1500s 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 can be young newlyweds, an established couple, or an older couple beginning with considerably fewer reproductive years remaining.

Your Sims may start in any social class. Peasant is not the default requirement. You may begin with farmers, laborers, craftspeople, merchants, professionals, minor nobility, wealthy nobility, or royalty.

Starting money, housing, clothing, education, servants, animals, occupations, and possessions should reasonably reflect the class you choose.

The 1500s cover an enormous period of change. A household beginning in 1500 should not look identical to one living in 1599. Clothing, architecture, religion, literacy, household goods, warfare, international trade, and technology can gradually change throughout the century.

If you are continuing from the 1400s rather than beginning a new save, do not replace everything on January 1, 1500. Changes should appear gradually as your Sims can afford them and new objects or practices become available.

Marriage

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

These are minimum challenge ages, not mandatory marriage ages.

Many Sims should marry later depending on their wealth, occupation, social status, inheritance prospects, available spouses, and family circumstances.

Optional Marriage Roll

Once a Sim reaches marriageable age and survives their yearly death roll, roll a D4 for every 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 may roll annually or roll ahead once the Sim reaches marriageable age.

For example, a girl reaches age 12 and survives. Roll a D4. If you roll a 1, she marries at 12. Anything else means you roll for 13, then 14, and so on until you eventually roll a 1.

Rolling a future marriage age does not guarantee survival.

If your Sim is supposed to marry at 19 but dies of disease at 16, congratulations: you planned a wedding that never happened.

Marrying young can help establish additional households and produce heirs before epidemics, wars, accidents, or maternal deaths destroy your plans.

It can also produce forty years of pregnancies and leave you wondering why one woman has populated half the save.

Choosing a Spouse

Your Sims may choose spouses based on:

• Attraction

• Family connections

• Wealth

• Occupation

• Property

• Social status

• Religion

• Reputation

• Political advantage

• Inheritance

• Location

• Personal affection

They do not need to marry someone of exactly the same social class.

Social mobility exists.

A successful merchant family may marry into the lower nobility, while a struggling noble family may find the money of an extremely wealthy merchant considerably more attractive than his pedigree.

Large differences in status should simply have a reasonable explanation.

For noble and royal Sims, marriage may primarily concern dynasty rather than romance.

Your newlyweds do not have to be in love.

They are allowed to become soulmates later.

They are also allowed to discover within approximately six hours that this arrangement was a terrible idea.

Engagements & Weddings

Your Sims do not need an elaborate wedding event to become married.

Ordinary families can have relatively modest ceremonies and celebrations.

Depending on religion and location, church involvement may be increasingly important to how your Sims formalize their marriages during this century.

Wealthier households may hold significantly more elaborate celebrations involving:

• Large feasts

• Musicians

• Dancing

• Expensive clothing

• Processions

• Gifts

• Large numbers of guests

• Displays of family wealth

Noble and royal weddings can be enormous political events.

However, your Sims still do not need:

• White bridal gowns

• Matching bridesmaid dresses

• Modern wedding cakes

• Modern wedding venues

• Wedding photographers

• A DJ

• A glowing Mixology bar because The Sims refuses to understand what century you're playing in

Dowries & Dowers

Dowries remain completely optional for challenge purposes.

You do not need to provide one before a daughter is allowed to marry.

If you want an additional financial challenge, use the following 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 challenge-balanced Simoleon values, not direct historical currency conversions.

Dowries and dowers may consist of more than money.

They can include:

• Livestock

• Clothing

• Linens

• Furniture

• Jewelry

• Tools

• Household goods

• Land

• Property

• Businesses

• Income rights

For noble and royal households, marriage settlements may involve estates, political agreements, titles, territorial claims, or other extremely valuable arrangements.

Divorce, Separation & Annulment

Your Sims may separate or end marriages, but this should generally be uncommon and potentially difficult.

Exactly what is possible depends heavily on location and religion, particularly once you enter the Reformation.

Annulment, legal separation, abandonment, or simply maintaining separate households may sometimes be more appropriate than a modern divorce.

If you use the challenge's simplified divorce option, children from a formally dissolved marriage are considered illegitimate for inheritance purposes.

Religion & the Reformation

Religion becomes particularly important during the 1500s.

You do not have to simulate every theological disagreement of the century, but religion can now have significant effects on marriages, inheritance, migration, politics, and household relationships.

1517 onward — Protestant Reformation

Beginning in 1517, Protestant movements may begin appearing in appropriate European regions.

Your Sims do not automatically become Protestant in 1517.

Changes should spread gradually and depend on where they live.

Depending on your location and storyline, families may:

• Remain Catholic.

• Convert to Protestantism.

• Convert back later.

• Disagree internally.

• Hide their religious beliefs.

• Attend different churches.

• Flee religious persecution.

• Lose property or social standing.

• Benefit politically from religious change.

Religion can even divide families.

If you want additional chaos, when a major religious change reaches your region, roll a D4 for each adult household member.

1 = Sim privately disagrees with the household's religion.

