Whether you’re running a D&D campaign, or writing a fantasy book, you will need a good map. Even if you aren’t the most artistic type, there’s no need to worry as this article is here to help you. In it, I’ll talk about some of the best fantasy map generators out there. The main focus will be on the dungeon master’s perspective, but even if you require a map generator for other reasons, you’ll still find useful information.
When running a campaign, a map is a great way to help you and your players remember where they’ve been. I’ve gone through most of the more popular map generating programs and will show my thoughts and what each program specializes in. Some focus on dungeons, others on world maps, while others do a mix of both. This guide will help you decide which programs you’ll want to get for your goal.
Inkarnate
- Website: https://inkarnate.com/
- Best fantasy map generator for: world, town and area maps
Of all map generators I’m going over, this is the one I have the most experience with. I started using Inkarnate for world maps for my campaigns and when I write stories. They’ve also added assets for dungeon maps, which I’ve enjoyed so far. They have a good variety of art styles for each type of map you want to make.
I mostly use Inkarnate for world maps and area/town maps. It has a wide variety of buildings and is easy to use. However, I still struggle to make my cliffs, rivers, and shorelines look pretty.
The variety of maps really shines compared to other programs. You can generate maps with an old-fashioned parchment style, or watercolor styles. I’ve had it for a while, and I’m still playing around and learning how certain styles work. I’ve included photos of the art styles currently available.
There is a free version with limited assets, so you can test how you feel about the program. It’s a monthly/yearly fee, but there are frequent updates adding content.
The sample here is just one of the maps that I’ve created, and they were all a ton of fun to make! I’m still constantly learning new things, and I joined the Inkarnate Discord channel to talk to other creators and keep track of contests.
Dungeonfog
- Website: https://www.dungeonfog.com/
- Best fantasy map generator for: dungeon maps
Honestly, after playing around with Dungeonfog for a bit, I’m tempted to get it for myself. While the learning curve is heavier compared to Inkarnate, I feel it would be a lot better for dungeon maps. Especially after training and several YouTube tutorials.
The site has a free membership but most (maybe all?) of the assets have watermarks, meaning it is meant to test the program over actually making sample maps. It is fun to play with, and there is a large variety of assets tied to fantasy, cyberpunk, and eldritch horror themed maps.
They also provide premade maps that you can open and modify. One especially neat feature, allows each map to use multiple floors. For example, you can see one of the floors of the magical library map above. For the magical library, the top floor randomly has a cyberpunk cop car and some animals due to me playing around. There are also the tunnels hidden below the library.
Out of the premium fantasy map generators, this is the one I want to buy the most. The commercial version is pricey, but the amount of assets and focus on dungeon maps is huge. Most of the other fantasy map generators focus on world/area maps.
I love Inkarnate, but they’re still new to dungeon and city maps. While they still have amazing, ever-expanding assets for dungeon maps, Dungeonfog still has a strong head start.
Azgaar’s Fantasy Map Generator
- Website: https://azgaar.github.io/Fantasy-Map-Generator/
- Best fantasy map generator for: continent maps
Creating a continent map can be surprisingly challenging. Especially, when it comes to designing rivers, landmasses, and countries’ borders. Azgaar’s can help by doing most of the work for you. You can set up specific land mass types such as archipelago, and it will generate it for you with a variety of named countries.
While some aspects can be confusing at first, I’ve found it enjoyable overall. I’m still working on wrapping my brain around the religious and political maps. It took me a bit before I realized I can have the map show country emblems instead of their names.
A useful tool if you’re writing a campaign where you need sample coats of arms or colored logos for military banners.
I generated the samples here with Azgaar’s, and I really like how they turned out. I’ll certainly use those emblems when designing orders of knights and factions in my future campaigns.
Watabou Medieval Fantasy City Generator
- Website: https://watabou.itch.io/medieval-fantasy-city-generator
- Best fantasy map generator for: town maps
This program has ties to Azgaar’s Generator, but it focuses on specific towns. You generate a map and rename the districts as you see fit. It’s very simple and easy to use.
Sure, for a capital city with unique districts or building styles, a more advanced program might be better. Even so, this tool is terrific to generate small towns to populate your fantasy world.
Wonderdraft
- Website: https://www.wonderdraft.net/
- Best fantasy map generator for: games where distance matters
Honestly, I’m still tempted to get Wonderdraft. It’s pretty, and I love the feature that calculates distances between points in miles. The miles feature is amazing if you’re like me and stress out over “How many days will it take to get from town to town?”
