In Thouscot you reach Dogsbridge by crossing the Bridge to Millside

March 1, 2022 6:06 AM

Generate an imaginary medieval town from scratch. A webtoy which does what it says on the tin. You can adjust parameters and reshape the results.

If you'd like to situate your town in a broader context, head over to Fantasy Map Generator and quickly build out a cartographic world with empires, kingdoms, islands, and so on. Also customizable.

posted by doctornemo (11 comments total)

This is cute! I like that it works on mobile and exports easily too.

I've rolled a handful and can't immediately see the algorithm, so that's nice too.
posted by SaltySalticid at 6:19 AM on March 1, 2022

I love these online map generators! My favourite is Perilous Shores
posted by fimbulvetr at 6:49 AM on March 1, 2022 [3 favorites]

There are more here. The village generator is also nice.
posted by fimbulvetr at 6:52 AM on March 1, 2022 [3 favorites]

My favourite is Perilous Shores

Oh wow. That reminds me so much of those summers where in between playing Dragon Warrior Quest NES games, we'd tape sheets of paper together to draw overworld maps for our own fictional JRPG game.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 7:18 AM on March 1, 2022 [1 favorite]

donjon.bin.sh is fantastic for these things too.

Some of my favourites include:

Fantasy calendar generators: https://donjon.bin.sh/fantasy/calendar/
Random Treasure Maps: https://donjon.bin.sh/fantasy/treasure_map/
Prophesies: https://donjon.bin.sh/fantasy/random/#type=prophecy
posted by bonehead at 8:26 AM on March 1, 2022 [2 favorites]

So much cool stuff on this site! I really love the Tarot card generator -- it produces absolutely gorgeous Tarot-like shapes and colors.
posted by treepour at 9:36 AM on March 1, 2022 [3 favorites]

If you like a little more hands on-ishness (though I imagine a lot of folks here already know of it), Townscaper is a pretty amazing little town building game. It's on Steam, iOS, and Google Play, and it's a pretty solid experience. Every town I've built ends up being a setting for a long term city-based campaign in my head, with districts run by different guilds, etc.

The only thing I would sort of like is an option for different skins, but it's still a solid base. One thing to watch out for, there are limits to the size of a map you can build, and the taller your city gets, the smaller its base can be. The limits vary by device, the maps I've made on my phone are more limited than on my iPad, and much more than on laptop.

It's sort of painstaking, one click, one block, but the time it takes to build a city is great for planning out a theme. Figuring out which arrangements cause spontaneous features to pop up is bit challenging, but part of the fun.
posted by Ghidorah at 3:25 PM on March 1, 2022

Yeah, I thought of Townscaper right away. This is like the 2D version. Looks like fun.
posted by zardoz at 3:31 PM on March 1, 2022

Watabou is my hero. That is all.
posted by Literaryhero at 4:32 PM on March 1, 2022

Awesome.
posted by signal at 4:38 PM on March 1, 2022

Good gracious, these —- especially the the sigil generator —-are going to keep me busy! Thanks for posting!
posted by Nancy_LockIsLit_Palmer at 6:06 AM on March 2, 2022 [1 favorite]