Decades Challenge Rules: Getting Started

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  • Starting Sims
    • You may start with one Young Adult and find them a spouse, or you may start with a married couple, both Young Adults.
    • You may also include the parent(s) for one of your starter Sims as it was common for multiple generations to live in the same home in 1890.
    • There are no restrictions within CAS – have fun with decade appropriate clothing!
    • Pronouns: Consciousness around gender-neutral and non-binary pronouns didn’t enter the mainstream until the 2010s. This is not to say that the practice didn’t exist before that (it absolutely did), but the way you tell these stories might look different in the earlier decades. Customizing pronouns for your Sims is available for all decades.
  • House and Finances
    • You may not have a home in Del Sol Valley until the 1950s. Any other world except StrangerVille is allowed (StrangerVille’s storyline is not consistent with the Decades Challenge as it is not realistic).
    • Regarding Sulani:
      • It will be significantly difficult to live in Sulani until the 1960s as much of the gameplay and many objects are restricted until the mid/late 1900s.
      • Regardless of the year, the concept of the Sulani Elementals is unrealistic. This supernatural aspect of gameplay may break realism for your challenge, so only use if you are OK with gameplay that is not realistic. This includes the Child of the Island trait, the Island Spirits lot trait, and the “Summon Island Elementals” actions.
    • You should start with only the starter funds for your family (no cheats) and use that to buy any land or house (you may use a home from the Gallery if you can afford it).
    • You can start in an apartment if you are single AND have a job, but as soon as you get married you must move to a house. (Apartments were not ideal places for families in the 1890s as they were reserved for the single and working.)
    • If you would like to use a money cheat for your starter home, you must treat it as a bank loan – you must repay your loan plus 10% interest before your original Sim couple dies.
      • Throughout the game, if you need to add or remove funds from your home:
        • Ctrl + Shift + C will bring up the cheats entry bar in the top left.
        • testingcheats on + Enter will enable cheats
        • money 1500 + Enter will change the amount of your household funds to §1,500 – use with any number to set your household funds to that amount
      • Modern Conveniences: Some game functions require a cell phone or computer, which were not present for the majority of this challenge! Until the appropriate time as indicated in the decade rules, use of these items is firmly restricted with the following exceptions.
        • Cell Phones are allowed, but only because they are the only way to get some gameplay options. You may NOT use the cell phone for chat, text, social media, or  entertainment until the rules specify otherwise.
        • Computers are only allowed for career-specific tasks, Writing (pretend it’s a typewriter), Household, and to Order seeds and books until the rules specify otherwise. You must lock the computer’s security so that only the Sim who is allowed to use the computer can use it (and only when doing career specific-tasks).
        • It may be helpful to use the likes/dislikes feature to discourage music and activities that are not yet decades appropriate. For example, if your Sim keeps autonomously playing games on their phone, set them to dislike gaming.
      • Wars: There are several wars that take place during this century, and your Sims will be sent off to fight – they may or may not return. To simulate this, we’ll use the in-game mechanic of a Cow Plant.
        • There are several ways to get a Cow Plant. You’ll want to have yours fully grown by the time you hit 1910.
        • We will simulate sending someone off to war by having them eat the Cow Plant cake. This will make your Sim Drained.
        • To learn if your Sim survives the war, roll a die after the Sim has eaten the cake once. Odds mean the Sim dies in the war, evens means the Sim comes home!
        • If you roll odds, then your Sim must eat the cake from the Cow Plant AGAIN before the Drained moodlet goes away. They will not survive the second slice of cake . . .
      • Fame: Famous Sims would certainly have existed as early as the 1890s, but what that fame looked like was very different from what it looks like in Get Famous. Hollywood, CA was a city long before 1890, but it didn’t start looking like Del Sol Valley until much later – for instance, the Walk of Fame was created in 1956. In order to suspend our belief as best we can, there are some “fame” features that we will not allow access to in earlier years simply because they way that they are manifested in The Sims is anachronistic. Use your judgement for this – for instance, while there would have been famous chefs in the 1800s, the idea of a “celebrity chef” didn’t really start until the 1950s. As such, you should not have famous chefs in-game until the 1950s.
      • Odd Jobs: Various odd jobs are available for you to earn a little extra money. Given the significant variety of these jobs, it’s difficult to place them within the Decades Challenge structure. Use your best judgement when determining if a certain odd job would be available based on your Sim’s age, gender, race, and any other historical restrictions.
      • Eco Living: There are a lot of aspects around Eco Living and Off-the-Grid that are applicable at various different times, so it is difficult to say that you can or cannot use these elements. Know that environmental awareness as we know it today started in small pockets in the early/mid 1960s and became more mainstream in the 1970s – use your best judgement.
        • Reduce & Reuse lot trait would be appropriate at any time (municipal recycling programs didn’t start until the 1970s, but people have been finding creative ways to recycle trash long before 1890).
        • Eco Lot trait would not be appropriate at the beginning.
        • Fizzy juice drinks would have been around in the 1890s, but you’ll have to suspend disbelief since there is a computer screen on the apparatus.
      • Story Progression: I recommend turning on Neighborhood Stories so that the lives of your neighbors progress along with yours, but this is not a requirement.
      • Scoring: The primary object of the game is to successfully get your Sims to the current day, but if you are interested in keeping score you can use my scoring template to keep track of the score for each Sim as well as your total game score!