Do you create your own challenges for your HM/SoS games?

SNES, HM64, BTN, STH, A Wonderful Life, Another Wonderful Life, AWL:SE, Magical Melody, Puzzle de HM, Tree of Tranquility, Animal Parade, Frantic Farming, Hero of Leaf Valley, My Little Shop, Seeds of Memories, Lil' Farmers, Light of Hope, Popolocrois: SoS, and Doraemon: SoS.
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Mabbie
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Oh wow... I haven't really thought of it. When I think of challenges, I think about The Sims lol. Never occured to me that we could do it on other games.

Recently I've been sneaking my laptop to work in order to play (lots of free time in a funeral home) because my son simply does not let me play/watch/touch it when he's at home with me hahah

So, no. No challenges for me.. just the plain old gaming. I'm kinda tired all the time, I can't imagine myself doing an ingame challenge, where I have to be the judge so I don't cheat! lol
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Rose Petals
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Sometimes not doing challenges is a challenge in itself!

Before I started doing this, the challenge was;
"How long can I play until I get bored?"
"Can I actually make it far enough to see the kid fully grown?" (No. I seldom make it far enough for that. Usually not long after the baby is born, I lose interest. Or while the farmer or wife is pregnant, depending if I'm playing as a male or female character.)

Even in this legacy, unless I'm really really into it, and need to take years and years to achieve the main goal, like with ToTT, I don't make it further than the birth of the kid before moving onto the next generation.

Even with legacies in HM/SoS, for me it is basically just playing the game. Only real crossover in way of rules is, farm name is always the same, and name and birthday is the same as the kid from the previous game.
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Mabbie
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Nice! Suddently I don't feel so strange anymore lol. I rarely see the child grow up, or even get out of bed stage. Hope I can do that on the one I'm cuttently playing. ToTT I didn't even get married... lost completely the interest on playing that game.
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The only other games I've gotten further is A Wonderful Life, but the kid never got older than child. That chapter just seemed to last forever, so I'd start again. Then in Tree of Tranquillity and Animal Parade, mostly because I would wait until after I got married to do all the rival marriage stuff, and working on allowing all the other rival kids to be born. I wish I could play those games, but my Wii is packed away in storage.

I do find that happens though a lot in each generation of the Legacy, that by the time the baby is born, I've achieved all the goals, gotten very rich and all my animals are giving the best produce. There isn't really much point playing after that. This particular legacy, I'm focusing more on animals than crops. In ANB, I'm only planning on growing crops just to give me a good head start on money to buy animals then switch focus onto them. Only grow crops I absolutely need for blueprints. In all my games, I tend to prefer raising animals more than crops.

ToTT is definitely one of those games that can be tricky. I personally do love it as a game. I would say it is definitely one of the best DS era ones, but I do struggle choosing a spouse. Even on my first play through, I found it so difficult to choose a marriage candidate, because none of them were really that interesting. I think I settled for Ash.