You can decide whether they hide it, convert openly, leave, or create a magnificent amount of family drama.

Monasteries & Convents

Before religious institutions are dissolved in your particular region, Sims may:

• Become monks.

• Become nuns.

• Receive education through religious institutions.

• Give children to religious life.

• Seek shelter there.

• Receive care there.

• Donate property to them.

If monasteries are suppressed or dissolved where your Sims live, those options may disappear.

Former monks and nuns do not need to vanish from existence.

They can return to ordinary life, join another institution, relocate, remain religious privately, or even marry where circumstances allow.

Legitimacy & Inheritance

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

They may still:

• Be acknowledged by their parents.

• Live with their family.

• Receive money.

• Receive property.

• Be educated.

• Learn a trade.

• Join the military.

• Enter religious life.

• Marry.

• Have legitimate descendants.

• Establish another family branch.

A wealthy parent may provide extremely well for an illegitimate child without placing them in the normal succession.

For nobility and royalty, legitimacy should remain particularly important.

Orphans

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

Orphans may:

• Live with grandparents.

• Live with adult siblings.

• Live with aunts or uncles.

• Enter another household.

• Enter service.

• Become apprentices.

• Be supported by religious institutions.

• Be placed with charitable institutions where available.

Relatives may absolutely raise orphaned children.

For wealthy families, guardianship can become particularly important when a child inherits substantial property before reaching adulthood.

If a child inherits an estate, you may have another adult control the household's money until the heir becomes old enough to take over.

Whether that guardian responsibly protects the child's fortune or mysteriously spends half of it is between you, the guardian, and God.

Children, Work & Apprenticeships

Children are allowed to work.

Poor and working-class children may:

• Tend animals.

• Gather resources.

• Help with crops.

• Perform household chores.

• Help care for younger children.

• Assist in the family business.

• Enter domestic service.

• Learn a parent's occupation.

Older children and teenagers may become apprentices.

Apprenticeships are appropriate for trades such as:

• Tailoring

• Weaving

• Blacksmithing

• Carpentry

• Masonry

• Baking

• Brewing

• Printing

• Painting

• Metalworking

• Merchant trades

An apprentice may temporarily move into their master's household if you want to represent apprenticeship more accurately.

Education & Literacy

Education depends heavily on wealth, sex, occupation, location, and social class.

Not every Sim needs to be literate.

However, literacy should not be restricted exclusively to clergy or nobility.

By the 1500s, literacy is increasingly useful among:

• Merchants

• Craftspeople

• Printers

• Administrators

• Lawyers

• Physicians

• Clergy

• Scholars

• Nobility

• Royalty

Wealthy women may also be highly educated.

Poor Sims can potentially learn to read as well; it should simply be less universally available.

Books & Printing

Books are absolutely allowed.

Printing is now established enough that books no longer need to represent exclusively hand-copied manuscripts.

Your Sims may own:

• Religious books

• Printed books

• Manuscripts

• Poetry

• Medical texts

• Classical works

• Account books

• Political or religious pamphlets

• Educational texts

Ownership should still reflect wealth.

A peasant household probably should not contain a 400-volume private library.

A wealthy scholar absolutely can.

Printed Material

Printed pamphlets and books become increasingly important throughout the century, particularly during religious and political controversies.

Sims with access to printing may become:

• Authors

• Printers

• Publishers

• Booksellers

If the game pays your author royalties, you may simply treat those royalties as income from manuscript sales, printing, patronage, or publishing.

Art & Portraiture

Art is completely allowed.

By the 1500s, wealthy Sims can commission:

• Portraits

• Family portraits

• Religious artwork

• Sculptures

• Decorative paintings

• Elaborate furnishings

Noble, royal, and wealthy merchant households are particularly appropriate places for portraits.

Portraits may commemorate:

• Marriages

• Children

• Heirs

• Important appointments

• Family alliances

• Deceased relatives

You are therefore fully authorized to create a slightly unsettling hallway containing portraits of every ancestor since 1300.

WooHoo & Contraception

Your Sims may WooHoo without pregnancy.

Whenever they intentionally use no-pregnancy WooHoo, roll a D6.

5 on D6 = contraception failed.

Immediately Try for Baby.

A failed Try for Baby does not require another attempt. Contraception failed; conception simply didn't occur.

Pregnancy & Childbirth

Home birth remains preferred for most households.

Birth may be attended by:

• Midwives

• Female relatives

• Neighbors

• Servants

• Other experienced women

Wealthy women may have significantly more attendants and resources available.

Physicians may become involved when appropriate, but they do not need to replace midwives for normal births.

If your Sim must go to an almshouse, hospital, convent, or similar institution because of gameplay or a serious complication, that is allowed.

Birth location does not change maternal or infant mortality rolls unless another rule specifically says otherwise.

If sent away, the mother and baby should remain away for 1–2 Sim days to represent an extended recovery period.

Breastfeeding & Wet Nursing

Babies may be breastfed or bottle-fed.

After every birth, roll a D10.

