Stories and Rules for The Character Trope Challenge for Sims 4

Okay. Okay, this isn’t the usual content on here, but to be fair, I was still having trouble with focus when I started this project. I have since changed meds, and through the magic of lower side effects, I’m beginning to baby-step my way back into writing stories and articles. It’s still slow going, but I’m managing to scrape together the focus to make headway for a little bit most days. So this is likely to be the last Sims 4 Challenge for quite a while.

This one does pertain a bit more to fiction and writing than the Color Spectrum Challenge did, and it gives the player both a bit more wiggle room and a higher challenge than the last one. It is still based around 10 generations, each affecting the next, but each generation is based on a common character trope. Since tropes tend to have a fair amount of variance across genres and even within the same, you are provided with a few options to choose between here and there.

I had a lot of fun while playtesting this challenge. You can even find some of my families and the builds from that play-through on the gallery under Tekaran_Lady. (You may need to tick the allow custom content or modded items buttons. They don’t actually have any CC, but I had MCC Command Center, Wonderful Whims, and the Better Schools mods installed when I uploaded them. Why that automatically counts them as having CC, I don’t know, but it does.)

If you decide to give the challenge a shot, please let me know how it goes. Or if you post about your games anywhere, send links. I would absolutely love to see what you make of the challenge.

The Character Trope Challenge

Generation 1: Fantasy YA Protagonist (a.k.a. The Chosen One)

You were just a normal kid growing up in a small, rural town when one day, this weird, glowing spot opened up under your feet, and you fell. You passed out due to terror and a lack of oxygen while tumbling through what you can only describe as a directionless vortex of light. You woke to find yourself laying on the floor of an apartment so empty it didn’t even have interior walls! 

Before you could so much as get up off the floor, your phone chimed with an incoming message from someone you’d never met before telling you to make sure you paid your rent on time. How you were supposed to do that when a search of what you had on you revealed only an unfamiliar textbook and your phone?

Determined to figure out how to get back home from this odd world where things were the same but also completely different, you scrape by as best as you can, learning as much as possible. Too bad this one jerk seems to be just as determined to make things as difficult as possible. 

Traits: Good, Clumsy, and either Family Oriented or Dog Lover
Aspirations: Renaissance Sim and Big Happy Family
Career: Politician, Scientist, and Secret Agent

• Start as a teen. Move into a starter home or apartment, delete everything but the exterior walls and entrance, and reset your money to zero. Survive, gain skills, and make friends until you age up into an adult.
  
• Either make the antagonist in CAS or pick a random sim with the evil trait. Then, either use MCC Command Center to cheat their relationship to enemies or actively make them your enemy. This sim represents whatever evil the protagonist is there to defeat. 
  
  • Your antagonist should always be a senior coworker at all three jobs. (You may cheat them into the 4th level of each job just before you swap to that career.)
    
  • You have three options for “defeating” your antagonist.
    
    • Defeat: Save the scientist's career for last, become their boss, and fire them.
      
    • Redeem: Befriend and reform your antagonist. Get the friendship bar completely full and orchestrate an incident that will convince them to trade in the evil trait for another.
      
    • Enemies to Lovers: Follow the directions for the redeem option, but seduce them along the way. Fill the romance bar all the way in addition to the friendship bar.
      
• During gameplay, rotate between the two aspirations until both are completed.
  
• Make 20 good friends and maintain relationships with each of them throughout this generation. (They are your “found family.”)
  
• Master the charisma, logic, and handiness skills. Reach level 8 in at least six other skills of your choice.
  

Generation 2: The Bitter Child

Your parents made sure you had everything you could ever really need growing up: love, food, shelter, support, a good education, etc. For a long time, everything was great, and you were quite happy. Then the constant comparisons began.

No matter what you did. No matter where you went. No matter how hard you tried, you were constantly compared to your parent. Did something really well? “You’re a regular chip off the old block, eh?” Struggled with something? “Ah, come on. This should be easy for the child of (Gen 1’s Name).”

It was infuriating. Why could no one ever see you as your own person?

Gradually you became bitter and resentful toward your parents and siblings, who never seemed to mind being seen as little clones. You began to avoid everyone when you could and snap at them when you couldn’t avoid interacting, counting down the days to when you finished school and could move far away.

