Sims 3 Legacy Challenge Scorecard – New Link, Suspended Indefinitely

Greetings, all. It’s been a while since I made any mention of this thing. Last time I did so was in a response to a comment. 4shared now requires a signup to download the file; I said I would get it back on Google Drive and promptly forgot to do so. I have done so. The sheet is now available here. Hopefully the link will work for everyone.

That said, I have decided that I will never give EA my money again. I also plan to refuse any gifts of EA products. This means I will not be playing any more Sims games than the one I have, and the current version, 2.00 (good up through the Showtime expansion), is the last to come from me.

At some point, someone commented asking me for permission to update the spreadsheet since I wasn’t. I granted that permission, but have no link to share with you guys. If someone knows where to find the version being upkept by someone else, please tell me so I can spread the word.

PyroFalkon’s Sims 3 Socialism Challenge

My friend PyroFalkon is a huge fan of The Sims. He was the one who introduced me to the Legacy Challenge, which has taken over how I play The Sims. He has created a new challenge which he calls the Sims 3 Socialism Challenge and is currently beta testing it in Let’s Play form on his YouTube channel.

I’ve enjoyed watching it and since much of my blog traffic is drawn to my Legacy Challenge scorecard spreadsheet, maybe some of you will like the Socialism Challenge, too. Today I’ll talk about the rules PyroFalkon has set up and my thoughts on how things have gone so far.

Sims 3 Hiatus

I recently bought a shiny new Mac. This means a lot of the games I purchased through Steam, including The Sims 3, are not playable until I get my hands on a copy of Windows and set up dual boot through BootCamp. I contacted EA about getting my license changed from the PC version to the Mac version (because I’d rather run it natively), but since I didn’t purchase it through an “authorized distributor” they’re unwilling to help me.

My response: How is Steam not an authorized distributor?!

What it comes down to, basically, is that they want me to buy their products through Origin instead of Steam and refuse to support my purchase. I could call them any number of nasty names, but instead I’ll just refuse to buy a new copy of the game.

What that means for you guys is that there probably won’t be any more updates to my Legacy Challenge Spreadsheet for a while. I might see about getting info on new expansions from the Sims Wiki at some point, but for now I’m just going to lay low. Sorry!

Sims 3 Legacy Challenge Scorecard Spreadsheet

I recently acquired The Sims 3. A friend of mine then introduced me to the Sims Legacy Challenge. The Legacy Challenge was conceptualized for The Sims 2, the goal being to start a new game with one impoverished Sim owning a large plot of land with no house on it and see how awesome you can make his (or her) family by the birth of the tenth generation. Only the founding Sim is created through Create-a-Sim mode; he and all his descendants must mate with non-player-created Sims. Like a royal family, there must be a blood-related heir to the position of head of household. Any Sims moved out of the household cease to be active members of the bloodline and no longer attribute to the success of the family. No Sims are allowed to return to the nest, and the challenge ends prematurely if the head of household dies heirless.

The part that makes this a real challenge is that all Sims born into the household must have all of their personality traits assigned randomly, even if the game gives the player the option to choose. If your heir is insane, hates children, and just wants to sit on the couch all day… well, you can try for baby again and hope for a better Sim or you can make it work.

The challenge’s creator, dubbed Pinstar1161 on EA’s official Sims forums, has set up a scoring method for the Legacy Challenge for both The Sims 2 and The Sims 3. Beyond birthing a tenth generation and building a wicked and expensive house, success in the challenge is measured by things like fulfilling your Sims’ goals (major and minor) in life and keeping portraits of your Sims after their deaths. Full rules for the Sims 2 Legacy Challenge can be found at the Legacy Challenge web site; rules for the Sims 3 Legacy Challenge haven’t been added there yet, but can be read in a thread on EA’s Sims 3 forums.

Now, you may note, as I did, that while Pinstar has done an excellent job of writing the rules out in a detailed and thorough manner, he has chosen not to make a plain ol’ scorecard for the Legacy Challenge. Multiple someones have made scorecards for the Sims 2 Legacy Challenge at different points in time, reflecting changes made to the Legacy Challenge for different expansions. A fellow going by RSKehrer at the official Sims 3 forums has made a printable scorecard for the Sims 3 Legacy Challenge and shared it with the community.

I live my life without a printer and am psychotic about papers getting wrinkles in them (which is likely to happen if I leave a paper scorecard by my computer), so I decided to make an Excel spreadsheet scorecard for the Sims 3 Legacy Challenge. In addition to remaining wrinkle-free, it does all the point calculations for me and can be reused again and again for multiple Legacy Challenge games.

The spreadsheet can be downloaded via Google Documents. (Edit: Check out the newest version.) It is an .xls file with no macros in it. Although I crafted it in Office 2007, it uses only basic formulas, so there shouldn’t be any compatibility issues with older versions of Office or with OpenOffice. If you do have any problems, please let me know by leaving a comment.