The "Rules"

Any good challenge comes with rules. Any good storyteller will break them when necessary for the sake of the story. :)

Here are the legacy rules as posted on the Sims 3 forum. Any changes I am making are in bold.

Legacy Challenge

The Legacy Challenge is a long, 10-generation challenge where you start out with a single founder and very humble beginnings and try to lead the family to fame, fortune and success over the course of 10 generations.

Starting out
Create a brand new game file. You will be using this file exclusively to play your Legacy Challenge. You may use an existing game file, but your Legacy family must immediately become the “Active Household” and not cease to be active for the duration of the challenge. You may select any neighborhood. There may be times when I switch active households in order to follow a side story or to get shots of minor characters integral to the story-at-large. Story progression will be turned off in these instances.

The challenge begins with a single founder. Make this founder in Create A Sim. They may be male or female. They may be any age that can have children (YA, Adult and Elder for males, YA and Adult for females). You have full choice over their look, color and clothing. Custom content may be used if you like, including create-a-style custom patterns and colors. You may choose all 5 traits as well as their three favorite likes (food, music and color) and a lifetime want. No other sims may be created in the founder’s family. Be creative with the family name, you’ll be seeing it for quite some time. Obviously, I am breaking a lot of these rules. My founder was a teen, and she has multiple family members. This is partially because this wasn't originally intended to be a legacy, but also because I think it adds to the story to have family members. Gives them a background.

Now to place the founder. While you are free to choose either standard town, there is a very specific lot that must be used. If you move into Riverview, you must move into “345 Riverblossom Hills Drive”. If you move into Sunset Valley, you will be moving into “15 Summer Hill Court”. The common thread between these lots is that they are large, empty and cost $14,700. Yes I know that leaves you with only $1,300 in cash to build a house, that’s the point. All legacies start out with very humble beginnings and expect your founder to live like a hobo for awhile. If additional neighborhoods are made available with mods or EPs, or we gain the ability to plop our own lots down, they may be used, as long as the lot in question is completely empty and costs at least $14,700. I'm flat-out ignoring this rule. I really hate large lots. They make my game run slow, and I end up spending hours trying to landscape it so it doesn't look so boring. I chose a different (smaller) lot, and the plan at the moment is to remain on that lot and rebuild the house when necessary, but I retain the right to change my mind. Sometimes I like to move for the heck of it.


Rules:

1. No cheating. Plain and simple, no money or mood cheats. You may use custom objects, as long as their price and mood effects are in line with similar ‘official’ objects. Objects purchased from the Sim Store are considered 'official' as well as the ones included with the game. I will occasionally mess with the moods/moodlets to get a picture that I want. Other than that, I do plan on following this rule.
2. Aging and story progression must be on and lifespans set to the normal level. As mentioned before, I will sometimes turn progression off if I have to switch households.
3. You are allowed to play with any Mod that does not give you a signifigant advantage over a player without the mod. The only specific mod I know of at the moment, Awesome Mod, is allowed. I use a lot of mods, and I use them often. You can see what mods I use on the "Expansions and Mods" tab.
4. The Legacy family must be the “Active Household” during the entire challenge. You may never switch the active household to another family. If you want to take a break from Legacy play, it is recommended you play in another saved game slot. Will occasionally switch. See above.
5. No Ambrosia! Your sims may learn the recipe for Ambrosia, but may not cook or consume the dish. Nor may ambrosia be used to resurrect ghosts.
6. You may not ressurect dead sims via the Science lab.
7. Sims may not consume life fruit to gain extra days to their lifespan.
8. You may age sims up via the birthday cake only once the game prompts you with a reminder of their impending birthday, not earlier. You do not have to use the birthday cake to age sims up, you can wait for the game to force the age transition if you wish.
9. Death Flowers may not be kept in inventory. You may gather and sell them, but cannot be used to ward off death

Black Market Restriction:
The Black Market is no longer being monitored by police. Kleptos, rummagers and theives are now allowed to liquidate their ill gotten goods for cash.

Moving Sims in:
Any sim may be moved into the Legacy Family via marriage or move-in except for the following:
Sims created by the player
Sims/households downloaded and imported from the exchange
Sims that had previously lived in the Legacy household but had since moved out
Sims that are identified by your sim as "Rich" are now fair game for all sims except your founder. I am also choosing to completely ignore this rule because I don't see the significance. I generally prefer sims I've personally created over EA created ones. Plus, there's not exactly a lot of choices that come already in the game. I may not need to break this rule, but I may. *shrug*

All other sims are fair game. You are allowed to create/download/import sims and families into your Legacy neighborhood, they just cannot join the family.
No sims/families may ever be merged into the Legacy family. If you wish to add members, they must be done in game. I may do this sometimes in Edit Town if I'm running short on time to get a new post out. I will also move sims in sometimes just so they are controllable so I can get that perfect shot. They will be moved out immediately afterward, and any money they brought in will be removed using MasterController.

Birth and growing up

Whenever a sim is born or ages up, they will often obtain new traits. Sometimes these traits are randomly assigned by the game. Other times the game lets you pick them. In the Legacy Challenge, all traits are random. If you are given the option to pick traits for any sim, you must hit the random button and accept the trait that is randomly assigned. The only exception is if you are playing with the "Family Trait" optional rule. If you are, and the family trait is one of the options, you may select that trait rather than hitting the random button. I will be randomly assigning traits, but I may hit the dice more than once. Some traits I just really don't like to play with.

Death
Sims that die on the family lot may be kept around as ghosts, or may be moved to a cemetery. It is up to you. If a sim dies and you forgot to get their portrait, making a portrait of their ghost does not count. If the bloodline is cut short by death, the challenge ends immediately. It is always a good idea to have at least one spare in case the heir perishes. Even if ghosts become playable, they may not earn any further points for the family. Ghost babies are not considered part of any bloodline.

Bringing in the next generation.
In order to bring in the next generation, a new sim must be born. Adoptions do not carry the family bloodline and thus don’t count. (You are still allowed to adopt sims if you really want to, but they won’t help point wise) If the heir is male, you must move their mate into the legacy family house before having a baby. If the heir is female, she may move her mate in, or simply get pregnant while off the lot. In either case, the heir and their mate don’t have to be married. Sims may be born at home or in a hospital, whichever you prefer. The moment the next generation is born, the heir’s mate officially becomes part of the family bloodline (and thus can earn lifetime want, aspiration perk and portrait points for you, provided they are living in the Legacy House).

Optional Rules: I will be doing a Matriarchy, mostly because I have found that I have a hard time writing adequately as a male character. Any male sims born into the family will not be eligible when the heir vote comes around.

Also, just as a side note, I will be naming sims born in the household in alphabetical order. I am not doing an "Alphabet Legacy" where each generation has its own letter, but rather each child will have his/her own letter. For example, our founder's name starts with "A." Her first child's name will start with "B," the second with "C," etc. If she has two kids (thus using b and c), the next generation will start with "D" and go on from there. I'm pretty sure I made that sound way more complicated than it is, but hopefully you get it. This is something I employ in almost all of my games because it helps me keep track of who is who, and, in generations where there are a lot of kids, who is the oldest and who is youngest once they've all become adults and look the same age.

I've enabled comments for this page, so feel free to ask me any questions.