The Rules!

[These are the May 2018 revised rules. If you're looking for the classic rules, they're still right here.]

To Begin:

1. Roll for your first generation's parameters and record them somewhere.

Rolls are outlined below. You may roll for all ten generations now, or roll ahead at any point. If you choose to wait, you must at least roll when the first child of each next generation is born, because some rolls (such as Random Traits) take affect immediately.

2. Create at least one of your founder sims in CAS.

Family structure will indicate how many adults you'll need. Children can be born later. If you create less founders than you rolled for (example: you rolled couple, but created only one sim) your sim can find their spouse/whatever in the "wild" in your town.

3. Move your founder(s) into a town.

You're not stuck here. You may change towns or lots at any point in the legacy. You may edit this town to suit you (add career rabbit holes and venues, make things pretty, etc).

4. Adjust the age spans.

You may leave it set to "normal", or tweak the stages to suit you. Do not get to the point where you have created an epic lifespan. A total lifespan of between 90 and 120 sim days is recommended.

You're also free to set weather and moon phases if you have Seasons. Excluding any season or weather type from your town is allowed.

5. Play a legacy!

No cheating! Many quality of life mods are allowed though; see mods section below.


General Rules:

1. This challenge runs for 10 generations. It is complete when the 10th generation completes all of its required goals, or when the 11th generation reaches YA, whichever comes last. It is not required to roll for the 11th generation, unless you want to!

2. You lose if you fail any of the randomized parameters that you're required to meet for the generation. There are no points, no competition... just a fail state to avoid.

3. From each generation, choose a sim to become the heir. The heir must be one of the children that counted in the previous heir's roll for # of children (in other words, the heir must have been raised in the legacy household, but doesn't have to be the genetic child of the previous heir).

Children can be adopted, or moved in from your neighborhood to count as adopted. You do not have to have a roll that forced adoption to adopt. Adopted children can be heirs.

If a sim is not the chosen heir, they must be moved out of the household (kicked out or moved to a new house) within 24 sim hours of aging up to young adult.

The previous generation may remain in the household, or they may move out at any time after their heir becomes YA, provided they have completed their rolled goals.

Generally speaking, the next generation begins when the heir reaches YA. Any previous generation parameters that require a daily or weekly activity are no longer required when the new heir reaches YA, and the new generation's rules go into effect when the heir reaches YA. Some rules take effect when the heir is born however (such as random traits), so it's best to roll for the next generation when the first child of that generation is born, or earlier. If the rule does not specify a start time for a roll, it begins at YA.

If the previous generation still has goals to complete (such as Perfect Careers), they may still complete them after their heir takes over. You only fail the challenge if they die before completing those goals.

4. Your heir has a while to assemble the family structure. You do not need to move in spouses or housemates the second they hit YA (unless you want to). The family structure is about how many sims are around to raise the children. So if you roll couple + 1, your sim doesn't have to have both of those sims around until the first child is born.

5. No cheating! This means no maxmotives, motherlode, kaching, fast-skill mods, etc.

Quality of life mods to keep your town running smoothly are allowed (even encouraged). Aesthetic cheats, such as moveobjects on to decorate your sim's house or town, are fine. Cheats to destroy unwanted items without making $ for them are good too.

6. It is intended that your sims only make money with the activities outlined in their career roll.

But there are some EXCEPTIONS. Exceptions are: (1) you may complete opportunities for money, provided those opportunities don't violate some other rule, (2) making money with the telescope is fine, since discovering stars, celestial bodies and meteors is a random event, (3) so yes your sim may also sell meteors, (4) you may invest in rabbithole businesses and other venues for income [including restaurants built with the Premium Content bistro set, but excluding the resorts from Island Paradise], (5) any teens in your household may have part-time jobs if you wish, (6) children may hold bake sales, (7) a kleptomaniac may only sell items they've stolen if they are in one of the two criminal career branches, (8) your sim may receive donations from blogging regardless of what career they rolled [you may not ASK for donations or sell your blog, unless you have rolled Journalism, but if you get unsolicited donations, you may keep them].

NOTE: Your sim may begin their career as soon as the game allows them to do so. If your heir has rolled artist, and you know which child will be heir, they may begin selling their paintings as soon as childhood.

NOTE: If you roll a career that requires your sim to sell items they collect or create, they may only sell items they collect or create themselves. No using an artist sim to freely sell paintings their grandmother created, for example.

NOTE: you sims are not required to do well in their careers unless they have rolled something that says they are (such as Perfect Careers). As long as they are registered with the career where applicable, they're free to put in as much or as little effort as you want. It's OK to be demoted in a rabbit hole job, just don't get fired.

