Wargamer: Thanks for agreeing to answer these questions MasterOfNone. First things first: what kind of work do you do for your day job, and when did you get into modding? How old are you? 

MasterOfNone: I work from home in various largely Internet-based ventures, including writing and genealogical services. Unfortunately modding and fiction writing (both of which I am passionate about) tend to encroach a little into those enterprises. I stepped into the addictive world of modding as a direct result of seeing a work thread for a Rome: Total War modification on the now-defunct stratcommandcenter.com back in October 2004. I didn't even know what a mod was until that point. The name of that mod was, of course, The Fourth Age: Total War. I was 35 then. I am now 41 and slightly graying at the temples. I think I can attribute some of that to modding!

WG: What do you think of Creative Assembly's latest releases, ETW and NTW? Will you be buying Shogun 2? Why or why not? 

MON: I've only looked at demos and videos of CA's releases after M2TW. They do not appeal to me, and not just because of the period: they are less moddable and CA seems to have focused more on eye candy and less on publishing polished games with strong strategic and life-time value. So no, I will not be buying Shogun. Don't get me wrong, I think CA produces the best strategy games out there, but I think Rome was the pinnacle of their talent to date, and also a period I prefer to their other games' eras. There is a strong voice in the Total War community for a Rome 2: Total War. I’m very interested to see what the future brings.

WG: If you could arrange to have an hour-long meeting with the department heads over at Creative Assembly, what would you ask them? Do you have any suggestions that you think would help them in developing the Total War games? 

MON: I would be very biased and ask for more Roman-era and Dark Age games set in the West! I'd also point them to my answer above. I think one of the reasons Rome worked was because of the diversity of factions. When CA focuses on a single culture or technology then it blurs the distinction between factions and makes play less diverse. Though I guess this cannot always be avoided with more modern time periods or with a focus on a single culture, such as with Shogun 2. Total War modding, unlike some other games, does not have tools or editors provided for it. Modding is at a very raw level, and tools (where they exist) are created by the modders themselves. 

This makes modding slower than it would otherwise need to be. So, I'd ask CA to release some basic tools which they must have used themselves - even if just for old games rather than their latest. As I can understand it, CA does not want to make public that which they use to create their current game engines. A full-conversion mod for Total War takes around 4-6 years to complete - and that is with a skilled team, working hard. Tools are the best means to shorten that time. 

WG: Can you name a few aspects of RTW and M2TW that you do not like? Are their features included that make you scratch your head and ask “What the hell was CA thinking?” 

MON: Probably the biggest gripe you'll get from modders is how some features are hardcoded or global. This can be very annoying, especially when hardcoded bugs are true game breakers. RTW is OK in this regard, but M2TW suffers from more bugs (mainly related to battlemap AI) that make play very unsatisfying after a while. My own tastes for a Total War game favor Rome over Medieval 2. Rome offers a smoother experience. Although troops act in a less realistic way than in Medieval 2, they are easier for the player to control. Sometimes gameplay is more important than realism. 

The M2 battlemap buildings are very nice, but such things fade into the background when you've been playing for a while - or annoy you because of the inherently worse AI path-finding in M2 settlements. Speed is also something that appeals to me. By that I mean that when I press the "end-turn" button I do not want to wait more than 15 seconds or so before I can start my next turn. I also prefer the sharpness of the visuals in Rome compared to the "blurred" environments and so-called "hunchback" animations of M2. I’m starting to sound like I hate M2TW but that's not true. I like it a lot, second to no other game I've played - except Rome. 

WG: What was your first modding experience with the Total War franchise? Did you work as part another team or did you immediately start your own? Do you work better by yourself? 

MON: I started with Fourth Age Total War (FATW) in late October 2004 as a map researcher. During 2005-06 I came to lead the team along with another guy, Apoc. I learned how to mod most things, except for 3D modelling (which is actually quite a small part of modding relative to the whole). Apoc gradually drifted away and I was on my own for some time. But occasionally others helped and, eventually, Aradan (the current lead developer of FATW) joined the team as a beta tester and then went on to learn everything he needed to eventually take my place at FATW and give me a rest. I think I work well in a team and also as a creator and leader of a mod. No mod is truly a sole enterprise. I think Aradan has done the trait coding and unit balance for all my mods, for example. 

