The Retired Fallout Modder Who Now Writes Novels

Since its release in 2011, Fallout: New Vegas (FNV) has had no shortage of mods—initially to keep the game from crashing and allow the player to move faster than a snail. Soon, however, the modding market quickly branched out into a vast array of weapon mods, companion mods, sex mods, weapon companion mods, weapon companion sex mods, and most notably, quest mods. The Nexus page for FNV has over a thousand quest mods, among them mods allowing the player to build their own casino in Primm, rebuild the Enclave (but as good guys), or travel to places like California, Utah, or Oregon to spread their ideals.

Many of these mods are ambitious undertakings, with some taking years to build. However, a second category of ambitious quest mods exists in which modmakers make several mods over the years, each with its own story, but also telling an overarching narrative. Though the most prominent such modmaker is Someguy3000, other such modmakers include Rikkurikku, CellblockPsycho, and Th3Overseer, whose six-mod series has racked up nearly 400,000 downloads—and who, in a virtually unprecedented move, is now adapting those very same mods into novels.

Th3Overseer got into the Fallout series in 2009 with Fallout 3, and loved it so much he preordered Fallout: New Vegas as soon as possible, which was a terrible error as FNV at launch was virtually unplayable. Time went on, however, and he discovered YouTuber Alchestbreach, who both played and made his own mods and showcased them on his YouTube channel. Galvanized by Alchestbreach, he decided to give modmaking a shot, and after a few smaller mods, produced the quest mod “The Initiation,” which expanded the Great Khans’ quest line. “[The Initiation] was atrocious in hindsight, but proved I could make these things,” says Th3Overseer. “The Initiation sucks, and I regret everything. Baby’s first mod, and all that.” Despite its professed shortcomings, the mod has garnered over 2,000 endorsements and nearly 40,000 downloads on Nexus.

Following The Initiation, Th3Overseer began creating a follow up: His next mod, “Eliza,” features a fully-voiced companion of the same name. Eliza, admits Th3Overseer, “genuinely is two mods that are sloppily tied together. One was a western storyline with the Khans and a wacky new companion character, and the other was a thing about criminals and espionage.” He welded them together and got the idea while he was making it to tell an overarching narrative across his mods.

Although he was dissatisfied with the fusion in the mod, “Eliza” remains the favorite of prominent New Vegas YouTuber Mike Burnfire. Burnfire likes Eliza because, in his eyes, “She's a memorable traveling companion that confidently asserts herself without becoming overbearing or obnoxious, which can be a tough line to walk.”

The story of The Initiation continues in Eliza and then into the next mod in the series, Headhunting. During Headhunting, the Courier (the hero of New Vegas) tracks down bounties on people all across the wastelands, from disc jockeys to bridge sellers to ransom-seeking kidnappers. The Courier even has a massive shootout with a sprawling family of inbred moonshine-swigging hillbillies.

Eventually, the skeleton of the series' story arc was formed, with most of the plot driven by two dueling antagonists: Senator Burke, a corrupt New California Republic senator who represents the worst aspects of the Old World; and Sheridan, a notorious psychopathic raider leader who represents the worst aspects of the New World. Sheridan’s associates provide violent, overpowered targets for the Courier to fight across the series, while Burke’s associates try to hamper the Courier politically and send assassins after them when all else fails.

Another recurring organization is the Office of Mojave Affairs, a shady NCR agency working in the background with enigmatic motives and loyalties. The plot line of the series would see the Courier working to take down Burke and Sheridan, taking lots of drugs and making lots of money along the way.

"The North Road" came next, where the Courier roams a devastated part of Nevada north of New Vegas to capture or kill a child molester, in a plot line Th3Overseer says was inspired by Sin City. It was followed by "The Depths of Depravity," in which the Courier confronts some of the most evil and corrupt aspects of the NCR. True Detective season one was a major inspiration for Depths; however, as with The North Road, its story quickly became its own unique and fulfilled plot line. “The High Desert” is the unintended conclusion to the series, in which the Courier helps set up a saloon in Primm, goes on a drug trip in a commune of kooky characters, and works for a lesbian pirate.

The series was well-received by the community. Aside from the thousands of downloads and endorsements, other prominent YouTubers like Ramblelime have spoken of their fondness for the mods. “[Th3Overseer’s] mods improve over time and build on each other,” Ramblelime says. He views that as one of their strengths, together with how the mods fill out the world of New Vegas. He added, “My favorite is The Depths of Depravity…it’s a fascinatingly gritty mystery; a mod has never been able to give me that pit-in-my-stomach feeling before or since.” Ramblelime even made a retrospective video essay analyzing the series, speaking to its strengths and weaknesses.

Despite having five or six more mods planned, the series was discontinued after The High Desert. In 2021, Th3Overseer was already taking a break from FNV to focus on other projects. Then Nexus Mods, the massive modding website that hosted all his mods, announced a series of sweeping changes to their policies. Most notably, Nexus removed the right for mod authors to delete their own files from the website, something Th3Overseer publicly protested as unethical. Nexus removed his announcement, accused him of spreading misinformation, banned him from posting images on the site, and threatened to terminate his account if he ever criticized Nexus’s staff again.

Th3Overseer was incensed, deciding to semi-retire from modmaking and not to release any of his future quest mods on Nexus again. He has released a series of humorous mods, such as adding Dr. Gregory House to the Lucky 38; anime girls to Red Rock Canyon, the Pip-Boy, and the Powder Gangers; and Sonic the Hedgehog to a set of armor. He's also made a few serious quality-of-life mods. None of these mods has been released on Nexus.