You’d prove to everyone you could be even more successful and beloved than your parent, and you’d be a better parent to boot, making sure your kids never felt like they had to be like anyone but themselves.

Traits: Jealous, Hot-Headed, and either Gloomy or Self-Assured
Aspirations: Friend of the World and Fabulously Wealthy
Career: Pick One (Politician, Athlete, or Business)

• Be a middle child with a poor relationship with your parents and siblings.
  
  • It can start out fine but begin to degrade in childhood or their teen years, depending on the inciting incident you want to begin their bitter feelings so long as you get the friendship bar either empty or into the red by the time they age up into a young adult.
    
  • Cut ties upon moving out, and shift any and all family gatherings to being your partner or roommates’ families only.
    
• Move to a new world, taking only the amount of money you have earned in your teens, just after aging into a young adult. (If you are working on the fabulously wealthy aspiration, it will show you the amount attributed to your sim up until that point.)
  
• Master the writing skill and 8 other skills of your choice.
  
• Alternate between both aspirations until you complete both of them.
  
• Reach the top of your chosen career.
  
• Write a “tell-all” biography of the parent from generation one, three non-fiction books about your life, and at least one motivational book.
  
• Maintain strong relationships with all your children and grandchildren, encouraging their individuality.
  

Generation 3: The Rogue/Trickster

Even though few seem to get your sense of humor, your parent was always supportive of your pranks and adventurous spirit. You are you, and you can’t help being your authentic self, even if that self is sometimes at odds with the law.

Your parents seemed to have a charmed relationship and ideal, easy marriage, but you have always seemed to have a restlessness about you. “Itchy feet” your mother called it. Who knows whether your inability to commit to a single romantic partner for long is connected with your drive to always be on the move or not, but it’s led to some… interesting situations throughout your life.

Traits: Goofball, Kleptomaniac or Adventurous, and either Non-Commital, Evil, or Childish
Aspirations: Chief of Mischief and Serial Romantic
Career: Secret Agent or Criminal

• Pull regular pranks on your parents and siblings while growing up, but make sure to maintain a good relationship with them regardless.
  
• Alternate between the two aspirations until you complete them both.
  
• Master your career as well as the mischief, charisma, and comedy skills.
  
• Stay in one location growing up. Then move at least six times in your adult life, living in at least three worlds throughout your lifetime.
  
• If you have Wonderful Whims or MCC Command Center, set risky woohoo to at least 25%, and always use that option and leave how many children you have up to chance. (Whether all of them live with you or with their other parent is up to you, but you should raise at least the gen 4 heir. “Pay” $1000 in child support each Sunday for each child who does not live with you.) - If you are playing without these mods, instead always use the try for baby option.
  
• Have at least one side hustle going on at any given time.
  
• Accidentally kill another sim with laughter.
  

Generation 4: The Cursed One

As much as your parent provided for and loved you, they couldn’t hide the fact they kind of resented you and your siblings a touch, which just seems dumb. It’s not like any of you asked to be born, after all, but you were figurative roots tieing them down. And if it was one thing they have always hated, it was being tied down.

If it weren’t for bad luck, you wouldn’t have any at all. That’s what some would say, but you figure it’s more a case of poor impulse control. Things cross your mind, and you just do them without thinking. Or, you are in the middle of doing something when it happens, and you lose focus and flub whatever it was you were trying to do. You try. You really do, but you just keep falling short of the mark no matter what you do.

Your whole life, it’s felt like you’re cursed. You’ve made peace with it, but you are also determined to break whatever “curse” has been placed on your family and help your children thrive.

Traits: Clumsy or Lactose Intolerant, Gloomy or Mean, and either Lazy, Slob, or Perfectionist
Aspirations: Bad Valentine and Successful Lineage
Career: Fast Food, Business, Critic, Social Media, and Freelancer

• If playing with Parenthood, make sure you age up with the irresponsible trait and none of the positive traits.
• Stay in the D to B student range throughout grade school and high school.
• Alternate between the two aspirations until you complete both. 
• Work through the careers in the order they are listed. It’s perfectly fine if you stay at level one, but make sure you never attain better than level 5 before quitting or being fired from them.
• Have three failed friendships and six failed relationships over the course of your life.
• Get married and divorced during the same social event.
• Master the parenting skill, play an instrument, and maintain good relationships with all of your children and grandchildren.
• Have a “surprise” child very young.
• Have at least two lot challenges active on every lot you live in from the time you move out of your parent’s home until you die.

