# Garry's Mod: I don't understand what this is **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [October 7, 2010, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/garrys-mod-i-dont-understand-what-this-is/556405 "2010-10-07T20:28:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![DCnDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dcndc/32/2842_2.png) [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2010, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/garrys-mod-i-dont-understand-what-this-is/556405/1 "2010-10-07T20:28:14Z")
It was made available on Steam for Mac a couple weeks ago. I read the Wikipedia entry. I watched a couple vids on YouTube. I still don’t get it. Who is this game for? Are you one of them? What do you do with it? ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2010, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/garrys-mod-i-dont-understand-what-this-is/556405/2 "2010-10-07T20:38:29Z")
It’s an addon to Half-Life 2. It’s basically a freeform editor in which you can create objects and people and move them around as desired. I’m sure there’s a lot more to it than that, but I never explored it very deeply myself. I do know that the comic [Concerned](http://www.hlcomic.com/index.php?date=2005-05-01) was created using Garry’s Mod, so that’s an example of what can be done with it. ---
**Author:** ![Balance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ccd318/32.png) [@Balance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balance)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2010, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/garrys-mod-i-dont-understand-what-this-is/556405/3 "2010-10-07T22:06:51Z")
Right. It’s not a game, it’s a sandbox. It lets you do strange and often very silly things with the game engine. Some things I’ve seen done with it: Fields of floating, lazily spinning circular saw blades that abruptly annihilate any living thing that wanders into them. “Gravity surfing”, achieved by standing on a door and shooting it intermittently with a tractor beam. A gun that shoots locomotives. A “vehicle” consisting of an office chair glued to a plank, which was in turn glued to antigravity devices, rockets, and manhacks (the little hunter/seeker drones). When last seen, it had killed its rider, run off into a pond, and was inexplicably breeching like an angry, rocket-powered whale. ---
**Author:** ![Yeticus\_Rex](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/a698b9/32.png) [@Yeticus\_Rex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yeticus_Rex)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2010, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/garrys-mod-i-dont-understand-what-this-is/556405/4 "2010-10-07T23:13:33Z")
And it makes for some goofy [youtube videos.](http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=pills+here&aq=f) ---
**Author:** ![ramel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/eb8c5e/32.png) [@ramel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ramel)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2010, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/garrys-mod-i-dont-understand-what-this-is/556405/5 "2010-10-09T04:23:57Z")
I used to play it back when it was free. It was really fun. Basically you could take pretty much anything from half-life 2 and weld them to each other to make stuff. Thing I liked to were making giant cannons using exploding barrels. and then making and arming an airship with them. Yeah, very silly, but fun! ---
**Author:** ![Uosdwis\_R.Dewoh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Uosdwis\_R.Dewoh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uosdwis_R.Dewoh)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2010, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/garrys-mod-i-dont-understand-what-this-is/556405/6 "2010-10-10T18:56:46Z")
The original Garry’s mod (Garry’s Mod v9.0) is still available for free. Get it here: [http://halflife2.filefront.com/file/HalfLife\_2\_Garrys\_Mod;49585](http://halflife2.filefront.com/file/HalfLife_2_Garrys_Mod;49585) ---
**Author:** ![DCnDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dcndc/32/2842_2.png) [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2010, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/garrys-mod-i-dont-understand-what-this-is/556405/7 "2010-10-10T20:14:00Z")
Nice. I’ll play around with it. Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2010, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/garrys-mod-i-dont-understand-what-this-is/556405/8 "2010-10-10T20:22:11Z")
v9.0 was the original? Garry had a weird sense of humor. ---
**Author:** ![Uosdwis\_R.Dewoh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Uosdwis\_R.Dewoh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uosdwis_R.Dewoh)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2010, 12:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/garrys-mod-i-dont-understand-what-this-is/556405/9 "2010-10-11T12:05:34Z")
Poor choice of words on my part. 9.0 was the last free version before Garry’s mod went all commercial. Apparently the creator of the mod needs things like “food” and “shelter”. :rolleyes: 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Lobsang](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobsang/32/4067_2.png) [@Lobsang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobsang)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2010, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/garrys-mod-i-dont-understand-what-this-is/556405/10 "2010-10-18T17:54:09Z")
Gmod idiot box, for the win. ---
**Author:** ![control-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@control-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/control-z)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2010, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/garrys-mod-i-dont-understand-what-this-is/556405/11 "2010-10-18T20:50:06Z")
You can spawn a door, a silo, monsters, all sorts of objects out of thin air. You can play with Team Fortress characters on a Counterstrike map. You can fly, be invulnerable, give yourself whatever weapons you want. You can set up a junk race track where the walls are all sorts of assorted objects, you can even script a lap counter and things like that. It’s not easy but it’s interesting. My friend and I used to play it pretty often but it got to the point where we were more worried about getting stuff to work than actually playing.