The downside is its heavy focus on world maps, while other similar programs have more features. Though for the price, if you mainly want world maps it is one of the better options.
It’s one of the few programs with a single purchase, plus you can download it. Thus, it’s superb for offline work and avoiding monthly fees. However, you’ll have to pay for DLC instead of getting automatic updates.
Donjon
- Website: (world generator): https://donjon.bin.sh/world/
- Website (dungeon generator): https://donjon.bin.sh/fantasy/dungeon/
- Best fantasy map generator for: being free, generating large maps
Donjon is simply one of my favorite sites. It has tons of free generators, ranging from world maps to dungeon maps to even encounter and loot generators.
The world map generator is spectaular. First, it creates a large enough map. Second, the grid system allows you to add your own landmarks alongside all the cities and such that auto-generate.
It might not be as artistic as some other options, but for a free generator, it is incredible! I also love the grid design, which makes travel easier, if you make a formula such as “a day of travel equals X spaces.”
The dungeon map generator is also great considering it’s free. It allows you to generate both a DM version of the map, complete with numbered rooms, and a player version with blank rooms. You’ll still need to generate and possibly draw the details in each room, but this will still save you tons of time when creating maps.
I generated a sample for the world map, and a numbered sample dungeon map, both of which you saw above.
ProFantasy Campaign Cartographer
- Website: https://www.profantasy.com/
- Best fantasy map generator for: working offline, uploading your own assets
ProFantasy is a company known for tons of different map-creator programs that you can download. Some focus on dungeons, while others focus on world and area maps. Now, the one aspect of ProFantasy that stands out among everything else I’ve listed is that they’re not internet dependent. If you like to create maps while traveling without Wi-Fi, this is one of the few options that’ll work.
While this is an excellent benefit, it is also why I personally can’t use it. My computer is old, and I use an external hard drive due to lack of space. So every time I try to use ProFantasy it loses track of assets. You’ll need a relatively modern computer to run it smoothly and avoid using multiple hard drives.
While many programs I’ve mentioned use monthly or yearly payments, ProFantasy is a program with a one-time cost per program. It can potentially be cheaper, but the membership programs frequently have updates, while ProFantasy doesn’t. It has add-ons you can buy and several generations of programs, but you’ll have to work with what you got or create and upload your own assets.
That’s yet another pro for ProFantasy, they’re the easiest for artists that want to upload their own assets. Since all the assets are saved on your computer versus being part of a browser program, you can easily add your own to the map asset files.
Nortantis
- Website: http://jeheydorn.github.io/nortantis/
- Best fantasy map generator for: being free, nice art style
Nortantis is a free map generator that makes nice maps. I love the hand drawn art style. I feel it’s meant more for fiction writers, but they are still terrific for D&D world building.
One nice aspect of this generator is you can download it on your computer, meaning you can generate maps offline. A good option if you travel or have spotty Wi-Fi, though you still need to do the initial download.
The Nortantis sample I provided is one of the samples the creators put on their site, as I’m not currently using it. Keep in mind that Nortantis uses Java, which isn’t commonly pre-installed anymore. This means it will take some effort to get going, but it’s free and makes beautiful maps, which makes up for it.
Worldspinner
- Website: https://ui2.worldspinner.com/
- Best fantasy map generator for: generating lore
One of the more unique map generators that actually generates lore as well. After you provide details on the people and communities in your world, the program can simulate how they evolve and progress over time. Say you start at year 0, and then move to year 4,000. It will then predict how these cultures will change and how kingdoms will move and fall in those 4,000 years.
I personally enjoy writing a lot of the background stuff like economics and cultures for my worlds. However, you might not – or you simply don’t have the time to do it. In that case, you can use Worldspinner to generate them for you. It even generates quests and events on the map for when your players decide to wander off.
The amazing thing about Worldspinner is that it generates dungeon maps for a lot of the quests too. This means you can have premade side quests ready in a pinch. That’s very useful for when you want to have some downtime before the next main story section, or if the party wants to grind some levels before moving forward.
Worldanvil
- Website: https://www.worldanvil.com/
- Best fantasy map generator for: keeping track of area-specific information
Worldanvil is an excellent program to keep track of the lore and information for each city and area in your map. It’s a great organizational tool for world building since instead of using a file or a folder full of city maps, you can simply use the world map and when you click on a city it brings up that city map.
