This started as a notebook when I was about 14 years old. It's still going. If it's given you something worth the time you spent here, that's already more than I set out to do anything else is just a nice bonus.
I've been playing Dungeons & Dragons since I was a little kid. It really took hold in high school. The game kept me out of trouble, has given me some of the best friends I've ever had! And lit the creative spark that has run through the rest of my life. If it hadn't been for those dozens of campaigns, I probably never would have learned to draw or paint. So many of the skills and interests I developed arts and crafts, making costumes for the Renaissance fair, worldbuilding of every kind trace straight back to D&D and the fantasy settings it opened up.
The first fantasy novel I ever read was Dragons of Autumn Twilight, the opening book of the Dragonlance Chronicles. A friend handed it to me in the summer of 1984. He had already hooked me on fantasy the year before by convincing me to try Piers Anthony's On a Pale Horse. His pitch was simple: “Read the first ten pages. If you don't like it, put it down.” Those first ten pages were the best opening to any story I'd ever encountered. After that I trusted his judgment completely. When he told me the new Dragonlance book was great, I read it and got hooked.
What I loved most about Dragonlance was its post-apocalyptic fantasy world. The gods had disappeared. There were no clerics at the start. The landscape was full of ruined temples and the remnants of a greater age. That idea that the great stories happen after the peak of a civilization rather than during it stuck with me. It was the same undercurrent that runs through Conan and a lot of classic fantasy, and it shaped how I thought about setting from then on.
I started running my own games when I was about 15. For several years I was the only DM in our circle. During the school year we played almost every Friday and Saturday night; summers were even more frequent. I ran published modules, adventures from magazines, and of course my own creations. Friends would find a module they'd like to play, and buy it, just so I would run it for them. I remember being in the Game Castle (our local D&D store) they'd show me the back cover, tell me they were getting close to the right level, and ask me to consider it. I ran almost all of the ones suggested. At the time it was probably 3 modules to one of my own creations. But I never rushed myself in creating a new adventure. I wanted them to be better than the modules, better than the other games.
What I really wanted, though, was a world of my own. The idea wasn't new, but I liked it. I started small, first a city, then a country (which later became a state or province). My very first city, originally named Terin, I eventually renamed (I came across the same name somewhere else) to Citavas Port City or sometimes the Port City of Citavas, I still find it referenced that way in old materials.
I built outward only as needed. Every time the party went down an alley I hadn't drawn yet or walked into a shop that didn't exist five minutes earlier, I created it on the spot. Shop, proprietor, inventory, all created in game for the game. I tried to keep my notes on every game. Over the years some of these things became regular stops for the PCs, some never to be used again. I've gotten very good at creating on the fly, and this has allowed my city to grow. The more the world grew, the more I loved it, and the more exclusively I ran games there.
In the beginning the city was deliberately monotheistic. The players knew other gods existed, but their characters only knew of one. Anyone who wanted to play a cleric had to serve that single deity. We ran a mostly good game, thieves still stole, of course, but the party as a whole weren't puppy kickers.
Keeping the pantheon small at first let me focus on the immediate story. As the campaigns continued I invented more of the pantheon, allowed players to learn about the world as it unfolded in the game. But as any DM knows, you can never expect the players to do what you want. That fact of playing this game pushed me constantly to update my world. I'm pretty good at the creative ad lib, especially at the table.
By the time I left for Marine Corps Boot Camp, every game I ran was set in that world. If someone wanted to play a published module, I converted it. I wouldn't run material that required foreign gods, cities, or factions. It all had to fit. Over the years, group after group told me the same thing, that these were the best games they had ever played. That the world felt real and deep and original. That consistent feedback only pushed me to dig deeper.
Every character I ever created, whether I was running the game or playing in someone else's, was built according to the settings of my world. And while I've played in plenty of other game settings, by keeping to that one rule for myself, every PC I've played since I was 16 was designed to fit my world. I was slowly building even when not actively creating it.
Early on the pantheon was just two powers. I never saw them as simple “good” and “evil.” One maintained balance and equality, the other tested people offering temptation so they could choose. The second figure is often seen as the evil god. That could be because I made her a sexy devil, but she isn't evil per se, she is just a temptress. He was the Judge. The whole pantheon rests on the idea that the universe seeks balance and you make your own choices.
The world has gone through several names over the last thirty five years. Whenever I discovered that a name I liked was already in use by another published setting, I changed it. I don't want that kind of overlap. Though, there is one exception to this rule now. That is the name of my main planet. Miranda. I use Miranda now as a homage to one of my all time favorite movies, Joss Whedon's Serenity. Once I heard it spoken by River Tam (played by Summer Glau) I knew I was going to steal that! What remains is the Verod System, the detailed, living setting that grew out of those high school Friday nights and has been evolving ever since.
For years I kept these three ring binders with all these notes, NPCs, etc. But those were lost to time. What remained was the knowledge in my head. So I started rebuilding it from memory. Most of the core stuff was easy deities, countries, main city names. But I began to rebuild all the other stuff, trying this time to keep better records. That's why this page exists. It's the place where all of that history, all those improvised alleys and half remembered deities and hard won campaign notes, have been compiled. I have done my best to keep this as true as I can, but you'll probably find some inconsistencies. Please tell me if you do!
This is not just ‘my’ world anymore. I have a few friends that now run their games in the same setting the Verod System. I have included some of their creations here as well. It's community. I have always wanted to create something like this. It came down to coding. I'm not a coder, I barely knew HTML 3, let alone all this new stuff. That is where Claude comes in.
I began working with the LLMs back in '23. I had fun using them as super improved search engines, compiling data, reading my scattered notes (this was huge for me!) and putting it all together in a neat package. But when I learned about their ability to code I had a thought. Could I use them to create my world as a website? Turns out the answer is yes. I spent several hours fine-tuning the ‘look’ of it, and more getting it to follow my vision (they do tend to run off if you let them). Adjusting this or that it may have done the coding, but I've done all the design. As I've worked, I've come up with new ideas (see the music page) that I thought would be fun or funny. I have used AI to generate images, a lot of them too. There was no way I was going to take on trying to draw/paint all of these. Plus I found using the same model for the artwork it gave it a consistence appearance (see if you can spot the different generators most are from my main one, some are from a couple of others as needed). Also, just look at them, they are awesome. As for the content, aside from things like grammar, spelling or keeping things consistent (I will tell you these things are great for continuity) I've written everything, or it was written by a player (namely my best friend Jon, who fell in love with the world as well). I've gotten pretty good at writing prompts to get what I want, and that is not an easy thing to do with these things. I hope you like what I've done here, feel free to use anything or everything in your game. Give the world a try, or better yet contact me and maybe I'll run a game just for your group. I do like to travel. Check out www.ironboundodyssey.com to see my bike/travel page.
If you'd like to help keep the lights on, this is the place.