These days, every decent strategy game comes with an editor of some sort. You can customize scenarios, build campaigns or even modify the units to your satisfaction. Even those games without decent user tools (like the Paradox and Total War games) have populations devoted to fine tuning their favorite games.

I want to be part of the fun. But I can’t.

I have a terrible for sense for how this sort of thing is done. Even with the best modding tools or scenario construction kits I get easily confused and lost in the mess of what I was trying to do. I have no sense of pacing, a poor idea for how I can incorporate base building into what I want to be a big battle and not a great sense of scale.

This is truly a shame because I like the idea of remaking historical battles or editing maps to reflect ahistorical possibilities. But when confronted with the not-too onerous task of actually doing it, I freeze.

I shouldn’t. I am sure that less adept hands than mine have made mods and custom scenarios, but I just can’t get the hang of it. Part of it could be my love of instant gratification in games; I don’t waiting for something to happen but I better have the feeling that it could happen at any time. If “something happening” depends on my schedule, though, forget it. I’d rather not put in the hours.

That said, I do want to learn how to make custom historical battles in Rome: Total War. There is an excellent historical battle mod out there, but it can use some tweaking.

Meh. Someone else will do it.