Working on my own challenge!

My legacy doesn't have different goals for every generation, so I can't say much on the first question of the thread.

As for arieltriffic question instead: normal lifespan is indeed quite short, and not very balanced either*. On the other hand, however, a whole legacy it's already very long to play and even longer to write (my whole legacy will reach about 240 chapters). Managing to complete aspirations etc... in such a tight time it's also part of the challenge for many.

*By "not very balanced" I mean that the relative lenghts of the sims life stages (days they're children, teen, young afults etc...") isn't at all proportionsl to real life. In particular, the number of days sims take to reach the young adult stage it's too long in proportion with the young adult+adult+elder stage**. I generally have my heirs have trir kids in the last week of the young adult stage, and this way they turn elders in the teen stage of their kids and die of old age in the first week after the kids turn young adults (without tricks to extend their life). For this I wasn't able to play grandparents at any point in the legacy, just a couple of time they were able to see their first grandchildren once! I think the only way to avoid it is to have them have kids the moment sims turn young adults, but this is usually not the story I want to tell.

** I played some years ago before the High School Years update on the length of life stages and the infants one, but they kept adding the same number of days to the phases related to minor sims as to adult sims, so the final result should be the same.

What fun questions! I guess my general advice is to do whatever makes you happy and ignore everything you know about legacy challenges that does not fit your game style. Make it your own.

For the OP's question: how do you come up with the goals for each generation, is I don't. I've tried those types of legacies and usually I get bored within two or three generations, especially when the intended story does not fit the intended sim. So a challenge says gen three should be a writer and build a library, well what if the third generation is an outdoorsy type who prefers riding? What if someone in the family does not like children and doesn't want any?

Right now, I'm playing a decades challenge, but entirely ignoring the "rules" and making stuff up as I go based on actual changes and events in history where my sims can react to the different events based on their personality.

As for your question arieltriffic, it's basically the same advice, you play as you want to. For me this is how I do it:

• lifespan is on long, but with custom aging through MCCC so the aging match what I want.
• One sim year = five years, making a "real" year be 11 days long and each day a little over a month.
• I don't have an heir sim, I follow the sims I like for as long as I like to, and see where that takes me. When I get bored with a sim they become NPCs and subject to MCCC and neighborhood stories
• I move my sims around in the sim world, and try to give myself as many different styles of gameplay as I can based on my sim's personalities, but also challenging myself.
  

Most of all, I do what I feel like.

Now if I were to start a legacy but didn't want my characters to die, I'd probably turn them into Vampires, then I'd move them around each generation to keep them "hidden" - that way they'd be immortal but I'd still be challenged to try new gameplay as they try to fit into the world.

Zeph , maybe we can ask mightysprite about rule-sets in challenges, I remember that on the old forum she was working on the rules of a funny challenge aimed to explore all the neighborhoods in the game with different traditions (and color choices) for each generation (link)

I thought I made it clear- my bad!

I'm sorry you felt like we weren't helping. I was trying. But I do have some suggestions.

• Rags to riches but with generations: first gen starts out in a rental unit, dirt poor, drop out from high school, menial job, then each generation needs to be better off than the other, working their way up, although I doubt it will take 30 generations.
• Trait-challenge: with each generation you autogenerate a trait for them, that trait becomes their defining trait and everything they do in life is defined by that trait - job, family, aspirations... so if that trait is clepto, they become criminals. The defining trait can only be used once and so you work your way through the traits. Jobs, neighborhoods should also be changed for each generation.
• Similar to the above would be an aspiration challenge - they live their aspirations

I've also seen the ABC-challenge where aspiration and traits and job starts with A for generation 1, then B for generation 2 and so on...it sounded like quite fun.

A generational challenge is, if I'm assuming what it is correctly, exactly what I had in mind, actually!