The Christian Greek House Challenge (Sims 2) - New Version!

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Scenario: Imagine that you are a devout Christian, attending university and living away from your parents for the first time in your life. Your parents have raised you well, and this time, it’s up to you to take care of yourself in college. The question is, can you do it? Or will you be absorbed by the world of corruption?

Goal: The objective of this challenge is to run a Christian Greek House for as long as possible, providing a friendly environment for committed Christian students and becoming part of God’s plan to fix a broken world.

Set-Up: This challenge requires University expansion pack of The Sims 2 game, mainly because the essence of this challenge is to run a single-sex honor society greek house (fraternity or sorority). Other expansion packs and stuff packs may be useful but are not required. Custom content is allowed in the challenge, and modded objects can only be used if they share the same or approximate value as the EA objects. The use of cheat codes is limited to debugging and building purposes – or moving Sims in and out of rooms. The showHeadlines and plumbbobtoggle cheats are also allowed for storytelling purposes.

The set-up begins with a family made by the developers of The Sims 2 or a family that you create. The selected family must have one teenager. During the teenager’s adolescence, the teenager should earn at least two scholarships before going to college. More scholarships can be earned, if there is enough time left in the life stage. Upon arrival at the college campus, the now-college student may choose to live on a dorm lot or a rented residential lot. The amount of money the college student has determines what kind of lot to live in. If a dorm lot is chosen, then the college student must earn enough money to rent a residential lot, because a greek house can only be opened on a residential lot. Once a greek house has been created, the college student can officially begin the challenge!

A Note on the Use of “Christian”: The word, “Christian,” in this context is a loose umbrella term for many different and distinctive theologies, traditions, and cultural customs of denominations that claim to follow Jesus Christ. Christianity, as expressed by the Christian Greek House Challenge, is a conglomeration of many Christian denominations. If you feel that the form of Christianity is not accurate enough, please feel free to change the rules to your liking. If you feel uncomfortable with the specific and overt use of religion in this challenge, then please feel free to change the rules to your liking. This challenge is not meant to offend, insult, harass, mock, or criticize the religion in any way. The best analogy that I can give is to liken this challenge to one of the more religious-laden episodes on The Simpsons.

Disclaimer: The Christian Greek House Challenge is inspired by, but may not be an exact replica of the various Christian fraternities and sororities in the United States.

The Christian Greek House Challenge (Sims 2) PDF
The Christian Greek House Challenge v2.0 (Sims 2) PDF

[MichelleCYoung]

As a challenge, per se, I don't really see much difficulty, here. The rules are basically - have a teenager, send teen to college, start a single-sex Greek House, and keep it up for a while, while maintaining "values."

The thing is, the values can be so varied, depending on the various Christian sects involved. Evangelical, Catholic, Mormon, Baptist... The variety of characters, with their variety of beliefs, can be a really interesting soap-opera in the making. Also, what happens when someone slips up? At my old college, there were *some* people who maintained that kissing was only for marriage, and if you kissed a fellow to whom you were not at least engaged, you had to confess to your roommates, and then take them all out for ice cream. I never did see the logic in that, but fortunately, my roommates didn't either, and we just ate ice cream whenever we darn well pleased. Then again, I had a dormie who went to college specifically to find a husband, and as soon as she was engaged, she dropped out, to focus on being a wife.

At my college, if you were caught having sex outside of marriage, it was grounds for expulsion. Yes, it was a church-run college. So, the kids who did have sex outside of marriage were extremely careful about it. Also, quite a few eloped for a quickie marriage, had sex, and then filed for divorce. Another friend got married in secret, since they couldn't bear the wait for the big white wedding, and nearly got expelled when her roommates found out she was spending the night with her husband (his roommates staged an "intervention" for him, too!), because they were still living in their separate dorms.

For such situations, I recommend establishing some sort of ceremony, to stand in for the wedding the Sims 2 can't have in college. The proposal for engagement should stay the same, but perhaps some sort of staged activity that you can call a wedding. If you're consistent throughout, it could work, and you can do the whole thing where someone is caught, and then says, "No, really! We're married! We just couldn't find a way out of our housing contracts in the middle of the semester."

For extra fun, add in some other religions, either as part of the Greek House (if you deem it to fit within the rules, so long as the leader of the house is "Christian,") or maybe as other students in the same university, so you have lots of interaction. Maybe a Buddhist rival house? The cow mascot is Hindi, perhaps?

In fact, there's no reason this couldn't be done with any religion or shared creed. I do see a danger, however. Someone might start playing on stereotypes, and mocking the religion, rather than using it as a way to showcase the faith. If so, spoiler warnings would be much appreciated, so that people who want that sort of thing can read it, and people who want to keep things respectful and educational can avoid it.

I see this as more of a story-telling exercise than a challenge, and I'm very tempted to play it in a new neighborhood, when I'm finished with my current apocalypse challenge.

Any ideas for more specific rules? Something to make it more difficult?

[MichelleCYoung]

Whoops! I just opened the .pdf file, and see a whole slew of rules! Cool! Off to read them, now.

[MichelleCYoung]

OK, I read the .pdf file, and those are a lot of very specific rules! I'd have to print them out and refer to them every five minutes.

Yep, that's a challenge, all right.

[0123456789]

Yeah, I am so excited that you are finally into this challenge! I know I haven't replied in a long time, but I'm here, and I'm very much alive!

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The main reason why I created this challenge is that I want to pour out all my book knowledge of Christianity and play it out. In real life, I was not raised Christian and wasn't at all interested in Christianity during childhood. (My parents and I were Chinese immigrants, so that's why. Many Chinese people are actually non-religious and atheist, but many Chinese people still maintain traditional Chinese values, such as filial piety.) It wasn't until I got into university, near graduation, when I explored Christianity in depth. I am well aware of Christianity's influence on Western culture, particularly American culture, and my book knowledge of Christianity has proven to me that there is more - so much more to Christianity - than what is actually portrayed in the mass media. It also helps me understand what people are saying and thinking. There are many observant Christians in the United States, and there are many more non-observant people who were raised as Christians. I personally find understanding Christianity helps me understand the mindset of some atheists raised by Christian families, their fears, and their sensibilities. My primarily academic interest in Christianity led me to contribute a lot to http://christianity.stackexchange.com/. I pull a lot of references from the academic literature, but I do also read from the popular literature.

I'm glad to hear that you liked it! It's my most detailed challenge ever! I attempted to research it to the best of my ability and knowledge.

[MichelleCYoung]

I'm still trying to finish my current challenges, so I won't attempt this one any time soon. However, I'm very much interested in reading yours.

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Updated on February 7, 2015.

I've fixed some typos here and there of the original, and I added the die rolls for the diet and dress. That way, it'll seem more random.