you have built everything you need, you may acquire one prisoner by entering the cheat ‘Sims.spawn'.

Rules

• You can use the cheat ‘testingcheats on’ to teleport your Warden in and out of the prison or use the
  door lock mod. You can also use teleportation to move your prisoners into solitary. You may not use
  teleportation for anything else.
• No other cheats are permitted.
• You can control the Warden like any normal Sim.
• You can only control one prisoner per day. All other prisoners must autonomously go about their days.
  You may not control the same prisoner two days in a row (unless you only have one prisoner). A day is
  from midnight to midnight.
• You can check the needs of all your prisoners whenever you wish.
• None of your Sims can have a career, you can only make money from your prisoners working in the
  workshops. Workshops can be painting, writing, gardening, woodworking or anything else that earns
  you money. Each workshop needs a seperate room though, or in case of gardening a separate fenced
  off outdoors area.
• You can expand your prison at any time using money you earn from the workshops.
• Other sims can only visit your prison if you have a separate visitation room. This room requires an entrance to both
  the inside and outside of the building. Visitors are not allowed into the inner part of the prison but your inmates can
  meet them in the visitation room. However if you aren't actively controlling a sim you may not send him there.
• Keep the prisoners alive. You can either order your warden or the controlled prisoner to make food for the day.
• To acquire more prisoners you have to pay a fee of 1000 simoleons. You also need to have a cell (bed and
  toilet) ready for them. Remove this money from your household balance by using the money cheat.
• To rehabilitate prisoners they must reach level 10 in any skill. As soon as that happens you must
  release them. However since the fee is already paid and a cell is ready for them you may acquire
  a replacement prisoner for free.

Mod Suggestions
There is a few mods out there that go well with this challenge. You can decide to use any or none,
that's completely up to you. Personally I'd at least suggest the door lock mod, it makes things easier.

• Door Locks for TS4 by scumbumbo
• Full House Mod by TwistedMexi
  Attention: Read the mod description, especially the warning section!
• Faster Sim Autonomy by Weebl_101

That's it, now you know everything you need for the challenge. Feel free to participate and post about your prison but most importantly: Have fun!

I love the jail! Can you put it on the gallery??

Indeed I can and I did. Search either for the tag #prisonchallenge or by my origin username simsurri. I also uploaded the original prison which was built within the 20k boundaries.

Thanks

I started this challenge yesterday. I love playing prisons, not so good at following rules set by others, but fortunately this ruleset is not too restricting and allows enough room for adding once´s personal touch (says the one who writes overly complicated challenge rules themselves...)


These are the cells, copied from the prison in my rotational save.
All my starting money was spent on the transfer fee for a second prisoner, so they had a good incentive to get to work: they have to eat something at the end of the day, after all. Then I realized that in order to start a woodcraft project, I had to invest money first and frantically sold the books from the bookcase in my jailor´s office
"Mr. McKenzie, the books you brought are not suggested reading material in here. Please get them off the premises!"
"But I´m the only one who can access my office anyway, Sir!"
"That was an order, McKenzie!"


And these are my first jailbirds, Carolin and Stefan.
Carolin is Good, Hot-headed and a Geek. I figured she witnessed an injustice and beat up the wrongdoer.
Stefan is Mean, Noncommital and Loves the outdoors. Since he cannot stay in one place or hold a job for long he fell into debt, joined a gang to raise money the easy way, but betrayed them for even more money that he spent quickly. When the gangmembers came to get revenge Stefan delivered himself to the law for protection.
Both sims share the same Aspiration, "Succesful lineage". I hear the wedding bells ring already...

My jailor is aforementioned Gordon McKenzie, a Slob/Romantic/Active person, your typical jock. He cannot advance his body builder aspiration, because the first goal requires him to train at a gym. To pass the time he started writing books: the house regulations at first, later I´ll have him write books on law, prisoners´ biographys, daily protocols, helpful guides for achieving rehabilitation, life after jail and related stuff.


