Alternate versions on posts #160 by Sims2Storywriter, #176 by Lavaster, and #233 by ASHBOOGiiE89.

The Homeless challenge!

Warning: This is really hard. As in, mindblowingly aggravating. It will also be extremely hard, if not impossible, to do this without expansion packs, since your options for earning money are much more limited.

The rules were created for realism, not sanity.

Basic synopsis:
You are one of the thousands of homeless roaming the streets. With little to nothing in your name, can you save up enough to buy your own little lot of land and finally leave the streets for good?

Setting up:
Start off with one sim.
Give them the Fortune aspiration, then roll for personality any way you wish.

The Home Lot:
You found this abandoned lot on the corner of nowhere as a safe place to sleep and sometimes store little tidbits. You dream about someday owning it…

Buy any size lot, then reduce funds to $100(You’re poor, remember?)
You cannot have a house or build anything on the small lot, including swimming pools, etc. In fact, the only thing you are allowed to do in build mode is flatten terrain.

Objects:
-Only small, nonpermanent objects are allowed. Placing anything else on the lot will alert the police to the fact that you are hiding there and might get you thrown into jail for trespassing.
-No toilets, sinks, stoves, baths, or even phones, etc. (*EDIT* Thank you to Engram for bring this to my attention. Non-BV players are allowed to have one phone, but may not use it for anything other than taxi rides.)
-In fact, for most of the challenge the only objects that will even touch ground will be the newspaper or the bills.
-Obviously, without a phone, you are also not allowed to hire a maid (to clean what?), exterminator, etc. You’re homeless, you don’t need it anyway.
-If you have Nightlife, only six tiles worth of portable objects will be allowed in your inventory (so for instance, if an object takes up two tiles, you only have four tiles worth of space left).
-If you do not have NL, you are allowed to place the six tiles of portable objects on the ground.
-Be reasonable: a large statue, though only taking up one tile, is most definitely not portable. An easel, however, is. And a tent is not considered portable for our purposes.
-A few objects seem to be ‘gray area’: the small telescope is considered portable, however, it may not be worth it (it takes up quite a few tiles).
-The grill is obviously not portable, and neither is anything that causes fire, really. The police would immediately notice you and evict you.
-Newspapers and bills do not count towards the 6-tile limit.

Money Matters
You cannot take a job because of your shabby appearance, so the newspaper is essentially only good for the crossword. After that the only use for it would be as a paper plane. Do not underestimate this! Since you are essentially homeless, very few “fun” restorers will be available to you right from the start. Use your resources wisely.

The bills must be paid even if you do not actually own the land. They will represent your other living costs, such as taxi fares (which do not exist in Simcity for some odd reason).

Needs
As you may have assumed, your survival depends upon using the community lots well.
-Most stores will have sinks/toilets you can use, and some will also have food (you may also have to pay for this, so be careful!).
-Restaurants, coffee shops, and OFB businesses(if applicable) are also allowed, so use them to your best advantage.
-However, the player-owned businesses cannot hire you.
-As for sleeping, you are not allowed to use hacks to sleep on community lots, and can only sleep on the floor at your home lot.
-You cannot create an all-in-one community lot specifically for this challenge ^_~

Finishing the Challenge:
The basic goal of it all is to earn $20,000 any way possible.
-Work as a bartender, barista, DJ, anything like that
-You may also (as mentioned) use the easel to sell paintings.
-You can move in and/or sleep with whoever you wish (except for playables), but no hacks are allowed in the process…and remember, you don’t have a phone or computer, so consistent communication with a townie is very difficult.
-You may move one person in only, and cannot use the Ask... interaction about money.
-If a townie does move in, they MUST quit their job (AKA get fired for not going).
-You may not control the townie.
-You must bring the townie/NPC with you at all times (if you go to a community lot, you must bring them.)
-No dates or outings. Period.
-Kids are not allowed out of concern for player’s (remaining) sanity.

After earning $20,000 you can apply to be the owner of the abandoned lot you sometimes haunt (AKA your Home lot), and the challenge is over.

Disaster
If your poor sim dies, you do have ONE grace quit without saving in case of a situation impossible to survive as a hobo in. That's all. Once you get over that, you lose the challenge.
-If you get turned into a vampire, you are allowed to quit without saving. If too late, you are allowed to cheat to return to normal, however, both count as your one grace opportunity.

Points:
+100 for every friend you make
+500 additionally for every love
+1 for every aspiration point
+1000 for every $10,000 (so at the end, if you finish, you’ll get 2,000 pts automatically)

-100 for every enemy
-10 for every day that it takes to get to 20,000 (if you finish)

Expansion pack extras:
No cell phones
No dates.
Obviously no OFB businesses.
The OFB creations are otherwise considered GREY AREA, banned or allowed according to the player's wishes. The stations do count toward the inventory max, however.
No gardening.
In Seasons, arrange the seasons so that there is no Fall.
No digging for treasure.

Of course, if you started the challenge before the rules were edited, you can still continue the challenge so long as you rectify any rule-breaking situations immediately.

Although it might kill me, I might give this a go! Question: if we have AL installed we are given more than the standard $20,000 per single sim, so what would we have to do to get rid of everything? Plant loads of trees? Cover the floor with tons of terrian covers?

Family funds Works like a charm!

Can we dig for treasure?

