A mod I am thinking of doing...

[geoschmo]

Typically, really almost without exception, everybody that Posts mods or suggestions to the forum understands that people will like certain things and want to incorporate them into their mods. Asking for explicit permission above and beyond this is not usually neccesary as long as you "give credit where credit is due" in a readme file in your mod somewhere. Unless you are doing something extaordinary like taking the entire mod done by someone else and adding some of your stuff but keeping their name, like Rollo and I did with Devnull Mod. In that case we did talk to Devnellicus first about using the name and all.