I also started a story/diary about this challenge on my simblr. It´ll get posted when I´ve played some more. The story revolves around how prisoners are drugged into submission and how they deal with their mind-debilating condition. Reason for this is that I´m a micromanager with little patience for sims on free will. I only use this feature to represent insanity, alcohol, drugs or demonic posession.
In the picture we can see Stefan standing around idle, as the drug amplified his commitment issues up to the point where he cannot decide on any action at all. I think already love this character more than my protagonist!
B.t.w., the cage to the left is the solitary confinement cell. Nothing in the rules said anything about it needing a toilet, roof or flooring... or basic human rights, for that matter.


And finally the workshop. Anything considered fun or that helps build body skill is out of the picture. All those priviledges have to be earned. For now there´s only a stereo and a woodcraft table and Carolin, being a nice person, manned the workbench the very hour she arrived.
Stefan, however, strikes me as the troublemaking type. He won´t contribute to the money-raising and instead work on his mischief skill. He´s already made a good start at this when he was non-controllable during the first day.
I´ll try having every prisoner max out a different skill and their choice will depend on their personality/traits.

In my opinion these challenge rules are more of a base guidance than strict regulations you have to follow. I personally set myself the rule that no two sims can work on maximizing
the same skill at the same time. Before that rule I had all my sims painting which was quite boring and also made the challenge much easier since painting earns the most money
on higher skill levels. So feel free to modify the rules as you see fit for yourself, after all the most important goal of a challenge is to have fun, right?


Haha, I did the exact same time in my first playthrough, my solution was to send the warden out to dig up a gem and a time capsule which brought in enough money to start a painting.
Which technically is against my set of rules since you can't just leave the inmates alone in the prison but I didn't know how to solve this differently - selling the books is a much better
way of dealing with that problem. I honestly had to laugh out loud when I read your text I have to compliment you on your cells, they are much larger than mine and I really like how
you separated the bathroom from the main cell area. My prisoners don't have any sinks they can access so they don't walk all over their premises to wash their hands but this would
be a nice solution too.


I love how you give your prisoners criminal history based on their traits and them having the same aspiration is a funny coincidence. Writing books is a good past time for the warden
and I like that you chose to write them about prison and prison life. I may have to snag that idea! My new warden is either busy with the office work behind a prison or cooking for the inmates.
I do want to add a small gym for him as soon as I have the money though because as warden he should be able to win any fights that might come up. Do you actually sell your books or do
you just keep them in the bookshelf?


I'd love to read that! I also post some pictures of my prison on my tumblr which I'll put in my signature as soon as I'm finished with this post. Your take on free will is very interesting. Not long ago
I was a micromanager too but I learned that the sims are well capable of caring for themselves. Today I have a more hands-off approach to the game, it's what challenges like this one taught me.
I know how you feel about Stefan, it was the same for me with Trish. I still have her saved and she lives in my prison neighbourhood. Your solitary cell is indeed not against the rules, the only thing
that is required is that it's enclosed. I have a toilet in my new one (which by the way is an outdoor cage too... That was coincidental) and I let the prisoners out as soon as they're feeling
uncomfortable (for smaller rule violations like attacking or having intense physical contact to another prisoner or peeing on the floor, things like that) or very uncomfortable (violations like trying to flee
or entering the warden's quarters as well as attacking the warden) so giving them a bed or luxuries would be contraproductive.

I really like your prison and prisoners (and the warden too, of course, especially his name) and am excited to see and read more about it!

Using the GTW photo studio is a splendid idea! It isn´t in the cards for my starters, but a portable camera should be.

That Mendez gives me the shivers. His trait combo reminds me of a slave overseer. A great choice of character for a story, but definitely one I´d give a wide berth in real life. I´m exited to see how this plays out!


Normally I don´t place sinks at all on my lots, but I uploaded the cell to the gallery and thought it would look strange to other simmers without those


For now I drag them over to the cantina for the inmates to read. The office with the computer and bookshelf is locked to everybody except Gordon (and the cells are locked to everybody except the inhabitant and Gordon). I do not plan on having him publish anything while holding this office.