WG: How much time do you usually spend working on individual projects? How long has production been going on for your Lord of the Rings mod, Fourth Age? Can you give us some details? 

MON: Mods vary in the time they take, depending on whether they are full conversions or how tightly-focused they are. Viking Invasion II took about 3-4 months because (1) I was unemployed at that period and (2) we drew on a lot of pre-existing sources from other mods (chiefly Arthurian: Total War and Chivalry: Total War). Mods get done a lot quicker and efficiently when there is one driving mind behind them - as long as that mind does not quit! Most do when they realize how much work is involved. So the Fourth Age has been going since late 2004. How many hours I have spent on it I have no idea, but we are certainly talking in excess of 10,000 hours all told, and that's just for my contributions. 

Modding is a part-time job and demands all your spare time if you're in the core of a dev. team. You can take it more lightly than that, but your mod will probably never be finished if it's a full-conversion. Very, very few mods even to this day are fully complete and polished. I'm very happy FATW will be reaching that status this year! And FATW is a Middle-earth mod, not a Lord of the Rings mod: the "Lord" and the "Ring" did not make it into the Fourth Age. Our development diaries have some details about FATW 3.0. I'll just say that I believe it will be the most polished, balanced, lore-accurate, feature-rich, innovative, and stable mod for Rome: Total War the community will have ever seen. 

WG: Following on from the above question, how much research do you do in preparation for a new project? Is it a labor of love, something you enjoy? What part of the development cycle do you absolutely hate? 

MON: You learn so much when modding - not just technical skills, and how to do a bit of art, but also things about the real world. In Norman Invasion, for example, we have information on each region (there are about 80) built into the game: geographical, historical and topographic facts for each. That all had to be researched. We do not copy & paste from Wikipedia! Much about modding is tedious. You can spend weeks tracking down a single bug or attending to something that few players will even ever notice. I think that testing the final build and reporting all the findings is a pretty harsh phase of the mod. I personally dislike repeating things over and over. Having said this, don't think that it isn't done. It is. Aradan and I are perfectionists. We often ask outsources to do the same work more than once, until we are happy with the results.

My main strength in modding, around 2005-2007, was in research and development - seeing how the engine worked with the files, making discoveries about game features etc. and applying those discoveries in ways that made FATW unique. Of course, those discoveries were shared and I wrote several tutorials and guides too. Sharing those things only helps the community make better mods so it's foolish to keep them to yourself - of course, the way they are uniquely implemented in a mod is another thing entirely. People find out about that when the mod is released! I suppose my main love of modding is the fact that you can create a world out of your own vision or imagination. This is also the reason why I like fiction writing. Getting feedback and reviews is also nice. FATW has consistently been voted "favorite fantasy Total War mod for Rome" over the past few years by the TW's largest online community site. Viking Invasion II has been well received in PCgamer. A small mod of mine called the Multi-Mod Sampler has been twice included on the cover disk of the PCGamer too. FATW also used to be listed on the official site at TotalWar.com. I think it disappeared when they upgraded the site design a couple of years ago. That kind of recognition is nice, but perhaps the best is when a father posts on the forums and tells us he and his son are really enjoying the mod and have had hours of pleasure from it. Or when a fan tells us that FATW is better than any commercial game adaptation set in Middle-earth. 

WG: Do you prefer fantasy or historical settings? Can you list the mods you've created, their main topics, and which one is your favorite? 

MON: That's a tough question. I like the idea that games provide educational information, and I am not a fan of cliched fantasy. I do like Tolkien's world of Middle Earth a lot though - perhaps because its history, myths and characters reflect something in this world that appeals to me. I won't mention all the mods I've made, but only the major, more poplular ones. I've said enough about FATW, so on to some others: Norman Invasion - I like this mod a lot because I get to defend my country from the cruel Normans! It's a fast-paced, tight campaign with just 5 factions and takes place in Britain and Normandy. Much of its imagery and basis is from Viking Invasion II (see below) but it also has a lot of neat additional features such as natural strongholds and a political system (which replaces the religious one). The mod has been featured on Infernocanuck's excellent "Let's Play (Rome Total War mods)" channel on YouTube for those who want a good taste of what it's like. As of this interview, I believe it's at 15 episodes! 

