Rules and no rules

You will get a closer look at the boat shortly.

While the 4 couples are on their way, I think I will say something about the rules for the SimBasic project. Besides the obvious restrictions for sims living in a back-to-basic environment, there won't be many preset rules for how the project will envolve. Only the intro story and a few essential events leading to new community stages will not be based on regular game play. Relations and much of the progress will develop due to free will, while I will of course need to help them getting married and establishing their new households.

Back to basic limitations
The 4 couples will need to survive from what they can grow and catch in nature. They will build smaller huts, but not owning lots of stuff. Some furniture is required to keep them going and to try for babies, such as beds. Some of them will keep stuff they brought for their vacation. They will not buy stuff from the catalog, because they have no electricity and well, most furniture in the catalog are too nice looking for this project's generation 1. What they do need, will mostly be "hand crafted" with primitive textures. The place has no streets nor sidewalks, meaning they will need to move about by feet.

They do bring their mobiles, and although they weren't supposed to be used, I realise I can't stop them from calling each other on free will, especially sims from non-played households. So, mobile signals will just about work limited radius "only on certain days thanks to calm weather".

To find food they need to grow whatever they can grow. It's a problem that plants take several simdays to give crops, and sims with no fishing skills won't always catch lots of fish on first try, so it will be a challenge to find enough food during the first 2-3 simdays. There are a few wild plants on the location, but they won't carry enough produce to feed 8 sims. Besides, I just learned that a very hungry sim is too hungry to harvest any food!

Services will of course not be available, and it will not be allowed to sell anything directly from their inventory until generation 3. At the first stages money won't have a big impact because they can't be spent. A sim who can produce extra food, will obviously become more popular than a sim with money.

Finally - looks and clothing of generation 2 must match the primitive setting, and will be adjusted accordingly. Hairstyles can be adjusted, while hair colour can not be adjusted. Weird hair colour combinations might occure as part of the community's DNA history.

Community organisation
During generation 1 the community will count only 8 adults and hopefully 16 kids (generation 2). Such a small community will not have the community structure of a smalltown, but there will still need to be certain responsibilities. They will all need to participate for common survival, based on their skills and interests, but somehow there must be a local economy allowing some households to build a future.

When generation 2 grows up, jobs will become more structured and specific, and this will be based on what turns up during the project. All I know for now is that they will have a consignment store. I don't know yet what it will be like, and there is no point in planning in detail in case only 4 of them will survive. So, more about the community organisation later on.

There are only two community lots to start out with, in order to meet the need for meeting places. Their private huts will be way too small for throwing a party :-)