Even in this legacy, a few games, I will probably find it difficult to choose a spouse. Currently now, on ANB, my only option is Tina, because she is the only female candidate I kinda like. Some games, I don't like any of the bachelors at all, and play as a male farmer because I like some of the girls. In ANB, my favourites are Neil and Rod, but I wanted to be different for the legacy. Story of Seasons is the next game, and I've already settled for Fritz. I love the game, but Mistel and Agate are the only ones I like. Didn't want to choose Mistel again on both saves. But when I get to SoS:FoMT, I will have no trouble picking a wife for my male farmer. I adore all five of the original girls from that.
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GenesisLove wrote: Jun 15, 2022 10:20 am Since money is usually so much easier to come by than raw materials in these games, I make it a rule not to buy anything I could conceivably make or find myself. This makes the game go by much more gradually and I find that I still have goals to aim for years into a run.
Oh, I do this too! I won't buy lumber or ore from the carpenter but instead force myself to get it on my own. It adds challenge, enjoyment and length for me.
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Burning Spear wrote: Jun 17, 2022 6:35 am
GenesisLove wrote: Jun 15, 2022 10:20 am Since money is usually so much easier to come by than raw materials in these games, I make it a rule not to buy anything I could conceivably make or find myself. This makes the game go by much more gradually and I find that I still have goals to aim for years into a run.
Oh, I do this too! I won't buy lumber or ore from the carpenter but instead force myself to get it on my own. It adds challenge, enjoyment and length for me.
Same here. I refuse to buy materials because to me it feels like cheating LOL.. it takes away all the fun.
Rose Petals wrote:Even in this legacy, a few games, I will probably find it difficult to choose a spouse. Currently now, on ANB, my only option is Tina, because she is the only female candidate I kinda like. Some games, I don't like any of the bachelors at all, and play as a male farmer because I like some of the girls. In ANB, my favourites are Neil and Rod, but I wanted to be different for the legacy. Story of Seasons is the next game, and I've already settled for Fritz. I love the game, but Mistel and Agate are the only ones I like. Didn't want to choose Mistel again on both saves. But when I get to SoS:FoMT, I will have no trouble picking a wife for my male farmer. I adore all five of the original girls from that.
On ANB I chose Allen, had no trouble picking. Now on SoS FoMT I'm having trouble choosing between the guys... on MFoMT I married Doctor, maybe now I'll go for Rick...... I don't know, they're all kinda meh. As for the girls, I'd go for Marie again, since I married her in BTN. She's just so adorable.
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Mabbie wrote: Jun 17, 2022 9:42 amNow on SoS FoMT I'm having trouble choosing between the guys... on MFoMT I married Doctor, maybe now I'll go for Rick...... I don't know, they're all kinda meh. As for the girls, I'd go for Marie again, since I married her in BTN. She's just so adorable.
For the guys, always Gray for me. The other men are kinda meh. Not that interesting really. My first ever HM game was FoMT, and I played that a lot. I've married all the girls numerous times on that. Now on SoS:FoMT, I'm really spoiled for choice. I did marry Karen on my main save, so probably not her. She has always been my fave Mineral Town girl. The challenge for that game will be just picking one. I do like Ran, Karen and Popuri most, but Marie and Elly are really great too. I will probably have to date all four of them and then somehow choose. :lol:

Eventually, I plan to have a save for being married to each of the original MT girls. I already have my main save where I married Karen. Then I did a girl save to marry Gray to "recreate" my old MFoMT save. Then I'll have one for each of the girls. I have so much love for this game, I will make a new save for each one. Not just the same original save but split off for each girl. I guess that is a sorta challenge too, to have in total six different saves all based around the spouse.


When I get around to HMDSCute in the legacy, I'm going to really struggle. I never really liked any of the guys. My faves will always be the AWL girls, Muffy, Celia and Nami. Same as FoMT, I'd play AWL a lot too and marry each of the girls. I couldn't even begin to pick just one out of those three.
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I didn't play FoMT, only MFoMT. And I played it only once, so only got to know Doctor better... now I'm like "what was I thinking, he's not even that interesting" lol.
I played A LOT the BTN version, so I married Marry, Ann, Karen and Popuri, and Mary's still got my heart. She's my favorite of them all.

NOW, about the DS Cute bachelors... what the hell was that, ffs.... I chose Marlin because he's the only acceptable, in my opinion. Not that I did find him interesting, it was only because I had to choose one of them. Good lord, they're all horrible.
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My legacy challenge is briefly stalling Sarah (3oT) married Wayne. They had a son, Wade. Who moved to Echo Village (ANB.) I was set for him to marry Tina, until I realised her job is pretty close if not pretty much the same as Wayne's. Don't want Wade marrying a woman who does the same thing as his dad. Now I have to choose someone else for him. Just not sure who, yet.