This makes it amazing if you’re making a homebrew world and need to create maps of the cities and documents of information to go with each area. That said, if you’re using an existing world and just want to create maps for it, I feel the other programs I mentioned will help better with that.
Best Dungeon Tiles for In-Person Games
If you don’t want to bother much with generating maps, there are other options for you. For years, I’ve run in-person games, and I have often been too lazy to draw maps, so thankfully I found these tiles!
They’re amazing for making maps on the spot. You have to be careful not to bump them (or if you have a window nearby that can let wind in), but they’re amazing for spontaneously generating detailed maps. You can even build the map as you go!
Now, the one hiccup with recommendations is I bought the 4th edition tiles. They’re now pretty old, and a lot pricier than when I originally bought them.
That’s why I’ve included a link to the newer Reincarnated tile sets. They’re pretty much the same thing, but I’ve heard some complaints. For example, the wilderness set is a mix of desert and forest tiles. Thus, if you only want forest like the original 4th edition tiles, you’ll have to get another set. Do your research and think of what scenes you want in your campaign and decide which version works better for you.
Each set has three versions. Let’s take a quick peek at them.
Dungeon Tiles Reincarnated – Wilderness
Each of these three Reincarnated Dungeon Tiles has different scenery. First up is the Wilderness one, which focuses on the outdoor scenery. So this is the best option, if most of your campaigns are happening outside.
Dungeon Tiles Reincarnated – Dungeon
If you’re a bigger fan of the Dungeons portion of D&D, these are a solid pickup. You’ll get the dungeon tiles for internal stone scenery.
Dungeon Tiles Reincarnated – City
Finally, if you’re more of a city person, this is what you’ll want to get. These tiles will help you build a map of a city, where you’ll be able to have your own adventure.
4th Edition Tiles
You can also look up the 4th edition versions of Dungeon tiles, but as I mentioned before, these can be way more expensive and difficult to find.
There is a controversial aspect for these tiles (both versions). Some users complain about lack of open space, since a lot of the map is filled with trees and rocks. I personally like it, as it looks more realistic and gives obstacles and cover for my players and the enemies. For larger wilderness fights when I want more blank space, I’ll use a large blank grid map and place the tiles on the map and just pretend those are grassy areas between the tiles.
Geek Tank Games
- Website: https://geektankgames.com/
- Best for: improving tiles / alternative for tiles
When I design the dungeon tile maps, they sometimes feel empty. There are tons of smaller tiles for decorations, but I discovered Geek Tank Games, and they’ve made my dungeon encounters feel a lot more realistic for my players.
You’ll find a variety of packs depending on your campaign. There are ones for buildings and market stalls if you plan an urban encounter. I mostly use the dungeon set and sometimes the graveyard one. If you don’t want to spend money on the tiles, these are an interesting alternative to decorating a blank grid map for more color and visuals.
Also, unrelated to maps, but they do make beautiful monster tokens that are flat, so they’re great if you have to travel when running your game. I bought their binder to organize them when they had a Kickstarter.
Commercial Use
Here’s one final thing I wanted to mention, before I wrap up. This won’t apply to everyone, but if you want to create content to share or record your games on Twitch or YouTube, check the commercial use of the map programs.
Some groups like Inkarnate and Dungeonfog include a separate payment plan that gives you more freedom to use their content, so read the details on each program if you want to share the maps. I create modules for people, so this is super important for me. Better to pay extra to protect yourself legally, and check the details because each commercial license differs on what it offers.
Best Fantasy Map Generators – Conclusion
Let me know if you’re using any of these best fantasy map generators! I doubt any of us can afford to test all of them, so it’s super helpful if we trade information. After the research I did for this article, I’m surely going to buy a couple, so I have more options for map making.
Lately I’ve had to shift from in-person games to digital, so these are becoming far more useful. I’ve also started a Fiverr account for creating quests and D&D content, so reach out if you need advice or want some custom content created. I hope you and your players have tons of fun!
If you’re looking for more D&D content, check the following articles:
There’s a new tool available for fantasy map generators called Mythical Realms. It’s free to use, and let’s you procedurally build a 3D fantasy world, with generation at every step for convenience. Check it out at https://www.mythicalrealms.world and have a go!