Playing their neighbourhood as post-apocalyptic, forcing them to endlessly mill about hungry, dirty, sick and afraid, while being forced to watch as the few friends and loved ones they had succumb to radiation sickness/infection/zombies and knowing that at any time a squad of "government" troopers might walz in and shoot them for any crime (real or made up) and/or confiscate the shed they call home, sending them to live in the ruined street or take their sons/brothers/husbands/fathers/friends as conscripts or split up the family altogether to be used as servants or aides in other households. All this and knowing they migt very well fall to insanity as they grow older.

The Apocalypse Challange is pretty messed up when you think about it...

I had sim live through days without any furniture (included beds) except for a fridge and telephone. I tried to test it as a challenge, but I unlifted the bed restriction it since it was to an hassle to wait for your sim to collapse/fall asleep standing, with non much of a good result as they don't manage to sleep enough and fulfill the energy meter decently enough.

While I haven't done one thing (for long enough of time to) quench my sinister thirst: I will attempt to trap a sim in a room via Magivestigium+Appello Simae and kept him/her there while my warlock tortures the victim with spells, and with the help of "no reagents needed for spells" mod.

Once, long ago, in place called Strangetown, there was a townie by the name of Jill Smith, known as The Other Jill Smith. She was very annoying but couldn't be blocked by Visitor Controller for fear of blocking Jill Smith of the Smith family. One day she was especially annoying and her first name was suddenly changed to Dopey making it possible to banish her from public areas. (:

Then there was the time I was intentionally trying to have Olive bumped off by ghost attack. Silly Ophelia could not stay out of the way and died about 4 time by Lyla Grunt who seemed to have a grudge against Ophelia. Finally her death was just accepted as collateral damage and Olive finally met her fate by the hands of an ex. (:

I've misread it a few times as "coolest" things.

Hmm, I had Jill Smith and Tank Grunt married then she got pregnant with Buzz's child. Then I killed all the Grunt boys.

I think that's why I've never played any of the challenges. They all seem to involve suffering and/or danger for the Sims in them. The usual criterion in my game is that whatever we do, my Sims have to enjoy it too. If I ever come across a challenge that I and a Sim, or a group of Sims could enjoy doing together, I might take it up, but I won't endanger their lives or cause them unreasonable suffering. I suppose that basically I just don't do cruel things to my Sims. I love them and I find it easy to empathise with them.

I have played that apoc challenge and Calista' very difficult homeless challenge but I never thought that as being cruel to the sims. That was the world as it was and I did my best to still keep them as happy as I could given the bad circumstances. To me being cruel to a sim would be something deliberate such as starving them on purpose.

I guess I just really like the element of "yes things are horrible now, but if my Sims and I work really hard then we can fix things". I'm kind of a sucker for stories that start with a dark/hopeless/awful situation and show how things can improve

Yes Jo, you're right. It's not the same as deliberately starving a Sim or setting the room on fire. What I don't like about the challenges is that they often have artificial rules that greatly increase the risk to Sims lives (like not allowing fire alarms). I could imagine that I might one day play a story in an apocalyptic scenario, but I'll keep my No More Fires mod -- I just never want to watch anyone burn to death. A few years ago ttowntallyho posted a picture of a Sim who had just died in a kitchen fire in an apocalypse 'hood. (Actually she had left the game running unattended for a couple of minutes.) The picture nearly gave me nightmares -- I couldn't sleep for thinking about it. (What disturbed me most was a Sim in the background with a fire extinguisher in her hand. I felt I was intruding on a moment of intense private grief of someone who had just tried to save a loved one, and failed. I knew I couldn't face watching something like that in my own game. Hence the No More Fires mod.)

But I think really I'm not so very different to you. When you describe doing your best to keep them as happy as possible given the bad circumstances, that's pretty well the way I play the Newsons in Veronaville. I have immense admiration for Ginger. She does an amazing job keeping the children and toddlers happy on the pittance that Gavin can earn in a teenage job, but the strain is showing on her, and to a lesser extent on Gavin. Because of the way I play I "know" they'll pull through in the end, but at the moment they are suffering from fairly extreme poverty. Others in Veronaville have noticed their plight, but Ginger might be too proud to accept charity, and anything they do get they'll give to the younger children.

[EDIT]
Maybe I am too. And maybe, by my own standards, I'm being cruel to Ginger and Gavin. I have promised Ginger that her suffering will end one day. I'm not sure if she believes me though.

You do over overestimate the danger though Andrew, like with the pool. I have had very few deaths about 2-3? In all my years of playing sims 2. Not counting sims 1 deaths since those pixels are twice as hard to look after. People whose sims die all the time from watching lets plays simply don't take of needs often enough. When something happens eg a lightening strike, instead of it being unpleasant-maybe pee on themselves, instead their sim dies. I have had lightening strikes in hot tubs, electrocution from fixing computers but never had anyone die from those things. Swimming pool never. The only things that have caught me short were tree fires and only because there were multiple sims who caught themselves on fire. I now have a mod for less tree fires because honestly trees do not catch on fire that often!

My cave sims and peasants in my medieval hood have no fire alarms but no one has died there either. I do make sure they don't use a stove with zero cooking points, use the extinguisher quickly etc. It was the cave man legacy that made me put in the less tree fire mod since the rocks at the front of the cave were always catching on fire.

