1400s Starting Conditions

Reminder: Start with just 2 Sims married to each other.

Your female Sim can be any age 12 or older.

Your male Sim can be any age 14 or older.

Your starting couple does not have to be newly married or close in age. They may be young newlyweds, an established couple, or an older couple beginning the challenge later in life.

Your Sims may begin in any social class. You do not have to start as peasants. Their starting funds, home, clothing, occupations, servants, animals, education, and possessions should reasonably reflect the class you choose.

The 1400s cover an enormous amount of change. A household beginning in 1400 should still feel considerably more medieval than one beginning in 1495. As the century progresses, especially in wealthy towns and courts, you can gradually introduce more elaborate clothing, furnishings, books, art, trade goods, and other early Renaissance influences.

Marriage

Female Sims may marry beginning at age 12, and male Sims beginning at age 14.

These are minimum ages for the challenge, not required marriage ages. Your Sims may marry considerably later depending on social class, wealth, inheritance, available spouses, occupation, and family circumstances.

Optional Marriage Roll: Once a Sim reaches marriageable age and survives their yearly death roll, roll a D4 for each year they remain unmarried.

• Girls begin rolling at age 12.

• Boys begin rolling at age 14.

• 1 on D4 = the Sim marries that year.

You can make the roll annually or roll ahead once the Sim reaches marriageable age.

For example, your female Sim turns 12 and survives. Roll a D4. A 1 means she marries at 12. Anything else means you roll for age 13, then 14, and so on until you eventually roll a 1.

If you roll ahead, the marriage is not guaranteed to happen. The Sim must still survive every aging roll, epidemic, famine, war, accident, and other historical event between their current age and intended marriage.

Marrying young can help establish another household and produce heirs before upcoming disasters. However, it also creates additional opportunities for pregnancy complications and maternal mortality and can leave you with an absolutely ridiculous number of surviving descendants if the couple both live long lives.

Choosing a Spouse

Your Sims do not have to marry randomly.

Family status, occupation, property, wealth, religion, reputation, proximity, and social connections may all influence marriage choices.

Generally, Sims should marry someone reasonably compatible with their social position. However, marrying upward or downward is completely allowed.

A wealthy merchant's daughter marrying minor nobility is plausible. A duke's heir randomly marrying an impoverished farmhand with no explanation should probably require an exceptionally good story.

For noble and royal households, marriage may be primarily about:

• Alliances

• Land

• Wealth

• Producing heirs

• Settling disputes

• Strengthening family connections

• Political advantage

Romantic compatibility is nice, but it is not required before marriage.

Your Sims are allowed to fall in love afterward—or absolutely despise each other for the next forty years.

Engagements & Weddings

You do not need a large wedding ceremony for every marriage.

If eligible Sims are formally engaged and have whatever consent your storyline requires, you may consider them married after they WooHoo and use the normal marriage interaction without holding an elaborate Sims wedding.

Ordinary families can have small celebrations involving relatives, food, drinking, music, dancing, and church.

Wealthy merchants, nobles, and royals may hold substantially larger celebrations.

By the later 1400s, especially among wealthy households, weddings can become increasingly elaborate displays of family wealth and status.

You still do not need:

• A modern wedding venue.

• A white wedding dress.

• A modern tiered wedding cake.

• Bridesmaids in matching dresses.

• A bartender standing behind a glowing bar.

• Any other modern wedding tradition simply because The Sims expects one.

Dowries & Dowers

Dowries are optional.

You do not need to save a dowry for every daughter before she is allowed to marry.

However, if you want marriage to have a greater economic impact, you may use these optional standardized values:

Marriage Match

Optional Value

Marry a peasant

§500

Marry working class — just above peasant, but still broke

§1,000

Marry lower class

§1,500

Marry middle class

§2,500

Marry upper class

§5,000

Marry ungodly wealthy

§7,500

Marry poor noble

§8,000

Marry lower noble — Lord, Baron, Viscount

§10,000

Marry upper noble — Earl, Duke

§12,500

Marry wealthy noble — any rank

§15,000

Marry royal

§17,500

Marry foreign royal

§20,000

These are gameplay values, not literal conversions of historical money into Simoleons.

