Recently, a gallery of screenshots from Skyrim made the rounds on the Internet and I was taken with the quality of the images. After being informed that many of the images were only possible through mods to the game, I looked into the idea of using mods (programs that make changes or additions to a base game) to improve the game that I already loved. I found that there are thousands, in fact tens of thousands of mods available.
I didn't want to change the base game, but improve its looks. I know that there are mods to change dragons into Thomas the Train and his friends or to let me play as a hobbit (not to mention a number of pornographic options), but I wanted to retain the original feel of the game while improving the experience. Originally, this led me to simply look for cosmetic changes to the game's lighting, fire and water effects, and textures. However, I soon found myself adding mods that include new lands, dungeons, and map improvements (like finding those pesky dragon priest masks and unusual gems).
The game is gorgeous and thankfully I haven't taken much of a hit to performance (I have had a few sudden shutdowns which is leading me to quicksave more often). While I started with the Steam Workshop, I have found that its limitation to file size was depriving me of some of the best mods there. I have since switched to NMM (I can't remember what it stands for) to deal with most of my mod-ing needs.
The only disadvantage of these new mods is that I now want to start the game (yet again) to enjoy the entire experience.