The Hutterite Challenge
Hello, there! As you can see, I've (finally) decided to upload my own challenge onto the sims forums!
This challenge originally started out as more of a personal challenge than anything else, but I figured that, at the very least, people will be interested in seeing how it goes - or maybe even want to try out the challenge for themselves! While this challenge does not require mods or cheats, I think anybody else who tries this will find themselves in desperate need of using one or even both eventually.
Anyways, let's provide a little background about the challenge here. Hutterites, less commonly known as the Hutterian Brethren, are Christian Anabaptists (like the Amish and Mennonites) that formed in Tyrol and Moravia in the 16th century. They are named after their founder, Jakob Hutter, who believed that Christians should live communally like the apostles did in the Book of Acts. Hutter was later executed for his beliefs and his followers later left Tyrol and Moravia and went from place to place until they finally settled in the United States and Canada. Today, around 45,000 Hutterites live communally on "colonies" of roughly 60-120 people that are scattered across the Midwest and the Canadian prairies. They are also easily identifiable by their plain dress, which is distinctly different from the clothing worn by the Amish and Mennonites. I couldn't really find any pictures that exemplify this the best through Google, so here's a link to the gallery on the Hutterites' website (which also shows pictures of different colonies and their day-to-day life): http://www.hutterites.org/gallery/.
The goal of this challenge is rather simple: establish your own Hutterite colony of 100 sims. However you do this is up to you, but there are some rules that you will have to follow:
1. Start out with 8-12 sims and dress them all appropriately before giving them as many starter lots as they need. A caveat about your sims, though: if you have more than 8 sims, only 8 of them may reproduce. The rest are just there to help out, if you will.
2. In order for your sims to get their colony, they have to earn it either by buying it* or you building them one, whichever you prefer. Monetary cheats and jobs outside of self-employed professions are strictly not allowed, but collecting insects/gems/metals/etc. is more than welcome.
3. Once your sims are able to move onto their colony, they cannot leave it without good reason. Whatever this means is up to you, but again, your sims cannot have jobs outside of self-employed professions so work cannot be one of those reasons.
4. When one of your teen-aged sims becomes a young adult, you need to flip a coin to see if they remain a Hutterite or not. If they don't, then they need to be kicked/moved out of the colony by the end of the day and have minimal contact with your remaining Hutterites going forward (for those who don't know, this is known as excommunication or shunning). The only exception to this rule is a designated heir, of which only one is allowed per bloodline per generation (aka only 4 designated heirs per generation max).
5. Designated heirs are especially important in this challenge because they are the only ones who can convert non-Hutterites by marrying them. None of your other sims are allowed to marry people outside of the colony, so your designated heirs are basically the ones that will be preventing excessive inbreeding.
6. A further note about excommunication: losing the coin toss is not the only way your sims can become excommunicated. They can also become excommunicated if they have traits that are not conducive to colony life, if they are caught cheating, or if they divorce their spouse (because Hutterites believe that marriage is a lifetime commitment).
One last thing: due to the requirements of this challenge, I realize that playing this challenge in pretty much any world is going to be difficult...which is why I created a world specifically for this challenge! It is called Selkirk County and is still in its beta/testing stages, but for those interested a link to it is here: https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/963949/selkirk-county-wip#latest.
Other than that, the only thing I have left to do is introduce my own sims for this challenge, which will be done in the next post ;)
This challenge originally started out as more of a personal challenge than anything else, but I figured that, at the very least, people will be interested in seeing how it goes - or maybe even want to try out the challenge for themselves! While this challenge does not require mods or cheats, I think anybody else who tries this will find themselves in desperate need of using one or even both eventually.
Anyways, let's provide a little background about the challenge here. Hutterites, less commonly known as the Hutterian Brethren, are Christian Anabaptists (like the Amish and Mennonites) that formed in Tyrol and Moravia in the 16th century. They are named after their founder, Jakob Hutter, who believed that Christians should live communally like the apostles did in the Book of Acts. Hutter was later executed for his beliefs and his followers later left Tyrol and Moravia and went from place to place until they finally settled in the United States and Canada. Today, around 45,000 Hutterites live communally on "colonies" of roughly 60-120 people that are scattered across the Midwest and the Canadian prairies. They are also easily identifiable by their plain dress, which is distinctly different from the clothing worn by the Amish and Mennonites. I couldn't really find any pictures that exemplify this the best through Google, so here's a link to the gallery on the Hutterites' website (which also shows pictures of different colonies and their day-to-day life): http://www.hutterites.org/gallery/.
The goal of this challenge is rather simple: establish your own Hutterite colony of 100 sims. However you do this is up to you, but there are some rules that you will have to follow:
1. Start out with 8-12 sims and dress them all appropriately before giving them as many starter lots as they need. A caveat about your sims, though: if you have more than 8 sims, only 8 of them may reproduce. The rest are just there to help out, if you will.
2. In order for your sims to get their colony, they have to earn it either by buying it* or you building them one, whichever you prefer. Monetary cheats and jobs outside of self-employed professions are strictly not allowed, but collecting insects/gems/metals/etc. is more than welcome.
3. Once your sims are able to move onto their colony, they cannot leave it without good reason. Whatever this means is up to you, but again, your sims cannot have jobs outside of self-employed professions so work cannot be one of those reasons.
4. When one of your teen-aged sims becomes a young adult, you need to flip a coin to see if they remain a Hutterite or not. If they don't, then they need to be kicked/moved out of the colony by the end of the day and have minimal contact with your remaining Hutterites going forward (for those who don't know, this is known as excommunication or shunning). The only exception to this rule is a designated heir, of which only one is allowed per bloodline per generation (aka only 4 designated heirs per generation max).
5. Designated heirs are especially important in this challenge because they are the only ones who can convert non-Hutterites by marrying them. None of your other sims are allowed to marry people outside of the colony, so your designated heirs are basically the ones that will be preventing excessive inbreeding.
6. A further note about excommunication: losing the coin toss is not the only way your sims can become excommunicated. They can also become excommunicated if they have traits that are not conducive to colony life, if they are caught cheating, or if they divorce their spouse (because Hutterites believe that marriage is a lifetime commitment).
One last thing: due to the requirements of this challenge, I realize that playing this challenge in pretty much any world is going to be difficult...which is why I created a world specifically for this challenge! It is called Selkirk County and is still in its beta/testing stages, but for those interested a link to it is here: https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/963949/selkirk-county-wip#latest.
Other than that, the only thing I have left to do is introduce my own sims for this challenge, which will be done in the next post ;)
