As someone who is new to modding, I have some concerns regarding my first mod.

When I first installed Oblivion many years ago, I gave a hasty scan of the EULA and clicked [Install]. At the time I had no idea that I would ever try to create my own mod.
I understand that using another modders content requires explicit permission and credit duly given.

Are we allowed to freely use vanilla Oblivion content as we distribute our own mod?
Are we allowed to use DLC content? (I assume not)


I appreciate any clarification or advice.

As a practical issue, a mod normally references the existing content (DLC or otherwise) rather than provide an additional copy of it. So you would not be redistributing that, and the mod would not work if the content wasn't present in the user's installation.

DLC-using mods would be dependent on the DLC's as masters, so could not be activated without them.

That makes sense.

I'm also curious:

Are we allowed to take an existing mesh or texture and modify it then release it?

e.g. adding a room to an interior mesh in Blender, or using Photoshop to adjust the color of a texture?

You can't distribute vanilla assets with your mod. You don't need to anyway given that everybody running your mod will have those assets. If you want to edit an existing mesh, then you need to save it under a new name so that it doesn't replace the original mesh. Even if you are just retexturing something, you need to change the path to the texture in the mesh and give it a new name.

Really? How come texture/mesh replacers work then? The game wouldn't be able to find them if you changed the paths and didn't redirect records via a plugin.

I was unaware that you needed to rename and relocate modified resources. Though seeing as the closest I got to such resources was in All Natural where they were relocated anyway, that doesn't say much.