Generation 5: The Comic Relief

The old saying, “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” is rather laughable when you consider yourself and your parent. The two of you are about as close to polar opposites as you can get.
Then again, things didn’t happen by accident. You saw firsthand what a cycle of toxic behavior and festering bitterness over circumstances did to your parent and how hard they had to work to try and undo the damage. Things weren’t always great in your family, but you promised yourself early on that even if they never changed, the cycle would end with you. You studied psychology and applied what you learned in a type of self-therapy, and you took your angst and channeled it into music and jokes.

Lifting the spirits of others, first in your family and then in those outside your small circle, gave you a sense of purpose and filled you with joy.

Also, from the time you began to notice the problems your parent had, and more so since beginning to study and realizing the potential reasons for them, you have worried for them. They’ve resisted all attempts you’ve made to get them to seek therapy, sighting prohibitive costs and a lack of time. So you made the decision that you would “stay at home” to make sure they didn’t get themselves into too much trouble until they passed, got their lives together, or asked you to leave, whichever came first.

Traits: Loves Music, either Creative or Goofball, and either Family-Oriented or Childish
Aspirations: Joke Star and Musical Genius
Career: Entertainer

• Alternate between the two aspirations until you finish both.
• Live with your parent until you reach the top of your career.
• Master all three instruments, comedy, charisma, and writing.
• Write at least six songs, and publish a minimum of three comedy books.
• Marry a loner sim in a career that works afternoons and evenings.
• Be the best parent you can be despite your working hours limiting the amount of time you have with your children.
• Make sure the home stays well maintained, the bills are paid on time, and everyone takes care of their health, especially your parent, who has never been that great at taking care of themselves.

Generation 6: The Lover

Your parents worked evening shifts for most of your childhood, so it was nice that you all lived with your grandparent. You and your siblings spent most evenings watching old movies with them, having them read from their novel collection to you, and listening to them talk fondly of all their past romances. Your parents made sure you all understood a lot of your grandparent’s past behavior wasn’t good. While you understood that, the wonder and fond recollections behind all those stories stuck with you.

You have always been expressive and more than a little extroverted. You love the arts, and your fondest dream is to have an epic love story like those in the books and movies you grew up with and live happily ever after with your one true love. If you can help your family and friends find theirs too along the way, so much the better.

Traits: Romantic, either Creative, Art Lover, or Bookworm, and either Ambitious or Jealous
Aspirations: Soulmate and Trusted Confidant
Career: Pick one (Writer, Painter, or Critic)

• Reach the top of your career, and master writing, painting, charisma, cooking, and gourmet cooking skills.
• Whether you pick being a writer or one of the other career options, write at least four romance novels but gift them to your spouse instead of publishing them.
• While you do love your kids, raising children was never really part of your fairy tale dreams, and you have a hard time connecting with them. Have only one or two children. Provide for them, but have a “hands-off” parenting style.
• Pour all your time, attention, and affection into your career and relationship with your spouse and friends. 
• Say yes to every invitation, unless you are already at a social event or work starts within an hour.
• Keep a well-maintained flower garden and dabble at making arrangements to gift to friends, family, and others in your network.

Generation 7: The Baddie

You’ve always known you were different than everyone else. They frittered away their days on meaningless drivel while you worked toward building the skills and connections you would need on your climb to the greatness you deserve.

So many others would be bitter and resentful of the borderline neglect you experienced when young, but you were grateful for it. Family outings, movie or game nights, and boring conversations would have taken up precious time better spent building your intellect and studying those around you to figure out how they tick. Foolish and frivolous they may be, but people can be handy tools.

Speaking of, you stumbled across the unpublished romance novels your parent wrote and stashed away for some unfathomable reason. They’re actually quite decent. It’s a shame no one is benefiting from their release. …Well, if they’re too self-conscious to do it, you may as well. Waste not, want not, right?