Are we thinking about the same song? Gordon has a step-brother name of Charly in my game, but fortunately they decided on different brides

Oh, and a teaser for the story is up now.

The first few seconds after loading the lot account for more drama and character developement than anything I could comment about the normal gameplay
The game is real creative at scrambling sims´ positions. This time both Stefan and Carolin were spawned inside Carolin´s cell, nevermind that said cell is locked from the outside (only accessable by Carolin and Gordon):



I now know that a) Stefan is obviously an accomplished lockpick and b) they want to be together.

One advantage of the cheap perimeter fence is that it doesn´t obstruct the view at the beautiful background when the two had their first kiss.
For some precious moments they could make believe to be on a walk in the park:

Using the photo studio for Mug Shots and then placing them outside the cell of each prison is brilliant and I am so copying you. I only have one prisoner right now but I can see things getting confusing later on.

ok, so I've been playing two days now, I have three prisoners. My Warden's name is Bobbi Hanna and she is all about the rehabilitation. All the money she gets, she uses to upgrade the prison-to give the prisoners a better chance. She even sold her personal tea brewer, when the prison kitchen caught fire and used the money to buy a microwave. The two females are both hot heads and don't like each other. The male is insane and talks to him self, but he is good in the garden.

I managed to release my first prisoner earlier today. It will take ages till the story reaches that point, but I wanted to share the news right away. Reaching the first milestone in any challenge is always something special

@mama_tex I love that face the left female makes in the 2nd pic! Totally "Not my favourite pasttime and then with HER in here, meh."
Are they both working at the same time or is it a clever illusion?

Congrats I am almost there but not quite. The one girl was working and then the other girl wandered in, I thought she was gonna work on her project from before. But she just stood there for a bit and then left. She may have been lonely. :-)

James, the original player, used selfies for the pictures but I found that inconvenient because if your sim only has a low level of the photography skill the
pictures often feature a thumb or a garden gnome.If it's one sim that takes all pictures he'll get better with time and there will be less faulty photos.



Mendez is slightly inspired by a tv character but despite his traits so far he actually has a pretty good relationship with the inmates. Sometimes he yells
at them but if I don't force it his usual actions are friendly. I am getting tired of playing evil wardens though. I was thinking about restarting the challenge
completely anyway because I had all that money from the former prison which allowed me to build and decorate everything at once but it also feels like
there's no challenge involved. Of course I could still just expand the prison but honestly I prefer to work for everything.



Why would you care if it would look strange to other simmers? The ones that know the challenge will realize why there are no sinks and the ones who don't
know the challenge probably won't need the cells or search for the prison hashtag. But of course having sinks in the cells is perfectly fine too! Actually it is
kind of gross to have the prisoners never wash their hands. In my prison not even the kitchen has a sink so that they use the money trashcan. But I should
probably think about changing that because seriously... Just because they're in prison doesn't mean they lost the right to have some personal hygiene other
than just cold showers.



Ah, that makes sense. I personally have the cells locked so only the respective inmate can enter them because my warden would often sleep in the prisoner beds
even though his is much more luxurious



No, McKenzie was the last name of my first sim family... 10 years or so ago. I used a name generator and that was the name it gave me.



The door lock mod sometimes doesn't apply the lock filters fast enough which causes sims to be able to go through doors they couldn't enter normally.
Also if you switch the active household sims will end up on the front lawn anyway, which I find annoying. It seems that Carolin and Stefan really are a match
made in heaven. You should think about building a conjugal cell with a double bed in it Also I would've punished Stefan with some solitary cell time for
entering another prisoners cell but hey, I have the mean, hot-headed warden, not you



Oh, it sounds awesome to have a nice, friendly warden who wants to change something in the prisoners life. I might have to "borrow" that idea because I'm
getting tired of the "mean and evil warden" shtick already. I really like your prisoner uniforms. Sadly I kind of have a quirk so I would be bothered by the different
sizes of the stripes of the male and female tops. I also had a problem with the male shirt not having white nametags and buttons on my old uniforms. Thanks to
Enki they're perfectly the same now.

