weepingbelle

In his recent and very kind write-up of CWKB, Frank @hecker mentioned in passing the common idea that 'iambic pentameter' is English's 'most natural' verse metre. Now, I don't think Frank endorses this idea—he carefully calls it 'claimed'—and I don't endorse it either, but it crops up pretty often, so I figured prodding it might prove fruitful.

Many ppl have a "drink water!" friend, who reminds you to stay hydrated. I am a "set a timer!" friend. Don't want to do chores? Set a timer for 5 minutes and do chores till it goes off. Body sore? Set a timer to go off at regular intervals to remind you to stretch and check in with yourself. Time-blindness while playing games making you miss bedtime? Set a timer and sleep when it goes off!

The real trick to making this work is to also reward yourself when the timer goes off. Have a bite of ice cream or another treat, listen to your favorite song, play with your pet or do smth else that brings you joy. This message brought to you by being neuroatypical and unable to regulate my day independently :)

My fav apps for this are Interval Timer, which lets you set a schedule of breaks (I do 37 min work + 3min stretch repeating 14 times during my 9 hour workday) as well as Random Timer Generator which does exactly what it says. Pick a range of time, I do 35-45 minutes, and then a length of time for a break. A timer will be generated that is within your set range, go off for the break period and then will go off again to let you know break is over and another timer has been generated, i use this one when drawing or playing games at home. Both are in the iOS App Store, idk about Google play store tho. Free to get, but a one-time payment to expand how much you can customize your timers or how many schedules you can save

I've been getting back into Fallout New Vegas (again), and if you're any self respecting person in the year of our lord and savior 2023, there's a veeeeeeeeeery likely chance you're playing FNV with TONS of mods. Mainly performance and optimization mods to make the game more stable and more playable on modern computers, but I'm sure we've all heard about that so I won't repeat what's been said thousands of times before.

Whether you're a veteran player who's able to recite Big Iron and Blue Moon by heart or somebody who's getting sick of listening to Johnny Guitar and Mad About The Boy, I think we can all admit that despite New Vegas having a wonderful selection of music, the number of songs on the radio is... Admittedly rather small. Thankfully, though, there's a fairly big selection of radio mods out there to make your experience out in the Mojave (or perhaps the Capital Wasteland) a little more lively and enjoyable!

This list won't be in any particular order, it's just a collection of radio mods, my thoughts on them, and reasons why I think you should install them and check them out! I will clarify, though, that this list will only include mods for Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas, as I don't own Fallout 4 on PC and don't know what the radio mods for that one are.

CONELRAD 640-1240 - Civil Defense Radio & Existence 2-0 -Robot Radio-

I feel like everybody in the modding scene knows about these two mods at this point, but they're still absolutely fantastic and deserve being talked about. I'm lumping them both together because they're both made by the same person and share the same level of quality, so, may as well!

CONELRAD is such an amazing concept for a radio station and it makes perfect sense for it to take place in Fallout. It was a real broadcast during the times of World War II that people could tune in and listen to, featuring PSAs about nuclear safety and awareness, where to take shelter, celebrities telling you about how important it is that you and your family are prepared in case some serious shit goes down and the bombs start dropping, all that stuff.

It's like looking through a window into the past, a time of fear and propaganda as though we aren't living in one already but you get the picture.

The music selection is great, if not a little uhh, heavy handed, because all of these songs are about nuclear stuff, songs about the war (there are a number of songs calling out Stalin by name and trash talking him it's like diss tracks before diss tracks were a thing) but that doesn't make them any less enjoyable. With tracks like Atom Bomb Baby, Great Atomic Power and The Bear Flew Over the Ocean, it's definitely worth throwing this into your modlist if you're planning on revisiting the Mojave.

Existence 2.0 is a very, very different sort of radio station. For one thing, it has a host! In the form of a flat, monotone robot, that is. His name is Junket, and he's here to remind you of the dreariness and grim reality of the wasteland with some tasty, delicious dark ambiance.

I'll just say, the tracks aren't the star of the show here. The tracks present in the radio station are mostly stock and royalty free. There's a good chance you've probably heard these tracks in a number of indie horror games like SCP-087 B or have heard them used as background noise in youtube videos. Don't get me wrong the tracks still serve their purpose well! Like, throw the station on while you're trekking through one of the vaults or dungeons, it does its job really well.

But what you're really here for is Junket's broadcasts and commentary. He's a very cold, dejected sort of character that knows everything is basically more or less screwed, and will consistently remind you of that in his broadcasts, with a number of unhelpful advice for your adventures throughout the wasteland and his dry, sarcastic humor only amplified by the mechanical flatness of his delivery.

