About System Codex

Why I Started Building It

When I first started reading and listening to LitRPG, I was struck by the feeling the genre gave me.

It was adventure, progression, levelling up, loot, political intrigue and character development all in one genre. It gave me some of the same feeling I've always loved from games, and in audiobook form I could even experience it while doing everyday things like going to the gym.

But I kept running into the same problem.

Sometimes I couldn't remember exactly what a skill did, when a character got an item, what their current equipment was, or how a stat or ability had changed over time.

A lot of that information was technically findable on existing wikis, but not safely. If I searched for a skill, character, item, or event, I could often find the answer, but I also risked seeing major spoilers from books I had not reached yet.

In a game, I'd know what to do: pause, open the menu, check the character sheet, look at the inventory, read the tooltip, compare the equipment, and then jump back in.

With a book, that experience did not really exist.

So I started wondering one day if it could?

What if a LitRPG series could have something that felt more like an RPG companion than a traditional wiki? What if you could set where you are in the story, then safely explore the character sheets, skills, items, titles, and progression details up to that point?

I searched for something like this, as the concept was so clear in my mind when I did, but it didn't exist, so I thought: I'm a software developer, I've been building things for over 13 years, maybe I can have a go at it.

After starting, I fell in love with the idea, and that became System Codex.

What It Is For

System Codex is designed to make complex LitRPG worlds easier and more fun to follow.

It can help readers:

• refresh themselves before a new book or audiobook
• check character sheets, skills, items, titles, and other parts of progression
• avoid spoilers from later chapters or books
• enjoy the RPG-like structure of a series in a more visual and interactive way

Stats, skills, items, and system messages are part of what makes LitRPG feel like LitRPG. They create the sense of progression, build choices, rewards, and levelling up that many readers love.

But as series get longer, those details can become hard to revisit, especially in audiobook form. System Codex gives readers somewhere to check stats, skills, items, and progression at their own pace, without needing every detail repeated in the story every time.

The aim is not to take stats and skills out of LitRPG. It is to help keep them useful, visible, and fun.

For Authors

System Codex is also being built with authors in mind.

Authors can claim or build their own codex for free, with basic tools for correction requests, representation concerns, and image preferences for their series.

For authors who want more, System Codex can become part of their official reader experience: a place to support readers, organise complex world details, manage community contributions, highlight artwork, and embed codex pages into their own websites.

Paid author features are not required for authors to raise concerns. They are for authors who want deeper tools, branding, analytics, website embeds, white-label options, or implementation support.

For Artists And Contributors

System Codex is pro-artist and pro-community.

Human-made artwork, fan contributions, and careful community curation are a huge part of what makes fandom valuable. The aim is to make those contributions more visible through attribution, credit links, highlighted presentation, and better ways for readers and authors to discover the people behind the work.

AI is one of the tools that makes System Codex possible as a small independent project, helping more be built and presented without a large team. The goal is for System Codex to become a useful resource for the people around these stories: authors, readers, artists, and contributors.

Founder Note

System Codex is currently an independent project built by me, Jerome Pratt, a London-based software developer with 13 years of experience.

The platform is still early, but I'm working carefully to make it useful for readers, fair to authors, and supportive of artists and community contributors.

Outside of System Codex, I'm currently preparing for my next big life quest: becoming a dad.