You may represent the value using money, livestock, jewelry, clothing, furniture, linens, household goods, land, property, or any combination appropriate to the family's wealth.

A peasant family does not necessarily need to hand another household §500 in cash.

For nobles and royalty, marriage settlements can become significantly more complicated and may include estates, titles, land, political agreements, or inheritance arrangements.

Dowry: wealth or property supplied from the bride's side of the marriage.

Dower: provision made by the husband or his family for the wife's financial security.

You can use dowries, dowers, both, or neither.

Divorce, Separation & Annulment

Your Sims may end marriages, although this should generally be difficult and uncommon.

For many Christian households, an annulment or permanent separation will make more sense than a modern no-fault divorce.

Your Sims may also simply live separately while remaining legally married.

If you choose to formally dissolve the marriage under the challenge's simplified divorce system, children from the dissolved union are considered illegitimate for inheritance purposes.

If you're playing somewhere with different religious or legal traditions, you may adjust these rules accordingly.

Legitimacy & Inheritance

Bastards/illegitimate children cannot normally inherit or become the primary heir.

They may still:

• Live with either parent.

• Be acknowledged by their father.

• Receive money or property.

• Receive an education.

• Learn a trade.

• Enter religious life.

• Marry.

• Have legitimate children.

• Establish their own household.

• Establish a new branch of the family.

Being illegitimate does not mean the Sim must be abandoned or treated horribly.

It primarily affects their place in the normal inheritance system.

A wealthy or powerful parent may provide extremely well for an illegitimate child without making that child their legal heir.

Orphans

Do not use modern adoption as your default solution for orphaned children.

Orphans may be:

• Taken in by relatives.

• Raised by older siblings.

• Placed with another household.

• Sent to a monastery or convent.

• Placed in service.

• Apprenticed when old enough.

• Supported by a charitable or religious institution.

Relatives are absolutely allowed to take orphaned children.

If a child's parents die and their grandparents, aunt, uncle, or adult sibling is alive and capable of taking them, moving the child into that household is perfectly acceptable.

An orphaned heir may also remain attached to their family's property while being raised under the supervision of another adult.

Children, Education & Apprenticeships

Children do not need to spend their entire childhood playing at home.

Once old enough, children should increasingly participate in the household economy.

Poor and working households may have children:

• Help with animals.

• Gather food.

• Perform domestic work.

• Help with younger siblings.

• Work in fields.

• Assist with the family trade.

• Enter service.

Older children and teenagers may become apprentices.

If a Sim is apprenticed to another household, you may move them out temporarily and have them live with their master if your gameplay setup allows it.

An apprenticeship is particularly appropriate for:

• Blacksmiths

• Carpenters

• Tailors

• Weavers

• Bakers

• Masons

• Merchants

• Artists

• Other skilled trades

Children of wealthy families may instead receive more formal education.

Literacy should generally be more common among clergy, scholars, merchants, administrators, wealthy urban families, and nobility than among poor rural laborers.

However, do not treat medieval people as universally illiterate or stupid.

Books & Printing

Books are allowed throughout the century.

Before the spread of printing, books should generally be expensive and relatively uncommon possessions, particularly for poorer Sims.

Handwritten books, religious texts, account books, manuscripts, and similar objects are completely appropriate.

1450s onward — Printing Begins

Beginning around the 1450s, you may start introducing movable-type printed books in European settings.

This does not mean every peasant suddenly gets a personal library.

Printed material should initially be concentrated among:

• Clergy

• Universities

• Scholars

• Merchants

• Administrators

• Nobility

• Wealthier urban households

As you approach 1500, books and printed material may gradually become more accessible.

Sims may write books throughout the century, but before widespread printing you can treat publication as the production or copying of manuscripts rather than modern mass-market publishing.

WooHoo & Contraception

Your Sims may WooHoo without pregnancy.

If you use no-pregnancy WooHoo, roll a D6 afterward.

