The Brewster's Challenge I thought it was time that World Sims had its own challenge. The Brewsters idea occurred to me late last year and I have been tinkering with it on and off for several months. The trouble is that I am not hugely organised and so I now throw out my idea for input, criticism and sundry ideas for refinement. On the other hand if it is agreed that its ready to go then let's get stuck in. The idea comes from no less than 5 movies titled Brewster Millions (the last of which starring the late Richard Pryor) The earliest was directed by Cecil B DeMille and apart from Pryor, Brewster has also been played by Fatty Arbuckle. Ah, but you can all read up on that yourself at IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/find?s=all&q=brewster%27s+millions Your challenge, should you you choose to accept, is to plant a new sim down, give him a million simoleons and then try to spend it all before he dies. Think it'll be easy? Wait till you see the rules before you decide. The rules are available below to download for printing out. The first version is a Microsoft Word Document The zip file contains the same document as a web page that anyone can access.
The Rules The Brewster’s Challenge The Challenge is to spend 1,000,000 and have nothing to show for it. The set up Make one adult male sim (I regret that maternity pay makes the Brewster life slightly easier for a female so no sexism here then ). Brewster may be any aspiration except wealth. Move Brewster onto a blank new lot in a blank new neighbourhood. The lot should be a 3x3 Immediately after entering the lot use the motherlode cheat 20 times to add $1,000,000 to your sim's family funds. Now build your Brewster a house and furnish it. While waiting on the neighbourhood greeters your sim must take the first job on offer from the newspaper, otherwise the time is your own. The Rules The Challenge ends when Brewster dies Brewster must never be unemployed. If fired he must immediately find a new job Brewster must always go to work at the correct time (no phoning in sick unless your sim actually is sick) but you may take vacation days (with vacation pay) Job chance cards must always be taken by random chance. (Coin toss heads/tails or die roll odd/even) Bills must be paid immediately Brewster may only sell/dispose of items as follows On days when no money is earned from paid work - no disposal is allowed If money is earned from employment then for each complete 100, Brewster may sell one possession Items sold may be replaced with new ones Brewster must be only playable sim in the neighbourhood. The phone must always be answered, even if Brewster is sleeping. To ensure this, every room in Brewster house may have a telephone. Visitors must always be greeted and must be treated cordially. Brewster must attempt to befriend everyone he/she meets. You must quickly set Brewster's gender preference and in all social interactions, Brewster must romance as much as possible. All custom content is strictly forbidden. A downloads folder is forbidden. All cheats are forbidden except the moveobjects cheat, which may be used to delete a stuck or bugged object or sim. If moveobjects has to be used then a kaching cheat is required because this challenge is not for self-proclaimed non-wusses. For deleting a stuck sim 3 kachings are needed. For deleting a stuck object one kaching for each 1,000 or part of a 1,000 of the replacement value of the item ... the item must also be replaced immediately; the replacement not to count as part of Brewster's accrued purchasing benefits Brewster may not leave the lot during the challenge. Brewster may move in as many townies/NPC's as possible but these may only move out under free-will circumstances. Brewster may raise as many children as possible, either by adoption or by birth All aspiration Reward Objects may be used except the counterfeiting machine The career rewards may all be used freely The Nightlife Gypsy may not be summoned and must be ignored or dismissed if she shows up. Under no circumstances may anything be bought from her Summary: The Brewster Challenge is about spending money without sheer waste. There are two addenda that detail special rules concerning building regulations and furnishing regulations to ensure that Brewster does not wilfully waste money by destroying objects Building Rules Brewster’s house may not exceed 4 floors Brewster’s house may have one “powder room” on each floor. A powder room is limited to one toilet and one sink plus dcor as required Brewster’s house may have no more bathrooms than it has occupiers at any time. If a sim moves out or dies the surplus fittings must be sold immediately without affecting any earned selling rights Brewster’s house may have no more than one spare bed at any time. Note that a double bed