If I were to put together a little rule set I've put together and following for this legacy challenge, would anyone be interested in that?
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Shan O 123
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^
Depends what it is. Cuz I’m only using PoOT and SSM (same « Chicken Hugging » marriage) is a thing. So I decided for my guy to marry Neil. You still get a kid
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Rose Petals wrote: Jun 19, 2022 2:44 am My legacy challenge is briefly stalling Sarah (3oT) married Wayne. They had a son, Wade. Who moved to Echo Village (ANB.) I was set for him to marry Tina, until I realised her job is pretty close if not pretty much the same as Wayne's. Don't want Wade marrying a woman who does the same thing as his dad. Now I have to choose someone else for him. Just not sure who, yet.

If I were to put together a little rule set I've put together and following for this legacy challenge, would anyone be interested in that?
Tell me, I want to know! ^-^
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I wrote up the rules! :)
I hope they are easy to understand, and not just chaotic rambling. I've not written a challenge rule set before. Definitely not for HM/SoS. It is WiP, so I can make rule set changes and improvements.

You can use literally any of the games for this, but I mention a lot the 4 that I plan to use to start with. You can tailor it to your game options or general play style.
Spoiler:
Harvest Moon & Story of Seasons Legacy Challenge

Inspiration:
This is based off the very popular and well-known challenge in The Sims community called “Legacy.” The basic principle is 10 generations of the same family.

I’m not going to say 10 generations for this. Even I probably couldn’t play that much, but I will try. 10 generations are entirely optional for this, because not everyone has all the Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons games, or enough to do this. So, it will be “How ever many generations you can do with the games you have or want to play.”

Founder and Farm:
  • This is the very first game you play. You can give them any name, any birthday or any gender you wish. No restrictions at all. Free to choose. (Example, for this, I chose the first daughter of my Rune Factory 5 character, Sarah. Her birthday was 30th of Spring, so I chose that. She also started the legacy in Trio of Towns.)
  • In this founder generation, you choose the name of your farm. Every generation after will also name their farm this. This is in place of the family last name carried from generation to generation in the original challenge. (For mine, I chose “Rune” as the name of the farm.)
  • Next is farm speciality. This is one thing that your legacy is famed for, that they build some of their family fortune on and what they get the most fame for with branding and festival wins. It should be noted, just because you choose this, doesn’t mean that is the only way they can make money. You can make money anyway you want. Your farmer will just prioritise this before anything else for festivals. (For this, upon Sarah’s creation I chose that she is an “Animal Lover,” so she prioritised animals over everything else. All her animals had the highest attributes for their productivity, produce level, fur and were 10 hearts with her. She won every festival she entered with them. Most of her income on any normal day was from the produce she got from her animals. But her other source of income outside required shipping for town rank tasks, was growing cotton, or raising oysters for pearls. Her son has moved away. Just like his mother, he prioritises animals, but his side money is flowers and honey. I plan on Wade’s child to have tea and herbs as their side money.)
Spouses:
  • There are no required spouses. You can marry whoever you want in any game. Completely your choice. No theme.
  • The only restriction areas are marriage candidates that crossover and are marriageable in other games. You can manage this how you choose. You can like me just avoid them all together, or say that if you marry them in one game they are blacklisted from marriage in any future games. After all, you wouldn’t want your farmer marrying their mother or their father or their ancestor, right? LOL. In a few games, there is a spouse that you can’t have a child with. Because it goes against the nature of the challenge, you can’t marry these.
  • Some more recent games allow same-« Chicken Hugging » marriage, that results in adopting a baby. You are free to do this if you want to.