5 on D6 = contraception failed.

The couple must immediately Try for Baby.

If Try for Baby does not result in pregnancy, that's fine. The contraceptive attempt failed, but conception was never guaranteed.

This allows Sims to attempt to space or prevent pregnancies without giving them perfectly reliable modern contraception.

Pregnancy & Childbirth

Home birth is preferred.

Birth may be attended by:

• A midwife.

• Female relatives.

• Neighbors.

• Servants.

• Other experienced women.

Male physicians should not automatically attend every ordinary birth, particularly among poorer families.

If gameplay or a serious complication requires your Sim to be sent to an almshouse, hospital, convent, or other institution, you may do so.

The location of the birth does not alter the normal maternal or infant death rolls unless another challenge rule specifically says it does.

If your Sim must be sent away for childbirth or treatment, she and the baby should remain away for 1–2 Sim days before returning home.

For challenge purposes, this represents a much longer recovery period.

Breastfeeding & Wet Nursing

Babies may be breastfed or bottle-fed.

The Sims bottle should be treated as a gameplay stand-in for whatever substitute feeding arrangement is being used.

Every time a woman gives birth, roll a D10.

3 on D10 = she cannot successfully breastfeed the current baby.

The baby must receive substitute feeding or have a wet nurse.

For an additional challenge, roll a D4 for each baby who cannot be breastfed.

2 on D4 = death from malnutrition/unsafe substitute feeding.

If an appropriate wet nurse is available, you may cancel the additional malnutrition roll.

Wealthy households are much more likely to be able to hire a wet nurse.

Poor families may rely on a lactating relative, neighbor, or another woman in the household.

A woman who failed her breastfeeding roll gets another chance with her next birth.

Death & Grim

You may plead with Grim when a Sim dies.

If Grim accepts, the Sim survives.

Specific historical events may prohibit pleading or declare a death automatic. Those rules override this one.

Spellcasters and other occults follow their own special death-prevention rules where applicable.

Food

Your Sims may:

• Grow food.

• Raise livestock.

• Hunt.

• Fish.

• Gather.

• Purchase ingredients.

• Purchase prepared foods where appropriate.

• Trade.

• Buy food from markets or merchants.

Households do not need to be completely self-sufficient.

Urban Sims in particular may purchase a considerable amount of their food.

Your blacksmith does not need to secretly operate a 40-acre wheat farm behind his workshop because The Sims doesn't understand medieval markets.

Food Storage

Food may be stored.

Medieval and early Renaissance households had numerous methods of preserving food.

Depending on the food, you may treat refrigeration interactions as representing:

• Salting

• Smoking

• Drying

• Pickling

• Fermentation

• Cellaring

• Cool storage

• Preserves

• Stored grain

You do not need to throw away leftovers simply because refrigerators did not exist.

The refrigerator itself should ideally be hidden, disguised, replaced with CC, or visually appropriate if possible.

Off-the-Grid

The Off-the-Grid lot trait is optional.

You are not required to use it.

The Sims' utility system does not accurately simulate historical life, and Off-the-Grid can sometimes create equally ahistorical problems.

Use it if you enjoy the additional gameplay difficulty.

Otherwise, simply restrict yourself from using inappropriate modern objects.

Animals

You may own as many animals as you can afford, house, and care for.

Animals may provide:

• Meat

• Milk

• Eggs

• Wool

• Transportation

• Labor

• Income

• Breeding stock

• Hunting assistance

• Pest control

• Protection

• Companionship

Animal ownership should roughly correspond to wealth.

Poor Sims may own a few chickens, a pig, goat, or other useful animals.

A prosperous farm may have considerably more.

Wealthy households and nobles can maintain horses, hunting dogs, extensive livestock, and other animals appropriate to their estates.

Horses

Horses are allowed throughout the century.

However, owning one should reflect the household's circumstances.

Not every poor Sim needs a personal riding horse.

Horses may be used for:

• Transportation

• Agriculture

• Hauling

• Hunting

• Messages

• Travel

• Warfare

• Status

Noble and royal households may own multiple horses for different purposes.

