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Legacy Challenges vs Legacy Narratives: which do you prefer?
Nikkei_Simmer
Posts: 9,428 Member
I tend to not do “Legacy Challenges” mainly because I’m a story writer vs playing a set of rules and achievements and logging points for them. I have a certain specific goal in mind and that is the function of my game - to tell a story, not to let my sims control the outcome of the story. My sims unless I’m doing a “freeplay” are controlled, on a leash.
If you are into Legacies which do you prefer: Legacy Challenges or Narrative or a combination of the two?
If you are into Legacies which do you prefer: Legacy Challenges or Narrative or a combination of the two?
Always "River McIrish" ...and maybe some Bebe Hart. ~innocent expression~
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There are some that I like to do, especially if I'm bored. I've come up with my own rules for legacies. Maybe one day I'll consistently write a story. LOL
My sims are also not on a leash, definately not. I allow them to roam free as much as possible, because I don't really want to be the one to decide what their story is going to be like.. Of course, I do to varying degrees decide their personality traits and select life time wishes for them, but sometimes I also just roll the dice on their traits, and then replace the ones I don't like.
So.. if I've created four sims sort of randomly, and these sims at one point gets a wish to start or join a band, well... that's what they'll do.
My long term goal is really to just play with generations and see what come out of it, but I find myself sometimes making stories out of things anyway, because suddenly.. oops, here's a story, but I don't sit out and try to start writing a story before I've even played the game. The stories, or the ideas for them, usually show up afterwards based on something that happened in game, and I still try to allow them as much freedom as possible within that story.. :P
Sub blogs: #01 Sunset Valley. #02: Lake Onebega #03: Sprottenham #04: Bewickton
As far as story writing is concerned, the legacies I read tend to fall into one of three gameplay styles:
1. Letting the Sims do what they want, basically just playing the game normally, documenting what goes down and then making a story out of it. This style includes 'true' legacies, which follow the Pinstar rules and aim to collect points. The best story I've ever read in this style had an author with a great sense of humour who fully leaned into the wackiness of the game and used that to provide witty and entertaining commentary throughout.
2. Essentially creative writing using Sims to illustrate the story, where the narrative is pre-planned and possibly even pre-written and the game is just used to provide the visuals. Usually the visually gorgeous ones with ReShade effects and tonnes of poses fall into this category. I don't think I'd ever have the patience for this style of storytelling myself, but one of my all-time favourites is done in this style.
3. A mix of the above two, where the author might have an idea in their head about how the story should go, but they allow in-game events to influence the course of the narrative. This is my preference and the style my own legacy story is written in, since while I like interesting plots and developed characters, I also like playing the game itself too much to just use it for screenshots.
I'm also terrible at limiting my gameplay to rules that someone else wrote.
Legacy narratives can be an enjoyable read especially if it has an engaging storyline and fleshed out characters, but that depends entirely on the skill of the writer.
It's like reading fanfiction where you never know what you're going to get. Sometimes you get top tier stories and sometimes you're left wondering what the heck you just read.
There are times where I want to read a legacy just for the challenge and see the successes and failures that happen along the way. No larger narrative needed.
As for my own legacies, I have a general idea for a story, but not fully planned out. So I'll stay within that story but with a few influences from in-game events.