counts as one bed for one sim though there is nothing to stop sharing. If a sim moves out or dies any surplus beds must be sold immediately without affecting any earned selling rights Windows may only be placed in external walls No more than one door may connect any pair of rooms. Note that the outside counts as a room No more than one fireplace per room Brewster may remodel his house only once per sim day. This means that build mode may NOT be entered more than one in any sim day, under any circumstances. Because time is frozen in build mode and because your are honour bound not to waste simoleons by unnecessarily building and removing items you must be careful to record the exact real-life time that you enter build mode. For each quarter of an hour or part of a quarter hour that you pass in build mode beyond the first fifteen minutes you must give yourself a kaching penalty of 1,000. But your first fifteen minutes are free. Building hardware (doors, windows, floors, wall dcor, fireplaces, fences etc.) may not be replaced like for like for the sake of it. Brewster may make over one room per day in build mode. The same room may not be made over again in the same sim-week. Trees and bushes may never be sold. Plants may only be sold if dead. Once placed water cannot be removed. This includes swimming pools. Buying Rules The option to place more than object on a wall with OFB is forbidden Brewster may not use his inventory backpack if he has one Brewster may not duplicate certain items of property Musical instruments Artists’ Easels Games Dining tables Kitchen appliances Brewster must duplicate certain other items of property There must be a telephone in every room that is larger than 4 squares There must be a smoke alarm in every room that contains a fireplace or cooking appliance There must be a burglar alarm in every room that has a door connecting with the outside Brewster may use the buy mode catalogue at any time to buy new (additional) items for his home subject to having a place to put it and subject to the following limitations: No painting or statue may be duplicated. However where the catalogue offers colour variations these may be purchased as separate items Curtains may be duplicated subject to a limit of one curtain per window Lighting is subject to the following limits: i.Maximum 1 overhead light per 16 floor tiles. ii.Lamps of all other sorts may be added freely Scoring Unlike the other challenges Brewster’s has a simple scoring scheme. Your score is Brewster’s family worth at the time of his death. The lower the better In the rules listed above you will have noticed a number of kaching and motherlode penalties. That is the essence of the scoring scheme. In addition there are a number of extra bonuses and penalties that will affect your final score. Some are applied immediately during play, others are invoked at the end and are applied to your final score. In Game Penalties: Full List Events That Earn a Motherlode Penalty 1.Once if Brewster uses an Elixir of Life dispenser (penalty applies if consumption begins but does not finish. Penalty repeats if another dispenser is used or started) 2.Once each time the repoman comes 3.Once each time a fire starts in a barbeque grill Events That Earn a Kaching Penalty 1.Three times for each day Brewster misses work without having a vacation day to take 2.Once for each 24 hour period (or part of a 24 hour period) that Brewster is without a job for any reason 3.Once each time Brewster fails to answer the phone (when he is at home) 4.Once each time Brewster fails to greet a visitor when he is at home (except the gypsy) 5.Once each time Brewster asks someone to leave 6.Once each time Brewster burns some food 7.Once each time Brewster has flies in his house 8.Once each time anyone in the house has an accident 9.Once each time there is a fire 10.Once each time anyone passes out 11.Once each time Brewster gets a warning about unpaid bills 12.Once each time Brewster gets cockroaches 13.Once each time the Social Worker attends 14.Once each real-life day you do not post news of your Brewster’s Challenge on World Sims End of Game Cash Deduction Bonuses 10,000 for every best friend Brewster had 10,000 for every tombstone/urn on the lot 10,000 for every career reward on the lot 10,000 for every money tree on the lot 10,000 for every tree on the lot 100,000 bonus if Brewster’s lot has every career reward that was open to him (obviously the University careers rewards are not available 250,000 if Brewster has the full set of ghost colours These bonuses are added together and the sub-total is subtracted from Brewster’s final family worth at his death. A negative score would be the target to aim for. The actual sizes of the end of game cash penalties probably need adjusting ... I'm still experimenting ...