Traits: Evil, either Mean or Hot-Headed, and either Genius or Erratic
Aspirations: Public Enemy and Mansion Barron
Career: Criminal (You may switch to the Villian branch of the Secret Agent career after completing the Public Enemy aspiration.)

• If playing with Parenthood, age up with the Insensitive, Argumentative, and Uncontrolled Emotions traits. Do not age up with the Good Manners Trait, and you can do as you please regarding the Responsible trait.
  
• Alternate between aspirations until you complete both.
  
• If playing with Get Together, use the club system to trick sims into working for you (i.e. painting or wood working clubs), and/or convince members of your household to ghostwrite books for you to publish under your own name.
  
• Immediately hire a nanny upon having a child. Add whichever nanny arrives to the family and have them become a live-in nanny/tutor/housekeeper for all of your children. Hand off any and all childcare, household maintenance, and parenting responsibilities to them, only trotting out your kids to make yourself look better at parties and work functions. (You may use the cas.fulleditmode cheat to tweak the nanny’s traits, age, and appearance. Try to set them up as the type of sim capable of raising the next generation in a plausible way. This may include pertinent skills, though randomize known skill levels rather than setting all desired skills to high levels.)
  
• Most if not all private interactions with the nanny or children should be negative. You’re the kind of parent/employer where perfect still isn’t good enough more or less. Dangle affection and acceptance like a carrot but never let them attain it outside of public appearances.
  
• Master the charisma, logic, mischief, programming, and fitness skills.
  
• Reach the top of either the Criminal or Villain (Secret Agent) career.
  
• Only maintain relationships with individuals from whom you are getting something, be it attention, good PR, money, or free labor. (This includes your “friends” and family.)
  
• Actively antagonize any and all good sims you meet. 
  
• Make at least three enemies.
  
• Die in any manner other than old age.
  

Generation 8: The Warrior

Your childhood was…interesting and more than a little traumatic. 

Let’s face it, your parent was a garbage sim who saw your other parent, you, and all your siblings as nothing more than tools to get what they wanted. You spent far too long trying to rationalize it away. If you could just be stronger, do better, maybe things would get better.

Thankfully, you and your siblings had at least one good role model and loving adult in your lives in the form of your live-in nanny/tutor, who was far more of a parent to you all than your birth parents.

The twisted thing is, you thought this was all normal until you went to school and made friends with other kids in actual healthy, loving families. This helped you see the flaws in yours for what they were, a narcissistic tyrant making life miserable for those they claimed to love and only doling out crumbs of affection when in public and pleased with your performance.

With this realization, you became even more grateful to your nanny than ever before, since they provided you with as much love and support as they could and tried to shelter you from the worst sides of your parents. You swore you would grow up to be like them and do everything in your power to protect those you care about. You studied and disciplined yourself, building yourself into someone who could stand between evil and those who cannot defend themselves. 

Also, you vowed that somehow, someway, you would find a great love for yourself and build the happy, healthy, loving family you, your siblings, and your nanny deserved.

Traits: Active, either Self-Assured, Ambitious, or Creative, and either Loves the Outdoors, Bookworm, or Gloomy
Aspirations: Bodybuilder and either Soulmate or Bestselling Author
Career: Pick one (Athlete, Police, or Freelance Writer)

• Grow up with a very poor relationship with the parent from Gen 7 and close relationships with your siblings. (You grow up being very protective of them and maybe your other parent, depending on their traits and behavior.)
  
• Master the fitness, charisma, logic, handiness, and writing skills, and reach level 6 in three others of your choice.
  
• Reach the top of your career if you choose the athlete or police career. Earn the freelancer award and complete the bestselling author aspiration if you choose the freelance writing career.
  
• Achieve and maintain full friendship and romance bars with your partner, regardless of whether you choose to do the Soulmate or Bestselling Author aspiration.
  
• Have at least two biological children and adopt two more. Build and maintain high relationships with them all.
  
• Live in at least four worlds over the course of your life.
  
• Keep in contact with your siblings, nieces, and nephews.
  
• Host big family reunions on holidays and during the summer, and have outdoor games, grilling, and swimming and/or basketball be a big focus of them.
  