NOTE: selling things you have bought in buy mode is not considered income. You may sell old stuff to make room for new stuff... or just because! Normally furniture and decorative objects depreciate in value anyway, so it's a net loss.

NOTE about random gifts from weddings, celebrity status, simport, attraction system, whatever: you may NOT sell these items. You may keep them in your house and use them, or delete them without receiving money for them.

NOTE about salvaging furniture from dumpsters or the art school rabbithole: you may keep any furnishing you pick up, but you may not sell them (unless your sim is in the Dumpster Diving career). If you don't want what you got, you may delete it without getting money for it.

NOTE: if an activity isn't covered under your career roll or under an exception, it's probably not allowed for the challenge.

NOTE about the time portal from the ITF: You may delete it, but you may not sell it.

NOTE about the free stuff in Oasis Landing: you may not sell anything obtained in Oasis Landing, unless your sim is in the Adventurer career. If they are in the Adventurer career, they may sell items looted from tomb-like places, harvested or scrounged up.

NOTE about the lottery from ITF: do not do this unless it is for a quest chain.  If your sim wins the lotto, they must give all of their winnings away to charity, or you must remove them with cheats.

NOTE about anything not covered: if it feels sneaky or cheaty, why are you considering it?

7.  No aging sims up early. You must wait for them to age up naturally, or use a cake on the day they would naturally age up (wait until it says 0 days in the age bar).

8. No life extending nonsense for human sims in your household. There are many forms of this nonsense. Avoid it. Supernatural life states are still allowed, even though some of them have an unfair advantage. You may mod supernatural life states to be longer or shorter. Your sims may keep death flowers, but try to remember to take them away from elders.

NOTE: if you have Pets, non-minor pets will harass the Grim Reaper if the Grim Reaper attempts to collect a sim they have a high enough relationship with. This will spare an elder's life and reset them to the beginning of the elder stage. Take any means you want (mods or cheats) to avoid making use of this feature for elders. I personally recommend a mod like this one.

9. If you have Ambitions, you must enable laundry by placing at least one hamper on the lot on day 1.

10. If you have World Adventures, you must not use vacation destinations to have free skilling days. You are allowed to freely skill photography, martial arts and nectar making while away from home. Other skills are limited to one level up per trip taken. Skilling that comes as a side effect of anything required for an adventure opportunity is allowed, as is athletics training while solving tomb puzzles or practicing martial arts.

If you have Into the Future, you may not use Oasis Landing as a free skilling area. Your sims may level the Advanced Technology, Bot Building and Laser Rhythm-a-Con skills freely in Oasis Landing, but are only allowed one level up per sim week (Sunday-Saturday) for every other skill.

11. You are allowed ONE reroll of objectives throughout the entire challenge. Use it carefully. For extra rerolls, see Misc Fun Roll - The Joker. If you gain "Joker" rolls then these stack. (You start with one re-roll, then if you roll "The Joker" you'd have two, provided you didn't already "spend" the first re-roll.) Note you may only re-roll for a single category! You may not scrap an entire roll.

12. You're allowed to reroll a career if you do not have the associated rabbit hole in your town and do not want to move (consider adding it to the town, though).

You may also re-roll if you get the same career twice within the same generation. For example, your heir rolls culinary, and so does their spouse. Re-roll for one if you like, but not both.

You may also re-roll if you have rolled it for consecutive generations. For example, you roll Journalism in generation 5, then again in generation 6. You are allowed to re-roll the career for generation 6 until you get something that is not Journalism. If you roll Journalism in generation 5 and 7, that is not consecutive. Note you are not required to reroll, the option is just there if you want it.

13. Last Generation free choice: When you reach generation 10, instead of rolling for all categories, you may set one category aside and simply choose the result. This is to reward you for reaching generation 10, and to help hold your interest in generation 10.

14. Pets. You may have as many pets of any type as you want. You may only make money from them if you roll a career that says you can. You may obtain pets at any time. If you want to create a special pet for your family in CAS, you may do so, but you must not keep the money the pet brings from a merged household. You may use cheats to remove the extra cash, or you may add the pet to a temporary host family and then use a mod like Nraas Master Controller to add that pet to your family.

If your Sim is in the Equestrian career, you may not sell any pets you acquire by creating them in CAS and adding them to your family. You may only sell their offspring or use the stallions as studs.

15. If your roll is impossible because you don't have the associated expansion pack, re- roll for that category. If any roll becomes impossible for you to play due to glitches, you may also re-roll for that category. Don't worry about it. Do what you have to do to save your game.