Viking Invasion II - This mod was made with perhaps more intensity than any other I had a part in. I really wanted to see a remake of the Viking Invasion expansion for the original Medieval Total War. VI2 got a nice review from PCGamer magazine too, back in 2009. The Dark Ages (in the British Isles) is perhaps my favorite period of history. Later a fan of the mod started working on expanding it to have two more factions and we eventually brought him onboard to release Dominion of Britannia (DoB) which aimed to enhance the historical accuracy of the mod and expand it in several ways. DoB is an expansion: players will need the final version (1.7) of VI2 to play. Gods & Fighting Men - I have a love of Irish mythology and so this was another natural one for me. It is said to be the hardest of my mods to complete. It takes place in ancient Ireland and is based around the myth of Lugh of the Long Arm as he tries to use the Four Treasures of Ireland to unite the Tuatha De Danann against their Fomor oppressors.

Interesting story: I came across a YouTube video with some good music that I thought would really fit the mod well. I discovered it was called the Blood of Cuchulainn (Cuchulainn was perhaps the most famous warrior of Irish myth) and composed by Jeff & Mychael Danna.I've always pursued a policy in modding of getting permission to use music, images, etc. and I've always been amazed at how often that permission is granted. What is more - and here is a secret of modding - if you ask you sometimes get things that you would not have otherwise have got! I sent off an email to these film scorers and soon came to realize these brothers had done some big movies. I thought they'd probably not reply, but after a few emails I found myself on the phone to their Hollywood home discussing terms of use. That permission was granted which is why you'll see full-card credit in-game for them if you play this mod. The music's just perfect! 

WG: What kind of balance do you aim to strike between historical accuracy and ease of play? Is this always a tough part of development? Do you typically work with an era that you are already familiar or do you research events and time periods that are unknown to you? 

MON: Accuracy is very important in FATW, accuracy to the lore. However, game restrictions and requirements of gameplay do put parameters on this - though it's amazing how innovative one can be with features to bring the two together quite nicely. I think this will be seen when Dominion of Men (the final version of the Fourth Age: Total War) is released this year.We poured quite a bit of time into historical accuracy in Norman Invasion. However, Total War games are "open" to the player's designs once the campaign starts and I dislike mods that use scripts to try and force everything to proceed historically - I feel too constricted (and distracted) by that approach and it is one reason I never use background scripts in my mods. I make mods I enjoy - whether mythical, fantasy or historical. Modding is a hobby, not a job. It's probably the reason why I think I wouldn't do too well at a developers' studio - I'd have to probably help design and create a game that held no appeal for me. 

WG: Does the work of modding ever take away the pleasure you get from gaming? Do you get so overexposed to a game that you just can’t play it for a while? 

MON: Yes, a little. In fact some modders - myself included - are notorious for not playing and end up having to be reminded about that distant memory called vanilla. And when new games come out, you think first about what it would be like to mod before how it would be to play! 

WG: When you aren’t working on your own projects, what other modders’ work do you enjoy for the Total War series? Do you have favorites for technical fixes, graphics, etc? What is your favorite vanilla TW game? 

MON: My favorite TW vanilla game is probably Barbarian Invasion (RTW) and the Britannia Campaign (M2). I quite liked the old Viking Invasion for the original MTW too. As for other modders' work - I'm actually quite fussy. I can see some mods with themes I enjoy but which aren't complete or stable, and others that are very well done and stable but whose theme does not interest me. I'm looking forward to see how "The Last Kingdom" comes out for M2TW. 

WG: What of the future? 

MON: I am officially retired - which means that I will not be creating any more mods and that I will not be modding at all once the final version of FATW is out this year. Of course, if my circumstances change and if a stunning new game is released with huge modding potential, I could come back... But there is still much to do on The Fourth Age: Total War - The Dominion of Men. You can follow the mod at the forums at TWcenter.net (and I'll post developers’ diary releases to the Wargamer too). These diaries are hosted on our YouTube channel HERE. For a list of all Total War mods (including mine) you might be interested in the TWC Wiki tables. I helped put these together (somewhat) and they are the most complete listing of TW mods you'll find HERE.