Here's how you can trivially beat this: Stack up the stackable OFB storecubes. Then put scoreables in them! We can trivially rack up as many best friend points as the neighborhood has population. 30-50 is a reasonable number, 100+ is a somewhat more UNREASONABLE number, but you can get even more if you work the system. We won't have to worry about phone calls: At this level of friend-maintenance, you're going to be on the phone practically 24 hours a day. Since there is no rule requiring that Brewster be the only playable inhabitant of the neighborhood, we look at the maximum theoretical population of the neighborhood: Around 32000 (INT16). All of these can befriend Brewster, and since he does not need to perform any maintenance while not played, we can thus rack up some 32000 best friends. A trivial, if tedious, -320,000K pts. We're looking good. Now let's focus on our 3x3 lot, which is 30x30 tiles in size, for a total ground capacity of 900 square tiles. We can build a gigantic monolithic structure of the maximum size, 4 levels tall, the maximum permitted, of 26x26. The ground floor yields a full 30x30 tiles, while the remaining 3 levels + roof will provide us a storage capacity of 676 sq. tiles per floor, for a total capacity of 3604 sq. tiles. OFB storage cubes may be stacked in structures 25 units high, each capable of storing a single -10K scoring object. Each storage cube costs us one from our allowance of objects-possible-on-lot. Since we have an initial capacity of 3604 objects, we can thus assume that each subsequent one-tile score object carries a cost of 2 objects, meaning we can store 14448 objects. Collecting all career awards provides us with -100K score, but takes up more than 10 objects (each tile of an object counts as an object), so the opportunity cost of doing so is too high, and we skip it. Tombstones are monotile and can be stored stackably, so we can get the -250K ghost bonus by simple process of massmurdering as many as we need to to get it. However, it is not even close to being on the same order of magnitude, so is not really important, and this too can be safely ignored. Incidentally, the mere act of purchasing 14448 storage cubes will already cost you over 2 million dollars! BRING ON THE PENALTIES! BOOYAH! Subtotal: ~18000 scoring objects = -180,000K. It will cost us 54,000,000 ASP to purchase these objects, or about 165 full tanks of 327670. Brewster will need lots of dates. But that's required anyway. Therefore, our maximum total score is a respectable -500M. Since all penalties are assessed in cash, and, in fact, we NEED EVEN MORE MONEY to achieve maximum score, penalties are, in fact, a GOOD thing. Therefore, this challenge is too easy, because all of your penalties are not, in fact, penalties, but actually work in my favor. All too easy. Your puny powers are no match for mine.
There is a rule determining that Brewster is the only playable character. The rules are not utterly set. I posted the idea for brainstorming because I don't have the anal-retentive mindset of math-geek. My first response is to stipulate that OFB displays are banned. Brewster will have to survive a minimum number of days from CAS to a natural death from old age for the challenge to end with a legitimate score. I agree that the majority of my penalties are risible and also I can't now remember why I didn't change that 3x3 lot-size ... well I can. I couldn't recall what was the smallest lot size available before NL. So I don't think the concept is quite as puny as you suggest. But anyway, shouldn't you be spending all your time pouring hot noxious concoctions over the heads of the malarkey-mongering MATY-manglers. To lose control of a website once in a season is unfortunate, but for it to occur a second time looks like carelessness. Thanks for your input though. I loves ya really!
Which means the challenge certainly runs faster now that we can ignore that part. We're still looking at a good healthy -180K. Well, that affects your lot storage capacity accordingly. The site is fine. Somebody, who we strongly suspect is <snip>, has been forging complaints to the DNS registrar. Currently in the process of initiating transfer to a less unreliable registrar.
*prints rules off* Sheesh, Mirelly. That looks like it would be nearly impossible. Too bad sims couldn't buy rare stamps and then use them while mailing a letter to sims, right? This challenge actually makes me want to play the game again just to see if I can complete this without breaking any of the rules.
I know my new years resolution was no more downloads, (and we all know how that turned out, don't we?), but my goodness, he can't leave the lot to by clothes or robots or anything... only to go to work? did I miss something?
Sounds interesting, Mirelly, but there are certain downloads you're going to have to pry from my cold dead fingers so I won't be playing. Plus, I'm trying to keep the number of hoods I've got to a minimum. But I'll be interested to hear how others do.