16. Do not abuse the simport feature for lifetime happiness points. Respect the spirit of the challenge.

17. With the University Life EP, you may send your founder(s), heirs, spouses, help, and even your spares to University. We will not have a roll for sending heirs to Uni or not, that's the player's choice. (If you want this chosen randomly, you could flip a coin).

-Sims may not hold careers or professions while at Uni, so only your heirs/spouses/help that have rolled a self-employed career like artist will be able to earn money at their careers while at college.

-Your heir/spouse/help may also take day jobs from the Uni jobs board (found outside the dorms). They may only take one job board job per day.

-Some of the Uni rabbit holes offer opportunities for employment. To take one of these jobs, your Sim must have rolled an associated career.   [Nude Modeling is restricted to: Artist, Photographer, Film, Stylist, Acrobat and Art Appraiser.]    [Test Subject is restricted to: Science, Military, Freelance Science, Inventor, Medical]

-Concerning scholarships: You may have any Sim you send to Uni take the aptitude test and get scholarship money and/or bonus credits. Once your Sim is at Uni they may NOT apply for extra funds.

-If you choose to bring a spare to uni, they may not earn money in any way. Once the spare graduates Uni, they must move out within 24 hours.

18. You can use any lifetime happiness rewards, except for these ones: Moodlet Modifier, No Bills Ever, Motive Mobile, Inheritance.

Do not use the food replicator if you have rolled homemade or living green.

You may NOT sell items you bought with your sims' lifetime happiness points! If you don't want the reward, you may shift+click to delete it without adding funds to your family. Alternatively, you can sell them, but then get rid of the cash with mods or cheats.

19. If you really, really hate a roll, you can exempt yourself from it. We have players that refuse to play with the celebrity system, players who don't like deadbeat parents, etc. We want this challenge to be fun, not torture.

20. If you decide to blog about your legacy adventures, remember to share them with us at the thread for this challenge at MTS. Okay, this isn't actually a rule, haha. We can't force you to blog or share, but it's fun to see what other people are up to, so we encourage it.


Premium Store Content:

Some of the premium content available at the EA store can be incredibly cheaty. We don't want to ban players from using objects they paid real money for, but we have to put some restrictions on using these items if they go directly against one of the challenge's rules or make a career or achieving a generation goal trivially easy. Anything that simply hands your Sim money for the asking will be restricted.

If you have any questions about what features might be restricted on a premium store object, please ask in the MTS forum. But mostly we assume people can police themselves.

Here are some notable restrictions players came up with, please try to use them as a guide on what you should do with your store content:

1. The Wishing Well from the Lucky Palms world: You may use the well to wish for Happiness, or for Love or a Child. You may not wish for Wealth or Power.

2. The SwiftGro gardening thing: This object fertilizes and talks to all plants at once, making gardening ridiculously easy, and it thus banned for Sims in the gardening career. Also, a Sim who has rolled Fulfilled as the generation goal and chosen Perfect Garden as a LTW may not use the SwiftGro station to do the gardening. You may use the seed identification feature if you like. You may also use the auto watering feature.

3. The Multi Tab 6000 tablet: The tablet allows you to skill up on multiple skills at once while doing other, more fun things. Therefore, skilling using the tablet is forbidden for the challenge. You may use the tablet for entertainment or other non-skilling functions.

4. The Playpen and Walker from the Gold Edition of Aurora Skies: both objects are banned if you've rolled Perfect Children. They should be banned completely, because they refill all motives while teaching skills. We can't make anyone use mods, but it is highly recommended that if you want to use these objects in this legacy, you  use a mod that takes away the motive gain.



Mods:

1. Playing a legacy is almost impossible without mods like Overwatch, and you'll probably need some non-EA Story Progression, just to keep your town alive. These mods are fine.

Nraas MasterController is used by most of us as well, to clean up glitches and monitor our game. Viewing an unknown sim's traits or using the stylist option on them with MC isn't considered cheating. You may also use these mods to block some expansion pack related things from the town if you wish, such as celebrities, tourists, paparazzi, supernaturals, and animals. These features add rage and/or lag to the game, and we understand some people want nothing to do with them.

2. Super Commander from awesomemod has the capability to automate some ambitions jobs. Do not use this!

3. Other allowed mods: stuff that doesn't give you some crazy advantage, but helps you with screenshots or adds life to your town or whatever. For example: a mod that gets rid of the ice cream truck, or a mod that lets your sim invite other sims to join them at the bubble bar.

4. It's okay to use mods to get rid of unwanted days off work.

5. Some mods allow younger sims to have traits normally restricted for older sims. This is allowed.

6. You may use MasterController to edit vanilla/face 1 sims in CAS, including children you've just adopted. You may also edit residents in your town before you start playing, if you just can't handle the way they look, and are having nightmares about them breeding and populating your town.

