Quote Originally Posted by Epistolary Richard
So are the people who (for want a better term) are the driving force behind the larger full-conversion mods able to fulfil most of these roles, or do they emerge as the result of other criteria?

And how do these larger mod teams operate? As is readily apparent on any forum, getting a consensus on anything with any group larger than one can be a challenge, how do they manage to ever release a finished product?
Well, I can only speak to how The First Triumvirate (TFT) mod operates.

For TFT, I wanted a different start date for the game so I just started modding away at the text files. The idea attracted others (from IRC chats and forum posts) and now I have a team working on more of a complete conversion than I originally envisioned. I'm still the final vote in any decision making (so concensus is not always necessary), but I let the team run with their ideas for the most part and only intervene when things seem to be going in the wrong direction. I would consider myself the "Project Coordinator" if you're looking for a term to use. My skills are solely around modding the map/text files - no skinning/modelling/animating/etc. The only reason I ended up in charge was because I had a vision and started working on it.

As for releasing the mod, an up-front determination of what is a "finished" product is extremely important. I could go on modding TFT for months and never feel finished and never release anything... but what good does that do for the community. I know people want to play mods NOW, or better yet, YESTERDAY. So once I knew that I would be releasing TFT for others to use, I made a decision to have two versions: First, a "lite" version that uses RTR assets only (no new skins etc.) that could be completed and released relatively fast; then a "full" version that would incorporate new skins, faction changes, new art, etc. etc. that would be built for vanilla RTW and required a longer development time. By releasing the "lite" version quickly, I gain feedback and help from the community that will make the "full" version that much better.

TFT doesn't have a "large" team, but even so, it all comes down to having one or two people coordinating all the work so that there is no duplication of effort and file versions are well managed.