About the photostudio mugshot... Well it is most useful if you have the door locks mod and want to send your currently controlled prisoner to bed or lock him up in
his cell. If you don't have some way of identifying the cells you have to check every lock for the right one and that's just annoying. I just wish I could use the detective
career mugshot device because that would have the prisoners standing infront of a height chart and they would pose and hold a name / info plate infront of them.
I'm really sad that many of the career objects can't be used for normal interactions... You for example cannot sleep on the medical beds on a private lot even though
sims in the hospital can.

I hope one day someone enables all these objects for use on private lots.



Congrats! Which skill did you maximize? I know how it feels to let your first prisoner go, I had a bit of a nostalgia attack when I released Trisha If you don't have more
than 8 Sims in your household you can always move them in somewhere in the neighbourhood. If you have over 8 Sims (with the full house mod) the only way of
releasing prisoners is to delete them via the mod or to kill them.

From what I´ve seen prisons are quite popular outside challenges, too. Simlogical for instance has a whole page dedictated to prison stuff for Sims 2.
Me, I´ve played prisons, penal colonies, labor camps and the like from the worst kind to the most benevolent ever since Sims 1.
In Sims 4 I started Willow Creek/Oasis Springs Penitentiary very early, before the pool patch was released. I put in every evil sim I could find and after a week had them spend all their aspiration points on potions. Thus they bought themselves free from that trait (with cas.fulleditmode) and the potions then went to the jailor (my original Gordon) as his payment.
One of the inmates was Gordon´s sister in law and she had an affair with Malcolm Landgraab, but they had to hide it from Gordon, naturally... fun times!
The prison is no longer needed, because I found a mod that nukes the evil trait altogether from the game. The building now serves as a training center for astronauts.


Gordon has the Romantic trait, so he understood and pretended it never happened He´s dissatisfied with how this place is run anyway, with prisoners getting medicated and him living in an unfinished apartment, so he tends to rebel against his superiors.
But even he can be driven up the wall: One day he had Stefan walk around the yard in his underwear. By that time Stefan also had a full bladder, so he looked real miserable.


Mischief - After I had leveled it a bit, Stefan chose mischief actions autonomously, so it was easy. I thought hard about how that particular skill would make one count as rehabilitated in the eyes of the law and came up with the idea that Stefan was drafted for the Secret Service Career. I imagine the time in jail taught him self-control. He is still Mean and Noncommital, but no longer a slave to those traits.
Stefan also had to throw a party. After all the fake ones he had invited the others to while leveling, it was long overdue

And a very sweet thing happened: The day after I moved him out, Stefan came visiting. Obviously he wanted to check on his sweetheart - they had become engaged the day before I let Stefan go.

Yes, I remember the sims 2 prison stuff from simlogical, I had my fair share of fun with it too I've only recently started to grow interest in prison and police related
challenges for the sims, mostly because I've been watching a lot of orange is the new black and prison break lately. I hope I don't offend you with my question but...
Why get rid of the evil trait? Are you a christian or otherwise religious? You don't have to answer, I'm just curious.



Ah, poor Stefan but nice of Gordon to not send him to solitary untill he feels very uncomfortable... Which is what Mendez does as soon as somebody dares to get
out of line. I think pretty much everyone of my prisoners was in solitary once, most of them for entering the warden's office or his apartment.



I never even thought of social skills like mischief, charisma and comedy being an option but of course maximizing these also frees a sim. I really like the thoughts you put
into your story and how you make sure that everything is logical, the secret service career is such a good idea. It reminds me of catch me if you can or white collar where
criminals are freed to help the secret service because they have a very specific set of skills that is useful for the agency.