7. We've decided this mod is OK, since it makes no sense that you can't buy camping gear at the general store anyway.

8. Mods removing the annoying freakout-impulse when a sim spots another life state, such as SimBot, are allowed.

9. You are allowed to use mods that enable teen or near relation woohoo, and teen or same sex pregnancy. Risky woohoo for your legacy family is allowed while you still have available slots for more children. Once you have had all the children you rolled for, you must not use risky woohoo or autonomous try for baby in your legacy family.

10. The robotic hand of god from awesomemod is not considered to be cheating, and even if you don't use the mod you are welcome to perform the actions yourself.

11. Twallan's career mod is ok to use for the most part, but your sim may not take the associated part time job if they have rolled a career for that rabbithole, as it will grant them too much instant advancement.

12. Nraas Relativity is allowed for this challenge. It helps the game run much more smoothly.

You can see our simplified discussion on what the mod does here, though for a more complete understanding, read the Nraas Relativity FAQ.

I recommend changing the speed setting to 19 (you will get a message about time running at 0.5 speed), and leaving other settings alone. 23 is another popular speed setting.

13. If you have a question about what mods or features of mods you can use, ask us at the active thread on MTS. We cannot possibly cover every mod here, so we rely on people to use their own best judgment, but if you want our opinions feel free to ask.



Minor Clarifications and Other Miscellaneous Stuffage:

1. If you roll "5 Star Celebrity" and have no celebrities in your town, you may introduce celebrities to your town if it's "Fame Ghosting" (No 5 star celebrities, etc.) There is no limit at the moment on how many celebrities you can introduce, but don't abuse it. Only introduce what you need.

2. Reminder: it is not considered cheating to use the "shift+click ---> delete" method to dispose of unwanted items you cannot sell.

3. Your sim may have children outside of the household, if you wish. Only children raised in the household count towards the # of children you rolled. Only children raised in the household can be the next heir. Adopted children can be heirs.

4. You are allowed to edit your town to add inhabitants and new lots, and tweak old lots to suit you. Don't do anything you think may be cheaty. Examples of cheaty town editing: rolling a collector, and then going in to add a million extra rare spawners. Adding new things to accommodate a career is not cheating, but adding new things in an obviously sneaky way is cheating.

5. UL brings a new Street Artist skill your Sim can master. Unfortunately, once you reach a certain level, your sim will automatically put out a tip jar while making street art. Sims in the Artist career may do this as part of their job. Sims not in the Artist career may learn and practice this skill, but you must use a mod or cheat to get rid of any tips.

6. UL also brings a roommates feature. If you use this, your roommates do not count towards anything in the family structure roll, but you must use cheats or mods to remove the rent they pay your household each week.


Other Life States:

1. Even though some life states are kind of cheaty (or extremely cheaty), we've decided not to ban any of them because we don't want to forbid such huge aspects of gameplay or opportunities for storytelling. If you are more interested in the story aspects of the game, use whatever occults you want. If you are playing for the sake of the challenge, then don't use the cheaty ones like vampires or fairies, or consider getting creative and trying to find ways to limit their cheatyness. We're trusting you to self-moderate your game.

2. Simbots are allowed, if invented. You may invent as many as you can, but they all must move out or otherwise be removed from the household within one generation. All the simbots your sim creates may help with chores around the house, or as babysitters, but may not have a career or earn money in any way other than through opportunities. Treat plumbots like simbots, since we are too lazy to write new rules for them.

3. Concerning Imaginary Friends: if they are made "real" they do not count towards the required number of children, they cannot be the heir, and they must leave the household upon reaching the young adult stage (unless they're kept as the heir's spouse, or something like that).

4. You may use a mod much as MasterController to remove an occult life state from occult babies, toddlers, children and teens born in your household, since they cannot drink the potions. You may also use mods to clean occult life states from anyone of any age in your neighborhood.

5. If you've obtained a genie lamp, you may NOT wish for fortune. If you free the genie, it must leave your household within a day or two, unless it's kept as part of the family structure.

6. Concerning ghosts: With the Philosopher's stone comes the ability to bind a ghost to your household. If you make a ghost a playable member of your household through this or any other means, like the Oh My Ghost opportunity, the ghost must fill an available slot in your household, such as spouse or help, or you can bring a ghost child into the family and adopt it as one of the required children. You may resurrect the ghost back to a living Sim using ambrosia or any other means. You may NOT keep your previous heirs as playable ghosts or resurrect them unless you move them out of the household.




Ready to roll? The rolls are here in detail, and the rolling app is here.


[Please note: the mods do not lurk here! If you have questions, find us at the thread on MTS.] 

Have fun!