I guess I don't actually have fire alarms in my frontier hood...but I honestly forgot I didn't have them! No one's burned anything at all; there hasn't been a single fire so far. Of course, I also had my sims study "fire safely" or whatever it's called, but so far it's been completely unnecessary. I think, as Jo said, the most important thing is to keep them from using the stove until they have high enough cooking skill.

I will say again that in all my years of playing Sims 2 I haven't had an *actually* accidental death unless I used something like that broken "realistic sickness" mode. Each time a Sim died in a fire, in the pool etc it was either a situation I had provoked with the intend to kill them off or in which I simply chose not to intervene on their behalf.
Truth be told I find it pretty hard to even provoke situations where Sims would die during regular game play, like how many freaking dirty dishes do you need to have piling up to have your Sim being eaten by flies? I'm asking because I have never had it happen. Likewise with death from fear or electric shock...how low do their motives have to be? Because I haven't managed to kill them that way either... My Sims get struck by lightning and all they get is a wacky hairdo and bladder failure... Sims 2 is incredibly safe.

Now Sims 1, here I agree...iirc Sims 1 Sims die if you look at them the wrong way.

My brother once had a married couple in his game burn to death from woohooing in the hot tub in the middle of summer. Yes, the hot tub, which is full of water, lit on fire. They didn't stay dead, though, because apparently Grimmie is quite compassionate to the plight of orphans, so the teen daughter was able to get her dad back, and then then dad just got lucky with the "which hand is her soul in?" game when pleading for his wife.

I think the only time I had a sim die by accident it was a dormie who got struck by lightening twice in rapid succession. It was my legacy founder's boyfriend, and she was at class so she couldn't even plead for him! I know it's against the legacy challenge rules, but I just exited without saving. And the lightening didn't even strike once when I re-loaded the lot (yay!).

Oh wait...I also had a random moron at the secret society get eaten by a cow. I had my sim bring him back as a zombie...

But no sim that I personally created or even one I was controlling has ever actually died of anything other than old age. Make of that what you will.

Edit: I didn't really play TS1 much, I suppose, comparatively, but I never saw a single sim die in that game. I wasn't even sure they could.

Your cave sims have a fire extinguisher? XD

I put fire alarms or sprinklers in my houses and no sim has died from a fire before the fire service showed up. You really don't need 'no more fires'.

Hey, they have to have something, otherwise it would be *rocks fall and everyone dies* The fire extinguisher is defaulted to wood though. So it's a magical piece of wood, so there. :P

This has turned into a pet peeve of mine due to my deep compassion for these Sims. I have watched a few Sims 2 Let's Plays where the player will ignore a Sim's motives for a long time by not having the Needs panel open. I'd end up gawking at the Sim's moods and plumbbob's color, and wonder when the heck the player will finally pay attention to the needs again.

LazyGameReviewer is one Youtuber I find to be an exception due to the humor behind his videos. He does deliberately abuse pixels, including Sims, but that's his style.



That just reminded me of LazyGameReviewer's review of Sims 2 Open for Business expansion, where he accidentally got his girlfriend's undead Simsona eaten by a cowplant. Then the undead Duke Nukem brought her back as a zombie once again.

I can see why Maxis didn't make an undead Sim appear even more decrepit if they're resurrected more than once into a zombie, but I'm looking at the game's unreal logic there. I always do that with any game.

I love LGR! Have you seen his cooking videos? I've been watching him since back when I played the Sims 4! I used to watch him as I played the game to keep from getting bored!

Haven't seen his cooking videos, but I have seen a few of his other game reviews including one for my personal favorite simulation game, Afterlife.

I recreated them in TS3. It was horrible, they all looked like puddings - and ugly puddings at that. They all stood around with their legs apart, staring blankly across Sunset Valley with their terrible soulless eyes. They were devoid of personality, there was none of the charm and humour that I had loved in TS2. Right at that moment, I knew I'd made an awful mistake, and I vowed never to venture down that path again.

I don’t do cruel things to my sims, I like them too much to do that, so I’m always trying to make them have the best life they can have I don’t let them become old or die. However, years ago I wanted to have a haunted house, so I locked townies with a cowplant and waited until they got eaten (I used a mod to keep their motives up, as it tended to take a long time). I chose cowplant, because it was the only method I could think of that didn’t involve seeing them suffer, they just simply disappeared and left a grave. I’m not sure if I could do that now, I like townies more than I used to. Even longer ago (more than 10 years ago I think) I made an experiment and cloned Daniel Pleasant with moveobjects on to see what happens if I kill the clone, I didn’t like seeing him suffering from hunger but I let it happen and it turned out that killing a clone is like killing the original sim. For all I can recall I resurrected him as a zombie, but quit without saving anyway.

Once, I put Olive Specter in her self-created graveyard and put a moat of water around it so she couldn't leave. I made her dig and dig holes and gave the proceeds of what she found to her ever-suffering niece. It took a few Sim days, but Olive finally got what she deserved and ended up in her own graveyard with all those she murdered surrounding her.

Oh, and today my Sim Andrew became irritated at another Sim for TALKING to his new finance. (How dare he!) So Andrew had many hostile interactions to this other Sim, ending up in 3 fights. The other Sim won all the fights. Andrew paid him off and vowed to work out to prevent this in the future. However, the other Sim decided to repeatedly knock over Andrew's trash can! Andrew had enough and invited the Sim in to his house. He then trapped the Sim in a 1 x 2 wall and waited until he died!! Andrew has the wish of seeing his ghost and so it shall be granted. Moral: Do not mess with Andrew and that $50 better mean something!