Dômus Môdé and an Imperfect Gaming System

I've always loved maps.
I've always loved alphabets.
I've always loved stories involving fantasy.

In high school, I read The Lord of the Rings, a world with maps, alphabets, and fantasy. Inspired, and with the naïveté of youth, I decided I wanted to create a world. Icebergs have nothing on creating a world. To create a realistic world, one must create terrains, histories, and cultures. To do that, one must understand history, cultures, geology, climates and how such things interact with each other.

I drew the first map, on the right, in High school. College and the draft slowed the development, but then D&D became a pastime and I already had an area, with a small amount of history, to use as a base for a campaign. However, PCs (Player Characters) never stay where one leaves them. They insist on exploring. Below is the map with 40+ years of player inspired growth. The red box shows the original map. The purple lines represent the Equator, 30°, and 60°. The full-size map is one pixel to the mile.

To my mind, the original rules of D&D were arbitrary, restrictive, and hit points didn’t support role playing. I spent years working on a perfect system and came up with one where, while the combat system worked very well, was too cumbersome for casual players. It finally occurred to me I didn’t need a perfect system; I needed a playable system that simulated the aspects of reasonable fantasy. So, I created an Imperfect Gaming System.