My Castaway Challenge Rules

I've been thinking about doing something different and I thought I'd like to give the Castaway Challenge a try. However, I wasn't really keen on the original rules and I don't really want a money-making based challenge. I reckon that money on the island isn't really worth anything and selling things doesn't seem to make any sense either, since there is no one to sell it to! I want to try and build a population and small village from a deserted island. 

So, I made a few changes to the challenge rules so that it fits my gaming style and my idea of the challenge. This is what I'll be using, in case anyone wants to check it out.

Castaway Challenge:

I'm using Katie Haven's challenge as a basis, but I'm changing the rules a bit. 

Source: http://katiehaven3.blogspot.com/2011/11/long-time-no-see-castaway-challenge.html

I'm also using the island recommended by Katie Haven - Paradise (Lite version, since I don't own WA) from Fuzzy Logic Dishwasher.

That being said, these are my rules:

Sims:

2 sims (one of them has to be a YA/Adult). More people can be added if one would like an easier challenge (although the drawback is that they will need more attending to their needs). Dress them according to the theme, as well.

Remember to use appropriate traits (gardening, fishing, handiness, etc.) - it will really help during the challenge. 

Food:

Everything has to be planted or gathered (fishing, fruits from trees,etc.) and seeds have to be collected around the island.

A few fruit trees might be placed on the island beforehand to ease the start. 

Furniture/build:

There should be the least amount of furniture possible and it should go with the theme and not seem out of place. Pick sleeping bags, rather than beds; grills or fire pits rather than ovens; pick wooden tubs, etc. No fridges - there is no electricity. Use fires or those tropical torches, rather than lamps. 

No walls or doors. Use wooden fences, for example (might not be a good idea to have a shy sim or 'never nude' - or do! It might be fun, who knows?)

Build a shelter or something resembling that. 

I might use the castaway set items for things like toilets, etc.

Source: http://www.modthesims.info/browse.php?tag=castaway&gs=2&f=38&gs=2

If you use the castaway set, don't just put everything in the game at once. Make it realistic. Your characters won't have every commodity at first. Things like the waterfall shower look like they belong in nature, but the sink looks man-made so adopt some rule like 'one object per each sim-day' or something to make it look like your sims are slowly building a village. 

Objects:

You can have a few things that would make sense for a sim to have on them when they got shipwrecked. This would be stuff like a sleeping bag; a book or two; a baseball/rugby ball; a guitar maybe? (don't know if that's too far-fetched, but it might go well with the whole island theme/mood). You can't have anything electronic since it'd have gotten damaged by the water when the sims washed up on the shore.

Needs:

No cooking with ovens. Try fire-pits or MAYBE grills. Don't use normal toilets or showers, since there isn't any plumbing on the island. You may want to use the castaway set, since it is more realistic (for example, the kitchen sink is a rock with a hose that has to be connected to a lake; there is also a shower imitating a waterfall; the toilet is a bamboo stall,etc.).

Pets:

You can adopt strays, or wild horses. That'll make the game-play more realistic. However, pets might eat your produce - you can have them eat that, but make sure they don't eat everything! No food bowls. Get some hay on the island at the beginning, but you can't buy more after. You can also teach cats and dogs to hunt - they will eat what they catch (example: cats can fish on ponds and eat the fish). They may also bring you food. 

Selling/Buying Rules:

(You can ONLY sell stuff when there are more families on the island.)

And money is no good on the island (your family funds should be 0$ at all times - use the familyfunds cheat), so you have to see it as an exchange - when you sell something, you will have some 'money' which will be seen as the value of what you sold so you can only buy what you sell. 

Example: you want to buy a shelf to store all the items you collect. You have to sell enough to be able to buy that object. If the shelf costs 100$, you have to sell 100$ - it is as an exchange, as if you gave your neighbor a bunch of fruit and he built you a shelf in return. I figured this'd be more realistic. Also, don't buy stuff that doesn't seem to belong on the island or is electronic. 

(And if you get a shelf, you have to delete all the books in it. You can only store the ones you may have brought on you - and you can't write new ones since you'd need a computer to do that in the game). 

Supernatural:

Adding the supernatural element to the challenge might be interesting but it needs to be well thought out. For example, a witch can conjure food so that might defeat the purpose of the challenge (maybe choose to not use certain spells); also, a vampire normally can't stay in the daylight, which means having them on the island might just get them killed. Zombies will eat all of the produce in your garden, so that might not be a good idea either.

But having a werewolf on the island might be fun - they're good hunters, they have no trouble staying in the sunlight and every full moon something interesting might happen on the island! 

Fairies are really good at gardening so that might be considered as cheating for the challenge, but who says one can't have a fairy island? 

Goal:

Build a family and populate the island (I don't like the idea of winning the challenge by making money to get out of the island. The sims are stuck there, not because they don't have money, but because they have no way back). Don't forget that if you want to populate the island, you can't have the 2 sims being related to one another.

When you have more families, you can start selling items, like your excess produce or fish you catch, stuff you collect, etc. to buy other stuff. Check the selling/buying rules above.

[Edit: somewhere along the story, other people will have to be introduced in the Island, whether it be tribal members or just other ship-wrecked people, otherwise you can't populate the island, as the initial castaways might have kids but their kids can't have kids with each other, of course.]