• Pick writing, gardening, fishing, reading, or painting as a hobby and “indulge” at least once a week to destress.
  

Generation 9: The Sage

You grew up in a big and chaotic but loving family and traveled around a fair bit. Although you can’t complain about your childhood, you began to crave a far quieter and more settled life as you grew up. Yet, you could never shake the “itch” to learn as much as you can about anything and everything. Maybe that’s why you became obsessed with the aliens who migrated from their homeworld of Sixam.

They’ve always given off an air of being open with their knowledge, but they seem to all be masters of talking openly without ever actually sharing anything. Additionally, to public knowledge, no sim has ever been to Sixam or even really understands the technology they brought with them. You are determined to be the first to travel to Sixam and discover the secrets they’re hiding there.

While you have friends and enjoyed a few romantic dalliances here and there, you’ve never felt the urge to settle down. The process of gestation and birth creeps you out a bit, so you have never really wanted biological children of your own. Yet, it seems a waste to never pass on the skills and knowledge you have developed over the years, and you wouldn’t mind having some company now and again. So, you decided to adopt a child to raise as your own, whom you hope will one day continue your research.

Traits: Perfectionist, either Genius or Bookworm, and either Loner or Hot-Headed
Aspirations: Nerd Brain and Freelance Botanist
Career: Scientist and then selling plants, alien artifacts, and serums.

• Master at least one instrument, logic, rocket science, handiness, programming, and gardening skills as well as two other skills of your choosing.
  
• Use satisfaction points to purchase the mentor trait before you master the first skill.
  
• Never have a lasting romantic relationship or biological children. (Unless you get abducted and become pregnant as a result.) Adopt at least one toddler or child and mentor them in at least two skills, helping them reach a minimum of level 8 in those skills before they age up into a young adult.
  
• Leave the science career and move to a “remote” lot upon reaching level six. Make all your money from that point on via gardening and/or selling collectibles, alien artifacts, and serums that you make in your home lab.
  
• Travel to Sixam and bring back cuttings from the alien plants. Splice them in your home lab, and once you harvest fruits and flowers from them, make a secret alien garden hidden in the Silvan Glade lot to protect your source as you continue to research these new species.
  
• Live like a hermit upon moving after quitting the scientist career, but still offer help to any who asks you for assistance.
  
• Write several (3-6) non-fiction books on your discoveries and gift them to your child rather than publish them.
  

Generation 10: The Outsider

You were adopted by a virtual hermit from a completely different culture than the one you were born into. While they loved you and taught you all they could, their self-isolation made it so that they didn’t think about helping you integrate into this new culture whatsoever when you were growing up.

You had no way of knowing just how much this oversight would impact your life until you moved out on your own. The excellent education you were provided has proven your greatest boon, and being useful causes others to cut you a bit of slack for being “odd” they probably wouldn’t have otherwise.

Never one to back down from a challenge, you simply add learning to acclimate to the culture you were adopted into to your list of life goals.

Traits: Geek, either Loner or Outgoing, and either Bookworm, Insider, or Neat
Aspirations: City Native and The Collector
Career: Pick one (Doctor, Freelance Photographer, or Unemployed i.e. make money via skills and collecting only.)

• Don’t have any friends or close acquaintances outside of your parent until aging up into a young adult.
  
• If playing with the Better School’s Mod, use the computer that allows you to attend lectures from home all the way through school. Spend any extra time either skill-building on your own or helping your parent with their work.
  
• If playing as an occult sim, do not hide your occult form at any time throughout your childhood or for at least the first week after becoming a young adult and moving out. (Your parent was always cool with you as you were, so why wouldn’t everyone else be?)
  
• Move to a more heavily populated world upon aging up into a young adult, and set out trying to make friends.
  
• If playing as an occult, only ever hide your “true nature” when in public. Drop your disguise when at home. (You may wear the disguise only if hosting a social event.)
  
• Have at least three failed relationships. If you marry, only marry a sim who loves all sides of you, especially if playing as an occult sim.
  
• Alternate between the two aspirations until you complete both.
  
• Master ten skills of your choosing.
  
• Make 20 friends and 10 good friends before aging up into an elder.