Paint the Townies Gorgeous Challenge

**UPDATE: I have moved the brunt of the information for this challenge to its own blog. Listing all the households for all the worlds was not something I wanted to try to tackle on this blog. I will leave this page in tact, but no more information will be added to it.**

Visit Paint the Townies Gorgeous Challenge Blog

If you’re anything like me, you’re always going straight to Create-A-Sim and making your own custom Sim to play with, especially when it comes to writing stories. If you’re anything like me, you feel the townies… are… a plague on the Simworld. However, sometimes I get that curious little urge of… what would it be like to play with the townies? Hmm… then I look at their faces and I cringe, even though they can always be tweaked, as they always do when they show up in the background of my stories. Lately, my cringing hasn’t stopped of course, but I explored my curiosity a bit more and wanted to take things a little further than a simple townie makeover so they could be an extra against my in comparison, much hotter looking Sims. LOL. I’ve looked online a little bit, finding these two challenges that deal with townies, The Townie DecaDynasty, by Carl’s Sims3 Guide, which restricted genetic tweaking, and Aria’s Townie Legacy by AriaGirl77, which was an alphabetical legacy that restricted exterior house remodeling, I thought my challenge might be different enough. I have a suspicion that Aria’s also doesn’t allow genetic tweaking, but it wasn’t stated outright on the rules.

How to Begin:
The main idea I had for starting out was to go into a random world of your choosing, and pick a townie, single, family, whomever you wish, to start off. If you wanted to write a legacy, the single townies might be a better option, but if you wanted to write a different type of story, a family might work well too. Also, if you want to play this challenge without a story, that also works.

How to Finish:
This challenge ends when you have painted your town gorgeous, when all of the original households in the world that were there when you started the challenge have been given a makeover. I’d recommend keeping note of what households were there at the beginning so you can actually know when you’re done. LOL.

In Between Basic Details:

• You can play this with as many or as few expansion packs you have or don’t have. You can also play this with any of the store worlds, or custom worlds.
• CC is allowed, of course, and encouraged, to make your makeovers as fabulous as they can be.
• House remodeling is also allowed and encouraged, money cheats are allowed to make the house beautiful, but when you are done remodeling, the Sim should have a starting account of no more than 10,000 Simoleons. If you’re writing a story, tweak that as you see fit.
• Lifetime Rewards are allowed.
• Any life span you wish is allowed. For some of those more difficult households, with multiple Sims, if you want to try to get all their LTW’s completed, turning off aging is allowed as well.*
• You do not have to stick to the EA description of the household in game if you’re writing a story.
• You can only move on to the next makeover when the previous Sim achieves their LTW. If you are doing multiple Sim households, you may either choose just one main character to fulfill their LTW, or for a bigger challenge you can try to get all of their LTW’s completed.
• You should keep the job the Sim has when you pick it, unless the Sim wishes to quit their job, wishes for a different career, or if their LTW is “get to so and so career” but they’re for some reason in the wrong job to fulfill their LTW. If the Sim is unemployed, you may pick whatever job you want to give the Sim.
• For an added challenge, master the skills the Sim had when you originally started playing them before moving on to a new Sim.

Specific for Story Writers:

• Populating a Lot with Sims – I ran into a problem where I usually build a lot to tell a certain part of the story because it was going to be hard to populate it with the townies… due to the unreliability of people coming over to your Sim’s house. So, I’m making an addendum that says if you’re writing a story, you may build lots and make your own Sims to fill in the background, but your own Sims shouldn’t be the main focus of the story. Your own Sims may of course, interact with your townie in the story, but as far as game play goes, they’re not important.

Things Discouraged:
I’m not entirely strict on discouraging things or even following rules to an absolute T on challenges, so these are things I’m just putting in to make the challenge have some structure, but if it doesn’t work for you, pick and choose accordingly. You can’t fail this challenge, it’s just something different you can do if you so choose.

• The LTW of the townies cannot be changed when you pick them.
• The traits of the townies cannot be changed when you pick them.
• The names of the townies cannot be changed when you pick them. If their names change because of marriage, that is fine. The only names you should make up are babies that are born. If you want to give the original townie a middle name for your story, that is fine, just don’t change their first and last name that they already have.
• Don’t bring people back from the dead.
• If you use the “Populate a Lot with Sims” listed above, do not make one of your created Sims become romantically involved with your townie Sim. The point is to stick as close as you can to avoiding making your own Sims a main part of the story. However, another townie may be involved with your townie. For example, if you would like to have two single Sims who are original households become a couple, that is fine. If you do this, you may choose to fulfill one or both of their LTWs.

I chose these two things (LTW and traits) as unchanging because hopefully it will challenge you to just try to play the townie to their true self as much as you can. If you’re writing a story, hopefully it will help you stretch your writing abilities to maybe writing some personalities that are outside of your norm.

Suggested Story Structures:
You don’t have to write this as a legacy, and if you do, you don’t have to have ten generations. You can write it as a series of short stories, one story for each family you makeover. You can write it into one large story about a town and it’s inhabitants. You can combine this idea with other challenge ideas, so long as you keep the basics of this challenge, which is don’t make any of your own Sims. Instead, make the townies into what you have always desired them to look like.

I will be trying this challenge myself to see if it is even doable or fun, LOL. If you would like to try this challenge or have any questions about it regarding things I may have overlooked, feel free to let me know. Also, if you think this challenge has been thought of before, I would gladly take it down. I don’t want to make anyone think that I am stealing their idea. I feel like I’ve tried pretty hard to look to see what else is out there before making this one up, so just know my intentions are not to be hostile. Last but not least, enjoy.

My Blog for my attempt at this challenge can be found at the link below.

Paint the Townies Gorgeous

Most Recent Chapter Update to my story – Chapter 3: Old Friend – February 25, 2015

Original Households per City – The lists per city will be built as time goes on, since there are so many, it will take me a little bit to get them all written down here.

• Appaloosa Plains
• Bridgeport
• Isla Paradiso
• Lucky Palms
• Midnight Hollow
• Moonlight Falls
• Starlight Shores
• Sunset Valley
• Twinbrook

Other People Doing this Challenge

• MrsOogieBoogie – Paint the Townies Gorgeous with Chi
• jensjch – via YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuzVg_LTgBw

Some Credits

*Thanks to jensjch for the suggestion to turn off aging.