In 2022, as it became evident he was unlikely to work on any more such mods in the near future, Th3Overseer released an outline of his future unmade mods, explaining how the Courier would wipe out Sheridan’s gang and deal with the Burke family. He answered various questions on his Discord and other social media about his various plans as well as other unresolved plot threads, but for the time, it looked like that would be the end of the Overseer series.

In 2025, however, things changed. Th3Overseer (just barely) makes ends meet doing various freelance writing gigs and is currently trying his hand at his own low-fantasy series. In the midst of his writing career, an idea came to him: Modmaking had many sloggish elements, and he admits he was never as competent as other modders. The Initiation, in particular, is a coding mess, as he freely admits. Modding also pays very poorly (which is to say not at all). Nevertheless, he wanted to finish the story he was telling and satisfy the fans, and the result is The Sunset Frontier.

The Sunset Frontier is Th3Overseer’s solution, a planned series of novels under the pen name J. Marshall, meant to retell the events of the mod series and eventually draw it out to its originally planned conclusion. The first novel, released on Amazon in September, titled Headhunting, largely adapts the plot of the bounty-hunting mod by the same name. Rather than have the Courier, the protagonist of Fallout: New Vegas, be the main character, Eliza is instead the heroine.

Although all Fallout intellectual property belongs to Bethesda, it was easy enough for Th3Overseer to lift his story lines into a new setting. Though Las Vegas is briefly teased at the start of the story, Eliza ultimately settles in the novel’s new main setting in the ruins of Barstow, California. The New California Republic (NCR) becomes the Western Government Coalition (WCG); Caesar’s Legion becomes the American Restoration Authority; the Fiends and the Great Khans become the Wreckers and the Kestrels. All original characters, such as Burke, Eliza, Sheridan, and so on, retain their names. A few gags are present for longtime fans of the mods, among them references to the prevalence of oldies tunes blaring across the wasteland’s airwaves, as well as the platoons of Legion hit squads that regularly ambush the vilified Courier outside the offices of Tully Headhunting.

The ease of the transition has been a pleasant surprise for Th3Overseer. The sole other main change was realism. “I made a decision very early on that I wanted the adaptations to hew to realism far closer than anything in the game settings would allow.” Though he likes learning things, he admits, “There’s still a lot more moving parts here [as opposed to] the mods, where I can just shrug and go: ‘Yeah, but the vanilla game doesn't care that much about making up fictional landmarks and hand-waving logistical details, so...’” This means no ghouls or other irradiated mutant monsters exist in Barstow that are easily found in the Mojave Wasteland; humans are the real monsters, after all.

Due to differences in storytelling between video games and books, Th3Overseer has a few advantages. The order of events can be more strictly controlled than in a video game, or shuffled around, and a greater sense of progression follows as a result. Headhunting takes place before the events of Eliza’s gang initiation, as told in the Eliza mod. The events of the Eliza mod take place before the events of Headhunting, for various story-related reasons. Other changes can be made based on how Th3Overseer’s writing has matured. Eliza, Th3Overseer felt, was obnoxious in her initial incarnation. With a second crack at things, he can fill out her character better.

As of right now, Th3Overseer plans to conclude the series eight years in the making. “Unless I hit some big financial emergency where I must drop everything and devote myself entirely to some horrible job, yes, I intend to finish the book series even if it doesn’t, in and of itself, pay my bills. It's a step in my desired path of being an author.” Eliza is the planned protagonist for most of the series, but other fan favorites from the mods, like depraved junkie Todd and traumatized hitwoman Charlie, are also intended to be point-of-view characters.

Scant literature exists that analyzes story mods in video games, despite their prevalence and popularity. Technically, all story mods are fanfiction, even if they do not contradict canon, and there is a history stretching back two decades now of authors creating successful book series based on their fanfiction. Tremaire by Naomi Novik began as Master and Commander fanfiction; Cassandra Claire's The Mortal Instruments series began as Harry Potter fanfiction; and Tamsyn Muir's breakout hit The Locked Tomb is theorized to have begun as Homestuck fanfiction.

Th3Overseer concedes the point about story mods and fanfiction, but says that "Mods are more technical than fanfiction, but the basic idea is more or less the same. It's unauthorized, third-party writing set in an existing IP that the author doesn't have official permission to use." There are degrees to it, he argues. "A quest mod that purports to give the player the untold early-life story of Fantastic, a vanilla NPC, is very deep in 'fanfiction territory,' whereas my own content, while originally utilizing the setting of FNV, was able to be very cleanly divorced from the Fallout IP and made into its own thing." In any case, Th3Overseer is travelling uncharted waters in the field of video games and literature.

Plenty of novels set in video game franchises exist; some of them are actually good. But a modder adapting their stories for another medium—and even making (some) money off of it—is an unprecedented move. The degree to which the series will become popular is currently unclear; it may only stay in the circle of Th3Overseer's dedicated fans and their immediate friends.

But perhaps one day Th3Overseer may be cited as one of the first transformational authors of the third millennium in a postmodern world. Or maybe he'll win the lottery like Oliver Swanick and ride into the sunset to bury some treasure in Lake Ivanpah before even publishing book two. Whatever the case, his fans can look forward to a true conclusion to the series and the ultimate confrontation with Sheridan and the Burke family.