CONTINUED:
A Handicap is an extra restriction that makes an Apocalypse Challenge harder. As a reward, you may subtract a certain number of weeks from your final score.
An Advantage is an exception to the rules that makes an Apocalypse Challenge easier. In exchange, you must add a certain number of weeks to your final score.
If you're not scoring, then just think of these as ways to adjust the challenge to your playing style.
Ground Rules:
1. If an Advantage doesn't explicitly allow you to do something, you can't do it.
2. If a Handicap doesn't explicitly forbid something, you can do it--IF the other restrictions still in place allow it.
3. You may have as many Handicaps as you like. You are allowed two minor and one moderate Advantage (for three total). You may have both Handicaps and Advantages in the same game--add or subtract weeks from your score as necessary; the score adjustments can cancel each other out.
4. If you break a restriction imposed by a Handicap, score the challenge as though you had not taken that Handicap.
5. Yes, you can make the Apocalypse impossible with the wrong combination of handicaps and advantages. So... don't do that.
6. If an advantage or handicap contradicts another advantage or handicap, you can't take them both.
7. Unless specifically stated, handicaps do not affect the founder at college. They do, however, apply to post-Apocalypse sims in vacation neighborhoods.
8. Apocalegacy players: You have the option of lifting all handicaps when your Apocalypse ends and your Legacy is still running. You may, of course, wish to keep Legacy handicaps for the Legacy points.