If your challenge tracks animal pedigrees, horse breeding can also become an important source of wealth.

Lighting & Electricity

No electricity.

Use:

• Candles

• Rushlights

• Hearths

• Fireplaces

• Oil lamps appropriate to the setting

• Other flame-based lighting

A Build/Buy object technically being categorized as an electric light does not matter if it visibly represents a candle.

Historical appearance and function take priority over the game's coding.

Bathrooms & Hygiene

Prefer chamber pots indoors.

Do not use pee bushes as the standard household bathroom solution.

If you don't use CC, you may use an ordinary indoor toilet as a gameplay substitute until you can obtain something more visually appropriate.

Your Sims are also allowed to wash themselves.

The 1400s were not populated by people who had collectively decided that touching water would kill them.

Bathing frequency, facilities, and practices varied enormously by place and class, but Sims may:

• Wash their hands and faces.

• Bathe.

• Wash clothing.

• Change linens.

• Groom themselves.

• Visit bathhouses where culturally/location appropriate.

You do not need to deliberately keep everyone's Hygiene bar red for "historical accuracy."

Homes

No:

• Modern drywall.

• Modern wallpaper.

• Electric lighting.

• Modern plumbing fixtures unless they're being used strictly as gameplay substitutes.

• Obviously modern appliances.

Appropriate building materials depend heavily on location and wealth.

You may use:

• Timber

• Plaster

• Wattle and daub

• Stone

• Brick where appropriate

• Tile

• Thatch

• Wooden floors

• Packed-earth floors

• Exposed beams

• Paneling

By the later 1400s, wealthy urban and noble homes can become substantially more elaborate.

Furniture & Decoration

Poor does not mean your Sims have to live in an empty room containing one chair and a pile of hay.

Even ordinary households can own practical furniture and personal possessions.

Wealth determines the quantity, materials, craftsmanship, and extravagance of those possessions.

Large tapestries, elaborate carpets, expensive imported goods, extensive decorative objects, fine furniture, and substantial collections of books should generally be reserved for wealthier households.

As the century progresses, wealthy households may increasingly display art and luxury goods.

Art

Paintings, religious images, sculptures, decorative carving, embroidery, and other art are allowed.

Professional artists are also completely acceptable occupations.

By the later 1400s, particularly in appropriate European regions, wealthy households may become major patrons of artists.

Portraiture becomes increasingly useful for noble, royal, merchant, and wealthy families.

So yes: you can absolutely start filling the family manor with portraits of dead ancestors.

Travel & Trade

Your Sims may travel.

They do not have to spend their entire lives on the lot where they were born.

Reasons for travel may include:

• Trade

• Pilgrimage

• Marriage

• Military service

• Education

• Employment

• Diplomacy

• Religious service

• Visiting family

• Relocation

• Fleeing war, disease, or famine

Foreign goods are also allowed when the household could reasonably obtain them.

The medieval world was not isolated into tiny self-contained bubbles.

Trade networks existed across enormous distances.

The important question isn't simply "Did this object originate somewhere else?"

It's "Could this particular household reasonably afford and obtain it?"

Religion

Religion can play a significant role in your household, but exactly how much you incorporate is up to you.

Religious Sims may:

• Attend services.

• Pray.

• Fast.

• Give charity.

• Go on pilgrimage.

• Enter monasteries or convents.

• Donate money or property.

• Observe saints' days and feast days.

A child may also enter religious life rather than marry.

For wealthy or noble families, placing younger children in religious positions can be particularly useful when you have far too many children and only one estate to inherit.

Medieval Holidays

Your Sims may continue celebrating the medieval holidays from the 1300s.

January — Twelfth Night

Religious observance combined with feasting, drinking, music, games, and celebration.

February — St. Valentine's Day

Courtship, poetry, singing, dancing, flirting, and pairing games are appropriate.

March/April — Easter

Attend religious services and celebrate afterward with food and family.

Easter is a movable feast, so you may place it in March or April.

April — All Fools' Day

Jokes