This radio station includes its own quest where you're not only rewarded with a larger selection of songs to be played on the radio, but broadcasts of Junket's dream diary, where he recounts his various attempts at lucid dreaming, all of which are incredibly interesting to listen to.

Although, there's a few problems with the presentation, but that's mostly due to the fact that this mod, along with CONELRAD were both originally made for Fallout 3 and were ported to New Vegas. Since CONELRAD is exclusively a music station, you can place it in New Vegas no problem, but Existence 2.0 has lore, LOTS of lore, and as far as I can tell, most of it hasn't been updated to reflect New Vegas' setting, with Junket still talking as if you're in the Capital Wasteland.

Buuuuuuut that's all pretty forgiveable, since the mod itself is still interesting and fascinating enough to excuse the inconsistencies it has. So, if you ever feel like spooking up your trip to the Mojave a little, or just want to know if Androids really do dream of electric sheep, tune in to Junket and listen to him for a while.

New Love Radio

Following up two of the more well known radio station mods with a smaller, more obscure one that deserves more attention, because just, oh my gosh this mod is absolutely wonderful.

It's a fairly beefy radio mod with plenty of stuff to hold you over during your time in the Mojave. Four hours of radio content, an incredibly wholesome host reminding you to love yourself and to love the people around you, talking about the state of the wasteland and how people could make an effort to be better, and also includes a new location and a gun you can find, albeit behind a Very Hard lock, you can tell this mod has a lot of care and soul put into it.

The song selection is a bit different than what you'd expect from a radio station mod. Whereas most radio stations try to fit songs that fit the theme of the Fallout series by using Jazz, Blues, and other songs from the early to mid 1900s, New Love Radio's music selection is much more modern, mainly consisting of electroswing. Does it feel a little out of place and strange to hear modern music in a Fallout game? Yeah, kinda. But is the music selection still good? Absolutely!

As you listen to the radio, you can tell that the tracklist is mostly just a bunch of songs and artists the creator of the mod really, really likes. There's a lot of Wolfgang Lohr, Rick Astley and a little bit of Caravan Palace here and there. It might not fit with the Fallout aesthetic outside of the general swing theme, but the songs that are there are all very enjoyable to listen to and I always find myself switching to this New Love Radio whenever none of the other stations I have are tickling my fancy.

But we don't just have songs, we have in-universe ads! Pre-war ads, post-war ads, ads for locations in the Mojave, ads for the skill magazines and books you find laying around, ads for the food scattered around the Mojave, the list goes on. They're very cheesy and corny and very humor focused, but it gives the mod a lot of charm and some of ads are genuinely hilarious. I won't go too deep into detail about the specifics, I encourage you to download the mod yourself because they have to be experienced firsthand.

All that being said though, as much as I love and adore this mod, it's very... Meta. You can tell that it's a love letter to New Vegas and the Fallout community as a whole, but with that comes references and community gags present in the announcers broadcasts. Things like mentioning how Malcom Holmes talks to everybody who collects star bottle caps and how it's freaky, referencing Todd Howard's "it just works" quote, things that catch you off guard and leave you wondering if you really just heard what you think you heard.

Don't let that detract from your experience with the mod though, it's still fairly funny and some of the references did get a little laugh out of me, and there's still plenty to enjoy and love about New Love Radio. Even if it isn't the most immersive mod out there, I still think it's one of the best and deserves more love than it currently has. Go download the mod and give it an endorsement on Nexus, I'm sure the mod team would really appreciate it for all the work they put into making it.

Old World Radio

Eleven radio stations in one! But are they all of the same quality? Weeeeeeeeeeeeellllllll-

Here's the thing with Old World Radio. It sorta tries to appeal to everyone to varying degrees of success, because each radio station is different from each other. I'm not going to go into detail on every radio station in this mod, but I will try to get into the ones I've listened to during my time with this mod.

Old World Radio doesn't just contain music- In fact, of the eleven radio stations this mod features, only four (five if we're being generous) of them actually play music. The rest of the stations are radio shows that aired back in the old days. You have things like detective shows, sci-fi shows, spooky ghost stories, comedy shows, which they're all well and good, sure, but they don't really capture my attention, outside of Ghouls and Ghosts Radio because I do love me some occasional spooks.

Some radio stations contain a host while others don't, and I think they're all voiced by the same guy just throwing a filter on over his voice because they all sorta sound similar to each other. That's not a bad thing or anything, but you can tell it's not the same production quality as something like New Love Radio.