I second broo's answer, although yes, technically, you could fill it with trees...

No gardens etc for seasons.

Broo: No, too much of an advantage, you see XD

Ha, I sort of did this, not as a challenge, but normal gameplay. You can sleep in tents in community lots if you have BV. Also, other ways to earn money is to search for shells on the beach, dig for treasures, sing for tips, recite poetry. My sim ended up with a lot of friends because of this and an impressive number of crushes.

What an awesome idea! I'm going to give it a try soon :-) Might go and create my homeless sim now, actually......

I may have to create a new handicap for Bon Voyage players as a result of that, although as of right now, in the rules, I specifically indicate that you can only sleep on the ground at the Home lot.

Is the homeless sim allowed to buy a cell phone?

***EDIT*** And how big is the home lot supposed to be?
***Another Edit*** Oooops, I read it again, any size lot, right?

No, no phones, because that would give University players an advantage...plus, how would a homeless sim have coverage? XD

The Home lot can be any size, since it doesn't affect gameplay at all.

I may try this... hmm. -contemplates-

Wow, this does sound interesting -- Could you be a little more clear on the "size" aspect of items?

You list the easel as one item, and I gather from reading the rest of the text, that there are few others.

Could you please give a few more examples?

Thanks

Sure

A good rule of thumb would be whether you could carry the object relatively easily and whether it could be concealed relatively easily.

An easel would fall into this category because most are wood and fold right up, as would a small telescope because most in real life are somewhat foldable. A piano would fail both tests. A guitar is an easier bet since you could just hide it around weeds and such and can carry it in real life.

I forget the name, but the fire burner object that can be turned off and on and roast marshmellows is not allowed because it would be very obvious to the police when you use it.

So, also, like, a small folding chair (like a plastic patio chair or camping chair), a remote control car, a teddy bear, stuff like that?

Yes. Things you can carry without people staring. You can't carry a table, for example.

Cool. I get it I've started already! Are we allowed to post a couple of pictures of our homeless person on this thread?

Why not? It'd be enjoyable, I'm sure :D

Yay! Here he is :D



So far he has earned just over $500. He works mainly as a barista, but has also tried his hand at DJing. He has now bought an easel, and is going to start doing some painting soon :-) He hates sleeping on the ground, and never has a full night's sleep. And it takes AGES to get his comfort level back up!

Thanks so much for the other examples. I was looking at things and was really having a difficult time, lol!

Alas, Clark Kent, young reporter for the Insider Weekly got fired some three months ago ( for trying to report the truth about LuthorCorp,) and he's lost his apartment and Lois is not having anything to do with him because of it.

(He never met Perry White, you see, and so never got past the interview stage at the Planet since he did not go to college.)

:D

Wow...I only have the base game. I might try it I guess we're only allowed to get food on community lots? And can we sell graves for $? Like, if we have a townie move in can we ignore them till they die? (that's a lot of dead people...and best friends....166, I think. XD

XD Well, the point of the challenge is to start fresh and try to survive from there...so if you want to work like that, feel free! As far as my original challenge goes, selling graves is allowed, but since it's quite difficult to actually get anyone to move in, I figure that you deserve it at that point!

Thaissa: Well, let's hope he survives then...it'd be a pity not to have a superhero in horribly clashing red and blue tights hanging around XD

I think that you should only sell graves if you want to kill the hood. Selling graves and urns corrupts the neighbourhood.

I think the challenge is practically impossible with just the base game - no phone, remember? Which means you can't go to community lots. It's basically extremely hard without BV and the option to Walk To Lot. No phone -> no taxi -> no comm lot for players without BV.

I think that for non-BV players a single wall with a wall phone should be allowed and that it should be outside the 100 simoleon starting money. Pretend like it's a public phone, dock the sim 10 simoleons or however much per use (place floor tiles or wall covering up to 10 simoleons for those without the ability to use the familyfunds cheat). The sim should not be allowed to answer the phone, only allowed to use it for comm lot travel, no chinese or pizza delivery, no friend making, etc.

I also think that move-ins should not be allowed. With BV, you can walk to a comm lot, meet a bunch of people and ask them how much they earn, move in the one with three simoleon signs, rinse and repeat a couple of times and the challenge is done within a few sim!days if those sims do a walkby on your lot so you can ask them to move in. Isn't the idea to earn the money, not grab it off passers by?

[slaps self] That's right. Walking to lots was a Bon Voyage thing, wasn't it.

I think I originally planned to let people have phones, but then I realized the whole deal about friends moving in...my goal was to let the players be rewarded if they managed to actually make friends with the handicap of no phone in place. :-/

Although I'm not so sure about the whole move in thing. I'm not particularly used to being accepted when I use the Ask interaction for money...or the one for Move in. What's the acceptance rate on those?

Challenge making is a rather frustrating process...

EDIT I have now changed the phone policy a bit, thank you for reminding me about how late the walk to- lot feature was introduced...

My sim got turned into a vampire. I don't think this is going to turn out well.

...sleeping on the ground? That's very bad...in that case, I should make a new rule regarding situations like this :-/

So many new situations that I didn't expect, apparently days of thinking haven't been enough to plan this out properly.

EDIT: New rule change concerning this. Probably going to change a bit as I review...

This... sounds really fun. I've been bored lately, and I think Copacetic Springs needs a hobo. :B