Decorative & Building Block Mods

Which mods should we add to increase themes?

To make beautiful themes, we need some more blocks than vanilla offers. First of all, those mods need to be not ARR (licensed). This is so that when the mod gets discontinued, we can take the code and continue it ourselves, making it future proof and not a liability. There is a forum post that contains a list of mods, which has been distilled to no-ARR and 1.21.4. All mods will NOT affect gameplay/worldgen. The first 6 by default, the last by changing config (which will be done).

The downside, however, to adding mods is that when it gets discontinued, we have to update them, or our mod breaks too. This does bring extra work to Devs (or whoever takes responsibility). For some mods this will not be much work, as they only add blocks, but for others it might be. More and complex additions means more work. Due to the licencing, we can scrape the textures for them and add to our own mod. Most mods do have a reputation of supporting new versions.

The mods are listed below, with summaries of what they add. Textures are things like a creeper face on a block, shapes are things like stairs or slabs, and decorations are things like lanterns.

They are sorted from simple to complex mods.

Mods to Consider

Chisel reborn: Adds textures to blocks (full blocks only)
Block variants: Adds shapes to existing blocks
Stoneworks: Adds textures and shapes
Dusty Decorations: Adds decorations. Only interaction: climbable rope
Glassentials: Adds glass (trap)doors, has redstone/light blocks, ethereal blocks
Oh The Biomes We've Gone: Adds textures, shapes, colours. Adds flowers, saplings, food. Adds mobs. Adds decoration. Adds recoloured crafting table, boat, button etc.

Pro/Con

Pro: More blocks to build with, so we can make more interesting themes and are not limited by vanilla. It also adds decorative blocks.
Con: We need to update those mods when they get discontinued (although, same needs to happen if we create a blocks-mod ourselves, but now for more). It will also make the minimum required pack a bit larger.