How to create a legacy and stick with it

You have my admiration, I cannot even stick through one generation. Legacies are just too boring for me. I have many families in my main rotation, and I rotate at pleasure and age them up when I want. My families pretty much all know each other here and there, belong in clubs etc. and I have aged very few up in the last 5 years. When I did try to do legacies in sims 4 though I would go in and mix families, give them children about every time my sim would have a child ( I don’t use mods ). I have thought about trying some kind of castaway game with chance cards drawn at random. In fact, if Maxis gives us another pack like Strangerville I hope that it is some kind of castaway pack where a boat load of people get stranded with chance cards. I loved ‘lost in blue’ and would sure like to see some of those elements in a game pack. I hope it’s a bit more challenging than Strangerville though, but the challenge can either be toggled on or off depending on the save ( I’m not sure I would want to mix it with my main rotation like I did Strangerville.

It's been a few years since I successfully completed a legacy following the rules perfectly, and I won't be of much help there, I'm afraid because even I question how I managed.

Though I will say that these days I choose to play my game loosely following the rules, and applying my own and find it easier to get through several generations that way. Personally I find it hard to stick with it for long if I'm too restricted by rules. So, if you find yourself getting bored maybe loosening up with the rules or tweaking them for more freedom would suit you better? Sure, it won't be the good ole legacy challenge, but it's your game and you may as well do what you need to do to enjoy the ride. Some strive with more definite rules to follow and things to achieve and it helps them get through it, for others it just doesn't and that's okay! We're all different after all.

In my current "legacy" I name each generation alphabetically (founder was Aeryn, who married and had the B generation, who then produced the C generation etc.), have strict patriarchy without player interference of gender outcome (and I swear I don't seem to be able to get a son on the first try), strict bloodline, founder started with 0 money on a big lot and so forth, no money/skill/needs cheats allowed, heirs have their typical rules of straight A's, completing aspirations and making it to the top of their careers and such, the usual shenanigans.

I do, however, play rotationally, and allow my heirs to move out of the house, and the founder's lot serves more as a legacy landmark and is where all my heirs eventually go to die as they grow old. I keep their graves, some personal belongings and portraits of them there and expand on the house with each generation, elders essentially inherit the house and do renovations and upgrades in their retirement years. I have aging off and kill for plot, or when I deem elders to have lived "long enough". I want to enjoy all the different worlds and I love building and furnishing so I just can't keep myself in one place forever.

When island living came out I wanted to experience the pack with one sim and considered just making a new save, but decided to instead use my then heir's sister Briar to do it because the pack fit her best and I got some fun plot out of it. She moved out with her future military husband who was sent off to be stationed in Sulani for peace corps purposes, and Briar was essentially a military wife. By the time I had experienced everything I wanted in terms of the pack I had fleshed out the "legacy" and had an actual story for her. She was a stay-at-home mom, producing her share of the C generation and I found myself more compelled to have my heir and the "core family" actually interact with their extended family once I switched back to them, as now that part of the family tree actually had something interesting going for them. Once I switched back, the heir Bellamy married his sister's best friend from Sulani and due to joining the military career and having the Strangerville aspiration he moved to Strangerville to raise the core C generation.

I followed the same principle with those children and the eldest daughter of the C gen is who I used to explore Realm of magic as it came out and for plot purposes had her run away from home (long story), and Discover University came out just in time for my heir to head to college, and I took him and his brother there separately (heir went to UBrite for drama and is now exploring Get Famous as an actor, and his brother attended Foxbury and made a Servo he now lives with in San Muyshuno)

Those are just examples of how I've made (a cherry picked few) legacy rules work for myself when I've found myself getting bored and quitting previous legacy attempts, besides the ones I somehow managed (seriously, how did I? I may never know). Other simmers who actually manage to get through legacies according to the rulebook (I bow to thee, you absolute legends) will be of better help in terms of the actual challenge, but I figured I'd share an alternative in case you're someone like me who needs more leniency, while benefitting from the structure and guidelines the rules provide.

TL;DR if the legacy challenge is intriguing as a concept, but you find yourself unable to stay motivated and inspired for long, consider being more forgiving and lenient with the rules and come up with your own to better fit your playstyle and what you enjoy.

