Rules: Orphanage Project Rules

[Schipperke]

Sure, level 10 of self-employment would be fine.

[Deme]

I have a question -- do both of the sims you use to start need to have the Good trait right away? I kind of had a story idea that started off with one of the two orphanage parents being Evil, but the other would be Good to make donations and things until his traits could be changed through storyline. Would that work?

[Schipperke]

Deme, I think your idea would work very well and should make for quite an interesting story twist.  Good and Evil working side by side?  Oh, yes.  I look forward to reading your story if you decide to go ahead with it!

[revolution724]

Thanks for this!  I really enjoyed reading the "Riches Galore" story and am starting my own orphanage project.  I am going to try to keep track of how much my sims donate to charity, and I have added a couple of requirements for my own project = the parents are to adopt a new baby every week on Sunday, and the parents have to supermax a skill.  Oh, and I am thinking I will run it on normal lifespan, until one of the mains dies (I have two, a gay couple so they can cheer each other up with woohoo but will not spontaneously have their own kids).  We'll see how it goes!

[Anna33]

If they have to do everything themselves does this mean they cannot order pizza?

[Schipperke]

If they have to do everything themselves does this mean they cannot order pizza?

Well, in my story they couldn't.  For one thing, they never did have much money for luxuries like that.  Another reason I didn't let them do things like ordering pizza was that the whole point of this experience was for Pippa and Sebastian to become self-sufficient and stop relying on others to "do" for them.  So I think ordering pizza would have been contrary to the spirit of what we were trying to accomplish there.

However, having said that, I think you should use your own judgement as to what is most appropriate in your own game.  This is a Project, not an official Challenge, and I have no problem with you modifying things somewhat if it seems to fit better with your goals.

[Emily Redbird]

Would it be OK to have a 'liquid' deadline? I'm thinking of having an old lady run the orphanage and see how far she would get before dying... Of course always with a YA orphan living in the house. Come to think of it, what even happens to teenagers and younger siblings if all the adults in the house die?

~Emily

[Schipperke]

Would it be OK to have a 'liquid' deadline? I'm thinking of having an old lady run the orphanage and see how far she would get before dying... Of course always with a YA orphan living in the house. Come to think of it, what even happens to teenagers and younger siblings if all the adults in the house die?

~Emily

Emily, I think it would be very interesting to have an old lady running the orphanage, with the deadline open-ended.  I'm not sure what would happen if all the adults died.  It seems to me I've read that a household with orphaned teenagers can continue (I'm not 100% positive on that, it's just something I think I've read).  But a household with just younger children couldn't continue.  I assume they'd be taken into custody by child protective services or whatever it's called in the game. 

But if you have a YA age orphan living in to help the elder character as you said, you won't need to worry about the children being scooped by the social worker.  It sounds like an interesting story idea and I look forward to seeing it. 

[Emily Redbird]

Emily, I think it would be very interesting to have an old lady running the orphanage, with the deadline open-ended.  I'm not sure what would happen if all the adults died.  It seems to me I've read that a household with orphaned teenagers can continue (I'm not 100% positive on that, it's just something I think I've read).  But a household with just younger children couldn't continue.  I assume they'd be taken into custody by child protective services or whatever it's called in the game. 

But if you have a YA age orphan living in to help the elder character as you said, you won't need to worry about the children being scooped by the social worker.  It sounds like an interesting story idea and I look forward to seeing it. 

Thanks for the support! I'll have to finish a few pet projects first, but I'll definitely try it out

I think I'll test the thing with the teens beforehand. Maybe if they have adult relatives in town... If a teen and a toddler lost their parents and their grandma lived in town, wouldn't they come to live with her? But on the other hand, sims doesn't really make any legal sense (my sim's old Ma lived in town in another household, but when she died, I didn't receive any inheiritance )

Maybe the old lady could be kind of strict ('proper' and 'hotheaded'), but still love her charges dearly ('nurturing' and 'good'). Oooh, I can almost imagine the teenagers skipping classes to take are of their younger "siblings", because Old Lady can't handle it all by herself.
Shoot, now you got me inspired, and now I'll have to write it  The ideas keep popping up like moles in a whack-a-mole game...