I'll be honest, there's only like, two radio stations from this mod that I actively listen to LMAO. That being Music Archives, which is just music, sorta like Mojave Music Radio, and Consumer Goods. I'll say this now, Consumer Goods is the saving grace of this whole collection, it's easily the best station of the bunch.

It's hosted by an alien (I think?) named Count Zero, and not only does it play music along with good old fashioned old timey advertisements from days long gone, but it's also host to its own specific broadcast segment; Know Your Mutant. It features trivia about the various supermutants inhabiting the Mojave wasteland, like Lakelurks, Centaurs, Cazadores, etc, and talks about the dangers of them as well as how to survive against them, talking about their biology, all that stuff.

It's such a fun concept and I wish more of the mod had stuff like this. I love it when mods add or expand upon things in the universe to give it more immersion and add more charm, making it feel like it's a part of the game and a natural extension of it.
I'd say at least download the mod for Consumer Goods, and give the other stuff a listen to if you're interested in old, classic radio shows.

Point Radio

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaait a minute, this isn't the Mojave!
Well, if you're someone like me who is still playing Fallout 3 modded without the use of Tale of Two Wastelands, there's still a fair bit of mods out there for you to download, but it's nowhere near as extensive as New Vegas' modding scene is.

What little there is for Fallout 3 though is still absolutely fantastic, and this mod is no exception. I already love Point Lookout and its aesthetic, and Point Radio just makes experiencing the DLC that much better. The radio host, Butler, has a very relaxing and soothing voice as he talks about all the various things that can kill you and you should stay away from, the music selection is nice, featuring Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Ink Spots and more, it's absolutely worth installing this radio station on your way to Point Lookout. Even if it's very unlikely people are still playing Fallout 3 standalone, I still think it deserves to be seen and admired for what it is.

Radio New Vegas & Mysterious Broadcast Radio Expansion - Dreaming's Songs

Another double set, once again made by the same person.

Unlike the other radio station mods I've mentioned previously, rather than doing its own thing, these mods are, as their names imply, expansions for Radio New Vegas and Mysterious Broadcast! I mentioned earlier that, as great as New Vegas Radio is, it still has a fairly small selection of songs, and Mysterious Broadcast has an even tinier selection of only ten songs.

These two mods aim to rectify that by adding a plethora of songs to both radios, essentially giving you more of the things we've come to love about New Vegas' music. Seriously, these two mods total up to three hundred and thirteen additional songs to listen to. The sheer number of songs alone should be enough incentive, but the song selection is absolutely fantastic.

More Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Dean Martin, Elvis, Bobby Darin, the list goes on and on, but that should give you a good idea of what to expect when downloading these expansions. If you're not interested in additional radio hosts and just want more of that old classic radio music, then these should be more up your alley.

KELZ Fiend Radio

Another rather obscure radio station mod, hosted by a raider!

Now that alone is already an interesting concept. A radio station hosted by not just a raider, but a fiend, who are typically known to be junkies hyped up on all sorts of different chems at once? Boy, that can only end well!

It's about as chaotic as you'd expect. While there aren't as many host lines like New Love Radio or Old World Radio, what's there is fun and enjoyable. It's got its own little side quest too (which I have admittedly never done as of writing this post but I will try to get around to it in my current playthrough of the game ssshhhhh) and the grungy, garage band genre of music that the station hosts is pretty neat too! Again, I love radio mods like this, stations with hosts that make use of the stuff in-universe is always wonderful to see.

The only downside is that the songs are strangely quiet. They're not quiet to the point where you can't hear them but the sounds of the gunfights you're gonna get into are definitely gonna overpower the radio. Even after an update that supposedly patched the audio it's still a little tough to make the songs out. Other than that, I'd still say it's worth a download, if you don't mind turning your radio volume up a little bit to listen better.

Radio Fallout Equestria

Ponies? In my Fallout? Oh my!

Yeeeeaaaaaaahhh, I'm sure a lot of people would consider the very existence of this mod incredibly blasphemous. But look at me, look at my profile picture, ponies were going to end up in this list at some point or another at least. Truth be told I'm still not over the fact that this mod exists at all, I didn't think there'd be enough Fallout Equestria songs out there to make up a whole radio station.

But, surprisingly enough, there are! I feel like this one will really depend on your tastes though, the contents range from wholly original songs all done to try and replicate the Fallout aesthetic as best as possible, then you have ponified parodies of existing songs, then you have what's literally just Linkin Park's Castle of Glass instrumental with lyrics rewritten to fit Fallout Equestria. Needless to say, the quality of this radio station is all over the place.

