The Sims2
For those of you who don't know who the Sims are, let me explain.. its a computer game put together by Maxis and EA Games about people. Real people which you - the player - control. You set up how they look, ranging from the hair color and style, to the color of their eyes, the line of their jaw, the shape of their nose.. Weather you want them to be skinny or fat; male or female; white, black, alien, Asian. You can make them babies, toddlers, children, teens, adults, or elders. Teens, adults, and elders have aspirations which set up their life goals such as Knowledge, Family, Fortune, Popularity and Romance. You start off with personality points, and can range them anywhere between 10 of each : nice or mean, neat or messy, outgoing or shy, active or lazy, and playful or serious. And that is just character creation. To go beyond that each family starts off with 20,000 simoliens which are dollars and can spend them how they choose. First they get a lot, and build a house, buy furniture, toys, electronics and all you need to survive. Your child and teen Sims go to school, and teens and adults and elders get jobs. To get promoted you must meet certain criteria of skills ranging from logic, mechanical, cooking, cleaning, charisma, body and creativity. And there are plenty of ways your Sims can die ranging from fires, to drowning, and electrocution, hunger, old age, disease, being scared to death, death by flies and death by satellite.
So now that you have the basics, I am an avid Sims player, from Sims1 and all its wonderful expansion packs to the Sims2 now. (released in early September 2004). I belong to these chat boards made by the Maxis company on their web site, and a few months after the Sims2 was released we were given a first of MANY challenges made by the players. This one in particular made by a player named Pinstar. It caught my attention and here are the rules:
 

The challenge: Make a family the strongest it can be over 10 generations.
The Rules: Start with a single adult sim made with the create-a-sim or bodyshop, male or female. Pick any aspiration. Assign personality points as you want.

Start the family on an empty 5X5 Lot.

When you marry or move sims in, you may only marry or move in townies or NPCs.

Children may move out if you want but you must keep at least one child in the home to continue the legacy.

When children grow into teenager and you are asked to pick an aspiration, roll a six sided dice
1: Wealth
2: Knowledge
3: Family
4: Romance
5: Popularity
6: Pick one yourself

This is to give some challenges and variety as you play through the generations.
Until New years day, 2005, you may change the roll of this dice ONCE to something else.

The 10th generation child must be able to trace family back up to the original Sim by blood.

You may NOT turn ageing off
You may use the elixir of life, but use caution, as you may suffer the jump bug.
You may use any other normal aspiration reward objects.
You may NOT use any kinds of cheats or mood trainers.
You may NOT use any "special" objects such as the platinum-maxing painting.
You may use any maxis-made objects, and any 3rd party skins/wallpapers/floors etc.
You may NOT use the new twins or abduction patches.

No reloading after bad events (bad chance cards or accidental deaths)
Restarting after a bad bug or a glitch IS allowed. Just as using the move_objects cheat is allowed for bugged objects.

Should you be unfortunate enough to have your entire lot bugged, starting the entire challenge over again is okay. I recommend backing up your lot.

At the end of the challenge (10 generations or after the family line is broken) score your family on the following terms.

1. 1 point for each generation reached (max 10)
2. 1 point for each $100,000 in net worth the family has (round your current net worth up)
3. 1 point for each PLATINUM grave on the lot
4. 1/3 point for each family friend the family has at the end. (round spare 1/3s down)
5. 1 point every time a sim fulfills an 'impossible' want (a want scoring 30,000 points or more, limit one per sim per want. There are other wants that also count for this, like "have 10 children" I'll try to post a complete list of them soon.)
6. -1 point every time a household member drops into aspirational failure, requiring a visit from the sim shrink. *Does not count for toddlers*
7. -2 points for every inter-bred birth in the family.
8. *NEW* -1 point for each infant, toddler or child that gets taken by to social worker


Special Bonuses.
1. 2 points if all 10 career reward objects are on the lot (One time only)
2. 1 point for each different type of NPC that you have children with over the whole legacy.
3. 1 point for each different color ghost you have on the lot at the end.
4. -2 points for each visitor that dies on your lot.
5. 1 point for each alien born on the lot (1st generation aliens only, children of aliens don't count, unless it's by abduction)
6. 2 points if the birth that brings in the last generation is twins.
7. 2 points if you can get two social bunnies to have romantic interactions on the lot (One time only)
8. 2 points if ALL the ghosts on your lot can access your Sims.
9. 2 points if you manage to collect ALL the different types of ghosts on the lot. (one time only)
10. *NEW* 1 point if you manage to get a platinum grave of each aspiration type. (one time only)


Of course there is NO way for anyone to enforce the rules or scoring, so the whole contest is on the honor system. I'm just putting this contest out here as a fun challenge among simmers, not an "I'm better than you" ego-fest. I look foreword to seeing everyone's scores while I start cracking on my own Legacy family. Good Luck!

And here's how my story begins....
Generation 1        Generation 2        Generation 3        Generation 4        Generation 5
Generation 6        Generation 7        Generation 8        Generation 9        Generation 10