Generations:
  • There is no restriction on children born. You can influence the gender of the baby to be what you want them to be for the next game/generation. (Even I am guilty of this. I had to reload once to get a son, because I decided I wanted a male farmer for ANB.)
  • The name you chose for the child and the day the baby is born on is the name and birthday for your next generation.
  • This should be mentioned, because I did this; if farmer customisation is an option you may use this to make the farmer look like they did as a child. I did this in ANB for Wade, because in 3oT, he had blonde hair and blue eyes.
  • Each generation when they are “all grown up” moves to a new town, or in this case a new game. (Example, I have already pre-planned the first four generations; 3oT, ANB, SoS, SoS:FoMT. So that means, starting on the border of Westown, Lulukoko, Tsukuyusa, then gen 2 moves to Echo Village, then gen 3 moves to Oak Tree Town, then gen 4 moves to Mineral Town. That is the legacy of Rune Farm spread over those towns, with their fame for the best cared for animals on any farm.)
Other Rules:
  • There are games that literally use exactly the same cast; AWL/AnWL/AWL:SE and HMDS and HMDSCute, Island of Happiness and Sunshine Island, Tree of Tranquillity and Animal Parade, spring to mind. Now, how you manage this, that is down to you to decide. I’ve decided it to be one of them. ToT and AP neither will the AWLs (sadly) will not be part of my legacy. If I get there, I will choose HMDSCute and then Sunshine Island.
  • You do not have to start with Trio of Towns for your founder. The only reason I chose this is because your farmer does have a family that is not only mentioned a lot, but they actually visit you and you even have an uncle in Westown. Other games any mention of family is downplayed enough that you can ignore it. Very difficult to pretend your farmer’s family is a save from another game, when they have a mother, father, sister and uncle very present. You can however, manage this however you want. For story purposes, I played this off that Sarah is still my RF5 character’s daughter, she was just sent away by magic from sources unknown, arrived in the “present” and adopted by Daryl and Marlena adopted her.
  • If you want to use a single game for this legacy, how you manage that is your choice. I would actually be interested in seeing what you do with that, and would like to give it a try myself (if I can.)
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Shan O 123
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If you want to use a single game for this legacy, how you manage that is your choice. I would actually be interested in seeing what you do with that, and would like to give it a try myself (if I can.
The DLC package in PoOT. It’s basically easy. Those characters doesn’t interact with anything outside of their respective islands. So what I’d do if focus only on one DLC island and ignore the other two. Then simply ignore the olive town candidates unless you have to.

Those rules are reasonable, the only thing I don’t care about is the money thing cuz I’m lazy. And PoOT doesn’t have many festivals.


Besides I can’t find my 3DS. It’s somewhere in this house.
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Shan O 123 wrote: Jun 20, 2022 1:54 pm
If you want to use a single game for this legacy, how you manage that is your choice. I would actually be interested in seeing what you do with that, and would like to give it a try myself (if I can.
The DLC package in PoOT. It’s basically easy. Those characters doesn’t interact with anything outside of their respective islands. So what I’d do if focus only on one DLC island and ignore the other two. Then simply ignore the olive town candidates unless you have to.

Those rules are reasonable, the only thing I don’t care about is the money thing cuz I’m lazy. And PoOT doesn’t have many festivals.


Besides I can’t find my 3DS. It’s somewhere in this house.
Oh! That is new and interesting way of looking at it. DLC isn't really an option for me, but that is great how than can work out with just one game.

I am glad they are reasonable. I was concerned that it might either be too rule heavy or just sound all over the place. I tried to make it as simple as possible, so everyone can tweak it to their play style. Like how you are using the DLC island for PoOT.

Having the 3DS games isn't really required. I only used those because I have them and wanted to play them. When I first made this legacy, I only used DS games of Sunshine Island, Grand Bazaar and Tale of Two Towns. But anyone can use any games they have access to. If I had my Wii available, I would throw Animal Parade and A Wonderful Life into the mix. I actually wanted to start with SoS: FoMT, but the whole having a family already in Trio of Towns threw a spanner into the works of that.
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Haven't thought of doing a legacy challenge

I have, however, made something of a challenge for myself regarding ToTT, in that I'm trying to get the English titles for the farm ranks, and trying to see how many of the points I can keep track of for each rank.

For HMDS, I've set myself the challenge to woo the Witch Princess, to keep me from my tendency to start over when returning from a hiatus. This because I've seldom managed to get past one year of playing that game, before the lack of purpose beyond rescuing the HG made me easily sidetracked. It becomes a "I've rescued her, now what?" situation, and I find it a game where I have to set up rules and goals for myself to not fall for the allure of the early struggles.
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