Generally speaking, the best way into the industry is arguably mods for Half-Life 2. Source is a very robust and customisable engine with lots of free editors and export scripts from 3DS Max and Maya.
This is true. that said however, modding on the Id engine is, in my opinion, much more friendly than Source's..what is it? Hammer. Quake Wars is pretty mod-able, and also incredibly cheap. Unfortunately, the audience is on Source right now, so I agree - that's definitely the way to go.
I would rather like to see an exclusively steampunk oriented gaming company created.
As for my idea, I'm more of a story person....(etc)...
A steampunk oriented gaming company would be absolutely wonderful. It would also very likely have to be composed entirely of people willing to work for free until the first game sells and profits can be shared, unless someone here on the forums happens to be rich, and chooses to invest

Fun idea though.
As to you being a story person: That's absolutely great. However, the best game designers really need to know some amateur programming. The more you know about other departments, the more you'll know what's feasible for them to accomplish within the time frame, and you'll likely get along better if you understand where they're coming from when they shoot down your 'awesome' ideas for various reasons.
Your idea to mod Fallout 3 sounds like an excellent idea for you and your situation. However, it also sounds like a complete overhaul that you will probably need a team of modders to help you with. That's an awful lot of work for one person.
I have, to my shame, never played Fallout 3.
Do. Absolutely, positively, do. Patch 1.5 is out, and as long as you aren't running any mods, it does a pretty good job (it messes up a lot of mods though -- if you're into mods, go with an earlier patch).
I just picked up Anchorage and The Pitts (I run on PC). Going to install those tonight or tomorrow

I've played through the game twice already, and have picked-up-put-down at least 3 times since it came out. I am STILL being surprised by new things, twists, amazing story arcs, etc.
It's almost as if they used TESIV: Oblivion as a warm-up for Fallout 3. Like Oblivion was just a tech demo to see what they could
really do with the engine and team, heh.

Kir - I've been looking at that for awhile now. Seeing as I now have a personal recommendation, I may be giving it a shot soon!
Now, someone help me write battle music.
Feel free to PM me if you want to talk music, I'm always down for that. Or we could start a thread for it, there are quite a few musicians here *shrug*