I hope Carolin gets out soon too so that they can be together Glad you didn't have to kill or delete him.
And yeah, I'll restart the prison challenge completely but I'm not sure if I'll do it right now. I really wanted to start up the private hospital but it doesn't work for me at all. Tried
several times but I think the challenge is just not for me... I'm never satisfied with the outcome, not with the hospital, not with the doctor... So I'm really sorry but I don't think
I'll play that challenge

Hello Sukie!
That´s alright, I didn´t finish the Private Hospital Challenge myself. It´s purpose was mainly to give an example of how something that isn´t in the game can be arranged by thinking outside the box.

As for evil, yes, you nailed it. I think the way EA handles that trait downplays the concept to something laughable. True Evil goes deeper than stealing candy from babies or even taking delight in others´ suffering. To me it represents a hatred of everything that comes from god and actively working against salvation. In the Settler Challenge I had an evil sim, my founders´ firstborn, who was posessed by demonic entities from birth. That man made for some very interesting turns in the chronicle, but I want such characters to be unique. The trait came up far too often in townies: "In my class I have ten kids who are slobs, a sqeamish kid, two geniuses and ten who serve the devil." Way too inflationary!
But for others "evil" is just a synonym for "bad" or "selfish", so they´d give the trait to sims that I would not even remotely consider evil. Like EA did with my poor Malcolm Landgraab.

But I talk and talk and know next to nothing about all your other players´ sims, so keep the pics and anecdotes coming please!

I see, it is actually interesting to talk to another christian about this. For me, evil is the intensified version of mean. Mean sims like to mock others and yell at them, they use words to
make others feel bad. Evil sims however have no problem to hurt other sims or fight with them but what really makes them evil is that they enjoy seeing others in misery. It makes them
feel better about themselves. They often feel what we german people call Schadenfreude. So I don't see an evil sim as the envoy of the devil but as a sim that has no remorse for his
actions. But I see the whole game differently, I see it as the simulation of a world without satan. Because the worst sims can do to each other is getting in a fist fight which leaves the
losing sim dazed for a while. Nothing bad happens. No sim kills another sim. No sims get raped or abused. There's no wars. There's no starvation. If that's not a world dominated by
god then I don't know what is. Since in my opinion satan does not exist in this simulation evil sims can't be posessed by him. I see them as a means to balance the world. If nobody
knows what is bad and wrong to do, how will they know what is good and right to do?

But maybe you're right and this isn't a good topic to talk about this in. If you want we could discuss further via pm because I'm very interested in others opinions I'm always curious
and always open to learn about others perception of this world. It's the way I learn

I have a question: How realistically do you all play your prisons? Are you locking up your prisoners in their cells while the warden is asleep? I gave my warden the Never weary trait today, but before I never thought of taking special security measures for the hours when he was asleep. The question occured to me only now.

Also, are visitors allowed? Because discharged prisoners will come back and knock at the gate if they befriended some other inmate or the warden. For now I decide on a case by case basis, whatever I feel like at the moment.
Also I imported my warden´s family from my other save, because he yearned for romance. He already had a date with his wife in his apartment (I use the door lock mod and gave her access to the main gate and Gordon´s living quarters, though not his office).

My prisoners are locked up at lights out. As far as visitors, I have only had two friends of the warden come visit. They enter thru the main gate (it is my only way in or out) and then hang out in her apartment.

Nighttime impression of my current prison and I also have a new warden that I use when Gordon takes a vacation or gets himself suspended:



My mom (who is also a gamer, though not a simmer) dropped by today and I showed her that same lot. She made a "Now how am I to say this politely" - face and then said: "No offense meant, but this house of yours looks like a prison." So it may not be greatest prison in the world, but at least recognizeable for what it is supposed to be

my prison is coming along nicely. I have 5 prisoners now. two workrooms and the yard has a horseshoe pit and a workout space.

Rah, that garden is killing me. Stupid plants always scream for attention when my controlled prisoner has far better things to do, so in the end Gordon does the bulk of the gardening. Sorta like a parent who gets stuck with their kids´ pets after they lose interest in them.

Is there an autonomous gardening mod? The autonomy mod linked in the first post seems to be a little too much for my preference.