The Future... Lessons from Rome in mod development and team management

[Epistolary Richard]

Here are a few things modders have had to say on this topic in the past:

Step 0: there is no point starting a mod if you have no idea about modding and have no motivation to learn along the way.

At the end of the day, you want a mod with good gameplay. My personal opinion is get a 'skeleton' of the mod working. Basically a map and factions, and some units. They don't have to be balanced. Then once you've done that, you can play around to your hearts content with stats and stuff to make the game fun.

If I knew this two years ago I never would have started Fourth Age: Total War. I got lucky and found the right people to run the project...

The sole reason that started this whole fiasco *laugh* is my desire to see Gondorian soldiers in the game, appearing just like in the movies. I found the idea to be very exciting and, most importantly, quite achievable. But instead I kept making more and more models and before long it’s enough for a decent sized mod.

Creating Your Team
Accept everyone who applies, whatever their experience. Every contribution has the potential to be useful eventually. This does not mean include every contribution that is made. A crappy model is still a crappy model, and it’s your job as leader to not include it into the mod. But less experienced members can be taught, and in time grow to be very valuable.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=52350

Lets start by looking at how to assemble a team. The guiding rule here is to keep it small. Managing a team of people is a full-time job, even when all the team resides in the same building. If you're dealing with an on-line team, you can easily spend all your time managing it, and that means you won't be spending any time on making your mod. Adding more people to the team doesn't mean more work will get done. The more people you have, the more time spent managing them.

http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Making_a_MOD

If you have never been apart of a mod team before, forget trying to start your own. A common misconception is that either it is easy to make a mod, or easy to get a team together. It really needs to be said, that this could not be further from the truth. Instead join a mod, learn what they do, learn from their mistakes; get to know people in this scene. Any time spent here will be made up 10 times over if you set out to make your own. Mod DB help wanted is a great place to find what jobs are available, otherwise contact a mod team, tell them what you can do, send them some samples and ask if they have a job for you - simple!

http://mods.moddb.com/getting-started/make-mods/