Finally, Skyrim has realistic rug physics—complete with tripping!

Just this morning while stumbling out of bed to make coffee, I tripped on the bunched up corner of my bedroom's area rug. I thought to myself: "I sure wish I could do this in a videogame." Thanks to johnskyrim's JS Rumpled Rugs mod, spotted by our colleagues at GamesRadar, I can finally have the rug-tripping experience I crave in Bethesda's seminal 2011 RPG.

The mod replaces "nearly 300 rug references" in Skyrim with custom meshes. These new custom rugs have a chance of entering an "unkempt state" as ingame time passes by, and can be set to rights by interacting with them. Feel like leaving a rug in an unconscionably slovenly condition? Okay bucko, now you and all NPCs have a 3%-7% chance of slipping and falling on them depending on whether you're walking, running, or sprinting.

This rocks. It's a fantastic example of modding's occasional "could over should" ethos, and I have nothing but respect for anyone who would put a ton of work into making this kind of small change to a videogame.

Johnskyrim has stiff competition when it comes to PC Gamer's "Absurdly Specific Mod With a Lot of Work Behind it of the Week" award, however. The Black Mesa Classic project to demake Half-Life's remake in the original engine is a herculean effort of doing something (almost?) nobody asked for extremely well.

Associate Editor

Ted has been thinking about PC games and bothering anyone who would listen with his thoughts on them ever since he booted up his sister's copy of Neverwinter Nights on the family computer. He is obsessed with all things CRPG and CRPG-adjacent, but has also covered esports, modding, and rare game collecting. When he's not playing or writing about games, you can find Ted lifting weights on his back porch.