To be fair, though, a lot of the stuff here is very good! There's a lot of swing styled songs that I feel like can be enjoyed even if you're not really invested in My Little Pony or Fallout Equestria, because they're genuinely good songs that can stand on their own, while others can be a bit of a slog to listen to because of a number of reasons, it's best to have a button binded to skip radio songs if you have Stevie's tweaks installed.

The collection of artists is relatively small, featuring Wasteland Wailers, Skybolt, a bit of Living Tombstone and a couple of other pony artists that I'm not familiar with. If you're a big fan of Fallout Equestria, there's a good chance you'll enjoy having this in your modlist. If you're not into ponies as much, it might not be your thing, but I'd still recommend checking it out if you're curious enough and just want more music to listen to.

DJ PON3 RADIO STATION

Sniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiifffff
You smell that? Smells like 2012 in here.

Yeah another one lmao. More pony music from the early days of the fandom. Apparently it used to be on Nexus before, but got taken down because it had copyrighted music in its tracklist, which I could only imagine, given the nature of this mod, were actually songs from Friendship is Magic.

I don't think I need to spend too much time on this one. Where as Radio Fallout Equestria at least tried to keep itself in line with its Fallout theming and aesthetic, this one is just straight up songs from the MLP fandom back when My Little Pony was making the rounds. Everyone you'd expect is here; Ken Ashcorp, H8_Seed, WoodenToaster, etc. I don't think I can recommend this to anybody who isn't part of the MLP fandom, it's such a bizarre thing to see on Nexus, even as a pony fan myself lmao.

Platinum Radio

Another one of the most well known radio mods alongside CONELRAD and Existence 2.0, but is it as great as it claims it is?

Well, for starters, the mod page is a bit deceiving. There is no Johnny Stone, there is no radio host like the page implies, it's another selection of old music. It's all very good music, like a lot of Fallout radio mods tend to have! But the mod page REALLY hypes itself up as being big, being bold, letting you know it's not like those other radio stations that play Johnny Guitar on loop, it's freaking Platinum Radio.

Yeeeeaaaaahhhh, well despite its glamorous presentation, there's nothing that really sticks out about Platinum Radio, sad to say. Again, if you want more tunes out on the wasteland, then go ahead and add it to your modlist! Just don't let the hype it presents itself with make you think it's more than it really is. It's still worth it for Nat King Cole, Dean Martin and Bobby Darin, though.

Graveyard Radio

Another trip back to the Capital Wasteland, and it's a delightfully spooky one.

I adore this mod, I freaking love it. A whole radio station dedicated to creepy crawlies and cryptids like me? That's perfect! The song selection is delightful, featuring obvious classics like Monster Mash, but you've also got songs like Transylvania Twist and Vampira that really bring out the liveliness of the undead.

I wish this wasn't stuck on Fallout 3, that it could be ported to New Vegas, because it's such a fun radio station, full of Halloween delights and spooky classics, with a bit of humor thrown into the mix. No radio host, sadly, but the selection of songs itself is still enjoyable enough that it doesn't really need a host. Like Point Radio, if you're ever playing Fallout 3 standalone, please give this mod a download and show the creator some support.

Numbers Stations - Ghosts of the Mojave Wasteland

Last but not least, we're closing out with even more good old spooky, creepy goodness.
To call this a radio station would be a little bit misleading, because in reality, it's just one extensively long ambient track featuring, as it says, various number stations listing off numbers.

Again, I'll admit, there isn't much to talk about here, but it's still fascinating it exists just for the novelty alone. I'm sure a lot of y'all remember the Numbers Station creepypasta from Fallout 3, right? This mod aims to try and bring it to life! ...Kinda! There's no depressed 3 Dog voice actor to be found, but the track that's there is genuinely very well done.

I wish there was a little bit more to it, but again, it's more of a novelty than anything. It's nice if you wanna spook up your trip through the Mojave and bring one of the infamous rumors of the Fallout series to life.

There's so many more radio station mods out there that I'd love to talk about, but the sad thing is, a lot of the really popular ones are very, VERY old, and were made before modders had the tools they have today. I would've loved to have downloaded and talk about mods like Radio Free Wasteland or Wave Radio, but those mods are so old and ancient, and the way they're packaged doesn't work with modern modloaders that we use nowadays.

But we've still got amazing new radio station mods coming out nowadays, and I would love to see even more in the future! Hell, one day, I hope I can make my own radio mod, host and all, for y'all to enjoy. But that day's a bit far off in the future since I don't have any modding experience and don't know the first thing about adding a station into New Vegas lmao.

I hope y'all've enjoyed this little showcase though! And to everybody who's made it this far, thank you for reading! I might talk about more Fallout mods in the future, but I guess we'll see! Hope y'all have a good day, and take care. <3

-Acti