~Emily^.^

[Schipperke]

I think I'll test the thing with the teens beforehand. Maybe if they have adult relatives in town... If a teen and a toddler lost their parents and their grandma lived in town, wouldn't they come to live with her?

I don't think so.  The problem with Sims is that you can only control one household at a time.  With Story Progression on, there's no guarantee the other relatives would still be living in the town when your orphanage proprietor passed on, and even if they were I'm quite sure the children wouldn't go live with them - the game just doesn't work that way.

But your idea is interesting, and as you say there are a lot of possibilities to make it a very interesting story.  If you do go ahead with it, I hope you'll let me know as I'd like to see it. 

[Emily Redbird]

I definitely will

~Emily^^

Edit: OK, I just tested it this morning, and it turns out, they can go on if there is a teen in the house.
Please, remind me never to let my sims burn to death again... after they've burned, there is a puddle of melted sim on the floor where they died, and when you mouse over it, it says "[sim name]"... Gross.

OK, I've created the old lady, but I want to practice taking screenshots before I start the story.

~Emily^^

[quinti.sims]

I think I am going to do this ... Looks fun !!!

[kittenalive]

Is it alright to have the main sim(s) have their own children so they can continue this once the parents pass away?

[Luna]

Hi.

This is a wonderful project! I'm interested with this project. I'm not used to write story, but I might want to try that

My questions are:
1. So, how this project will be end? Until our main character reach the end of their life?
2. Can my Sim getting married? But, she will not having children due to this project.
3. If I start with one Sim and she cannot getting married, is there any restriction to move in at least one of world resident for helping this orphanage project? So I’ll treat them as my main character. I love to see original Townie getting involved. I will use cheat to erase their additional money and make sure they started from the scratch
4. Can I use mods? I only use Nrass Overwatch, Error Fix to make sure my game running well and some custom eyes and skins.

I just want to make sure before I getting started right away! I'll be waiting for your answer. Thank you for your time

[Schipperke]

Is it alright to have the main sim(s) have their own children so they can continue this once the parents pass away?

Kittenalive, I must apologize for not responding to your question sooner.  I'm really sorry about that.  I'm afraid I just didn't see it.  My computer was in the shop quite a bit of the summer, and when it finally came home, unfortunately I missed your post.  I hope you're still reading this thread and that a belated answer will be better than none.  The Orphanage Project really only became a project after the fact (after I wrote the Riches Galore story), so it didn't start out as a project with rules that needed to be followed.  In fact, there were no Projects in the forum at that time - this was the first one, and it was written after requests from readers for a ruleset. 

What I'm getting at is, you are free to modify the rules if you wish.  I would have absolutely no problem with you developing your own variation on the official rules.

Hi.

This is a wonderful project! I'm interested with this project. I'm not used to write story, but I might want to try that

My questions are:
1. So, how this project will be end? Until our main character reach the end of their life?
2. Can my Sim getting married? But, she will not having children due to this project.
3. If I start with one Sim and she cannot getting married, is there any restriction to move in at least one of world resident for helping this orphanage project? So I’ll treat them as my main character. I love to see original Townie getting involved. I will use cheat to erase their additional money and make sure they started from the scratch
4. Can I use mods? I only use Nrass Overwatch, Error Fix to make sure my game running well and some custom eyes and skins.

I just want to make sure before I getting started right away! I'll be waiting for your answer. Thank you for your time

Thanks for the interest, Luna.  Again, I have no problem with people doing their own variations on the Orphanage Project.  My Riches Galore story ended when the two main characters had reached the top of their careers and when the game had reached the time limit I set myself (which I think was ten weeks).  Yours could be longer or shorter, whatever works for you.  I think it would be interesting to have an Orphanage Project that continued to the end of the main character's life, if you would like to do that.  Your Sim/s can be married or not, and there's absolutely no reason you couldn't move in a townie to help.  If you do that, I agree with you that it would be a good idea to reset the household funds.  Bringing in a rich townie would make things too easy, in my opinion.

Mods and custom content are also ok for this project.

Good luck, and if you do decide to write about your Orphanage Project, I'll look forward to seeing it!