I think the problem I have is that if you play "properly" the traits are randomised and I randomise aspirations as well and then I don't get as good a sense of who I want each sim to be. That's why I was thinking of picking a theme.

Mine's been going for about two years, and the secret? I genuinely don't know. Pride in my family and their achievements, I guess?

That's fair. If being more hands-on about their traits and aspirations would help keep you invested I'd say go for it. I myself randomise all traits and childhood aspirations, but by the time my sims enter their teens I usually pick their aspiration based on the traits they've received or what I think would fit them, or simply by what I want to play through. I will occasionally randomise it if I don't have preferences at the time, but ending up with, say, the vampire family aspiration when I really don't feel like messing with vampires it will just end up being a drag and I'd much rather do that aspiration with a sim that fits at a time when I do want to explore vampires again.

Really just mess around with the playstyle and rules and see what works best for you.

I picked the Decades Challenge as my legacy base. I love history and so I focused on making each generation/decade as close to historically accurate as I could. That made each generation different, added new challenges, and provided storylines (like war or technology or cultural developments).

That said, I hit a wall in my 4th/5th generation. They had maxed out money and I was bored. But then the Great Depression came and the family lost all their money. That made it interesting and I actually grew quite connected to the heir. They started from nothing and worked hard to rebuild their lives. It was fun and was just the jolt my legacy needed.

I have now finished the legacy and am making up new rules for the ‘future’ to have fun with so I can keep the family going :smiley:

@ThePinkBookGirl Oh, I will definitely start implementing decade/history specific themes to my saves now, thank you for sharing that. The great depression idea in particular will come in handy once my sims in my current save have more money than they know what to do with, especially considering I thoroughly enjoy the struggle of making ends meet and making due with very little.

I was thinking about slowly increasing the technology with every generation.

I used to be the same, and could never get past gen 3 or 4. But I'm now on gen 23, and I can't imagine going back to anothe rway of playing, or even starting another save. I think the key is to mix it up a bit and not play by the actual 'rules' of the legacy challenge. The only rule I have is that my next heir is the first born child of the current sim. But they can move out to wherever they like, and I change between randomising traits and choosing my own, depending on how I feel. I've also found that keeping the aging on Normal helps things to feel quite flowy, in that I have enough time to enjoy my sim but by the time my new heir ages up to YA I take over and make that one my new main sim. (I have lengthened the age using MCCC since university, just so there's time for uni and a family, otherwise the parents kept dying when the new sims were children or teens.

I think the key for me, is to keep each new generation different, and let them be whatever I want. So, if I am getting bored and want something different I like to randomise everything, to turn them into a sim that I might never normally play (and it takes you to discover parts of the game that arent played very often), or sometimes I'll have an idea for a sim that I really want to play, so instead of starting a new save, I keep that idea for my next gen, and then create that sim. So although I have a legacy, each generation feels like a new save and a different game. One tip I would give you is to try and take a family photo of each generation, and save them somewhere - it's really fun to look back on your whole story and remember all of your sims and how they all fit together :smile:

A legacy has been something on my mind for a while now, so I've been trying to make my own legacy style . For me I try to keep a little rule book and create, update and remove the rules as I go until I find a good balance.

I do things like name the kids using the first letter of their parents names and go from there. My gay and lesbian Sims adopt NPC children which is really fun. Sims who "Hate Children" are more or less the Sims that won't have children and that is fun in its own way because then I have to decide who ends up with them if anyone.

I use a randomization app to randomize choices like aspirations, traits, skills and career points. I also assign Sims (randomized of course) "chosen" skills. I really like this a lot but what it means is that if a Sim completes a chosen skill then they are rewarded with the option of buying a reward trait. Same goes with completing an Aspiration or Career.

My other tip is really stylize each household. Make them feel different than each other that way each time you play a new household it feels new and fresh.

What I haven't quite figured out is aging. I know I need to let them grow up and age and die but it's hard!

My Willowbrook has 13 households. 5 are my legacy families and the rest except one are the next generation of those legacies.