3 on D10 = the mother cannot successfully breastfeed this baby.

The child must receive substitute feeding or use a wet nurse.

For an additional challenge, roll a D4 for the baby.

2 on D4 = baby dies from malnutrition or complications of inadequate/unsafe substitute feeding.

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

Wealthy families may hire wet nurses.

Poorer households may rely on relatives, neighbors, or another lactating woman.

Roll again after the mother's next delivery; inability to feed one child does not mean she will automatically be unable to feed future children.

Medicine

Your Sims may receive medical treatment.

Allowed practitioners can include:

• Physicians

• Surgeons

• Barber-surgeons

• Midwives

• Apothecaries

• Herbal healers

• Experienced family/community members

Treatments do not automatically save Sims from challenge death rolls.

A Sim drinking medicine because you told them to does not grant immunity from tuberculosis, plague, childbirth, or whatever other horrible thing the dice have selected for them.

However, medicines required by a specific event or disease rule should still be used.

Death & Grim

You may plead with Grim.

If Grim accepts, the Sim survives unless that specific death is marked as automatic/no pleading.

Occults follow any additional death or resurrection rules assigned to them.

Food

Your Sims may:

• Farm.

• Garden.

• Hunt.

• Fish.

• Raise livestock.

• Gather.

• Purchase ingredients.

• Purchase prepared food.

• Visit markets.

• Trade.

• Import foods if they can afford them.

Your household does not need to personally produce everything it consumes.

Urban Sims in particular can rely heavily on purchased food.

New Foods & the Columbian Exchange

The 1500s are where your available ingredients can start becoming particularly interesting.

After European contact with the Americas, new foods and crops begin crossing the Atlantic.

However, discovery does not mean immediate universal availability.

Do not have every household suddenly eating modern tomato-and-potato-heavy meals in 1501.

New ingredients should appear gradually depending on:

• Year

• Location

• Wealth

• Trade access

• Social class

Foods originating in the Americas can become available gradually during the century, including things such as:

• Maize

• Tomatoes

• Potatoes

• Cacao

• Chili peppers

• Various beans and squashes

Some may initially be rare curiosities rather than ordinary staple foods.

Likewise, Old World animals, crops, and foods are increasingly transported to the Americas.

If your Sims live outside Europe, do not treat European availability dates as universal rules. Use the actual region you're playing.

Food Storage

Yes, you can store food.

Treat refrigerator storage as representing appropriate preservation methods such as:

• Salting

• Smoking

• Drying

• Pickling

• Fermentation

• Cellaring

• Preserving

• Cool storage

You do not need to throw away leftovers because refrigerators haven't been invented.

If possible, hide or disguise modern refrigerators.

Off-the-Grid

The Off-the-Grid trait remains optional.

You may use it for gameplay difficulty, but you do not need it for historical accuracy.

Simply restrict your Sims from using inappropriate modern conveniences.

Animals

Your Sims may keep as many animals as they can reasonably:

• Afford

• Feed

• House

• Care for

Animals may provide meat, milk, eggs, wool, transportation, labor, income, hunting assistance, pest control, protection, breeding stock, or companionship.

The household's animals should roughly reflect its wealth and occupation.

Horses & Transportation

Horses remain allowed.

Your Sims may also travel by:

• Horse

• Cart

• Wagon

• Carriage where appropriate

• Boat

• Ship

• Walking

There are no cars.

Travel can occur for trade, military service, marriage, pilgrimage, education, diplomacy, migration, exploration, or simply visiting relatives.

Exploration & Overseas Travel

The 1500s involve rapidly expanding long-distance maritime travel.

Your Sims may participate in:

• Merchant voyages

• Exploration

• Naval service

• Overseas settlement

• Missionary activity

• Military expeditions

• Long-distance trade

These journeys should not be treated as safe vacations.

If a Sim leaves on a major sea voyage, roll a D12.

1 = Sim dies during the voyage.

For exceptionally dangerous expeditions, roll twice.

Either death result kills them.

This can represent:

• Shipwreck

• Disease

• Starvation

• Violence

• Exposure

• Disappearance at sea

If they survive, they may return with money, unusual objects, new relationships, or absolutely nothing after disappearing for three years.

Warfare

Military service is available to appropriate Sims throughout the century.

Depending on class and location, Sims may serve as:

• Soldiers

• Officers

• Archers

• Pikemen

• Cavalry

• Mercenaries

• Sailors

• Naval personnel

Gunpowder weapons are now absolutely allowed.

Do not restrict your 1500s armies to swords and bows simply because those look more "medieval."

Firearms and artillery should become increasingly prominent throughout the century.

Specific wars should still use their own challenge rolls.

Firearms

Firearms are allowed from the beginning of the 1500s.

Early firearms should be appropriate to the period rather than modern guns.

As the century progresses, gunpowder weapons may become increasingly common in warfare.

Hunting with firearms can also become possible where historically appropriate.

Swords, bows, crossbows, spears, polearms, and other weapons do not disappear simply because firearms exist.

Technological