I’ve been thinking more about the concept of “pretender mods” in recent days. Not because there’s been a new avalanche of them, but just an avalanche of ideas. Ideas that aren’t very good at all. I’ll explain.

Last month a very highly-praised mod came out, portraying Nixon’s campaign in 1972. It was called “Peace with Honor.” It is absolutely fascinating and high-quality. You are placed in Nixon’s position and your actions determine which candidate you will face in your re-election bid (there are eight in total). It has great replay value as a result (I’m less fond of the overall endings concept than others but some I very much liked).

But I think there’s a great deal of people in this community who, like me, enjoyed it but were confused by its concept. In their minds, “Peace with Honor” does not represent a realization of CTA’s full concept for the 1972 election first started with McGovern in 2021, it represents a fresh take on the election, and the start of a new genre of mods (some don’t even realize CTA made it, which is pretty funny). They are wrong, and very much so.

Sorry to burst their bubble (or yours if you happen to believe in this nonsense). “Peace with Honor” is not some special new kind of mod. It is literally just the Nixon side of 1972. That’s all it is, and that’s all it has been this entire time. As I’ve insinuated, this could be shocking to some people. And they could respond by saying such things as, ‘but you see, it has its own Code 1! It has shiny CYOA thingies and beeps and boops on my screen and other things I don’t understand’ etc. in a futile case to protect their own preconceived notions. But they’re still wrong (and by the way, it really only got a new Code 1 due to different further reading and crediting inherent to the new side of the mod).

Shockingly, these same clueless people have decided that they want to make their own “Peace with Honor” mod. They want their own shiny CYOA with 15 different possible candidates. They want their own mod that beeps and boops on the screen and has funny endings. So they have begun to congregate on Reddit and share their malconceived, demented half-ideas, transplanting the concept of “Peace with Honor” onto completely different men, in completely different situations, with the only common denominator being that all are incumbent presidents. Just search “Peace with Honor” on the subreddit and you can see some examples:

To see why these ideas fall flat before they were even written down, let’s examine why the concept behind “Peace with Honor” works:

• Nixon had deep emnities and personal rivalries which he acted on even before the ‘72 campaign (ie attempting to stop Wallace from becoming Alabama governor again)
• The Democratic party was immensely divided (which is reflected by both Wallace and Chisholm being possible candidates) which Nixon exploited
• Nixon was in office in a pivotal time for US domestic and foreign policy, in between the hippie revolt and the malaise that defined much of the 70s
• Nixon with the institutional power of the Presidency at his disposal had the direct ability to reshape the national conversation and used it to immense (and illegal) extent

“Peace with Honor” was not created to arbitrarily fit some kind of concept. It was created to properly portray a Nixon campaign in 1972. It is ultimately the perfect counterpart to the McGovern side.

When you play as McGovern, you are David. There are 40 questions, the mod is a long drag. Your fortunes are few, and, to your dismay, there is no (RN)God to help you. You are at the whim of Nixon’s campaign machine. Meanwhile as Nixon, you create your destiny. You get to see the fate of your legacy. You are Goliath, playing the game on a higher level, while as McGovern you are perpetually played.

Of course, none of this comes to those wishing to copy the “Peace with Honor” “genre.” If I jingle keys in front of their faces, they will be mesmerized. It’s likely that even the worst slop is good to them if encased in enough cool looking stuff.

When it comes to “Peace with Honor,” the concept behind its gameplay only came about because of Nixon itself. If Nixon did not act the way he did, it would be very different. The concept fits the candidate. In fact if you take this in a very literal and narrowly-minded way, literally any incumbency mod could count as “Peace with Honor.” 1864 is now a “Peace with Honor” mod. And so is Romney 72. And every Bryanverse mod. And like half the mod catalog that exists right now. Because it portrays an incumbent president.

But of course that’s not what they mean, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this column. No, their conception of this mod “genre” is far worse. As I insinuated before, they wish to take the superficial parts of “Peace with Honor”’s gameplay and transplant it onto other presidents. Let’s take Trump for an example. Did he ratfuck the Democratic primaries? He sure made many statements while that shitshow was going on, but unless the many extraneous investigations into him missed something glaring, he did nowhere near as much as Nixon to influence it.

Hence whatever comes about from this “2020 MAGA” mod is bound to feel stilted. And I’m not even factoring in writing and coding quality, which will undoubtedly be poor. Why? Because it’s not creating a concept to fit the candidate. The whole idea for it involved stripping the concept out of another mod, and fitting it around the candidate. That is the cardinal sin of modding. That is what creates “pretender mods” more than anything.

I mean what will they even come up with to change around the Democratic candidate? Trump’s impeachment somehow works? It falls apart? He does some foreign treaty differently? He slips on a banana peel? His credit card gets declined? I mean seriously.

And part of why “Peace with Honor” works so well is that the political landscape was de-aligned enough as to render the Democratic party completely divided. Whereas in the modern day the political landscape is the most partisan it’s been since the Gilded Age. Playing against Sanders, or say, Buttigieg, will give you 95% the same map, and this would be true for every candidate they can come up with. The gameplay would remove, rather than add, to the 2020 experience. It’d be like eating an M&M with a chocolate shell and a brittle candy interior, which would be as unpleasant and unsatisfying as it sounds.

And I don’t even want to speak on the new Obama one that got proposed, because it has the exact same issues. It does not fit the candidates. People are trying to create a trend out of thin air because they are very uninteresting overall, and have no conception of what the creative process is like, or what it should entail.

And in fact I would like to encourage rookie modmen who do not think like this, that they’re therefore on the right path and have a good chance at making something enjoyable out of a Campaign Trail mod, as many before in the past. Here’s something I stated some days ago to end this column off:

TL;DR don’t box yourself into the latest dumb “trend.” If you want to make a good mod, find an election, real or not, that’s interesting enough to portray, then figure out the fundamentals, and you’ll get on the right track.

~ liquid astro