Free fantasy map making tool

So give this fantasy city generator a try and let your imagination run wild in whatever forms you desire. It's often hard to make a map's layout readable and indicate its relevance to the story. World Anvil's Interactive Map is the 'go-to' tool if you are the kind of creative writer that starts with a rough map prepared. Through World Anvil's software, you can upload your map to add whichever various and interactive elements suit your needs. For example, you can chart the courses of heroes and villains as they venture across the map, adding waypoints to show moments of conflict or rest.

Or you can make use of the function that allows you to interlink maps — adding icons linking to city maps — and make sure that you never lose track of what's where. Essentially, World Anvil's tool allows you to take your map to the next level through customization options that just aren't possible through traditional pen and paper drawing.

This next entry is one of the pricier pieces of software on this list but it's also one of the best-reviewed. Wonderdraft's fantasy map-making software occupies a happy middle ground in size, specializing in creating continental and regional maps. Wonderdraft's maps are particularly praised for their detailed, beautiful, and indeed Tolkienesque art style, as well as their customizability.

It can generate countless elements to add to your map if you wish, from rivers and roads to mountains and cities. Of course, if you don't like what the software generates for you, you can also use the "paint" tool and mold the landscape to suit your needs. The beauty of this Wonderdraft is that, no matter how many crazy combinations of landscapes you throw at it, it maintains your map's style, allowing you to fearlessly customize to your heart's content. If you're looking for basic ideas to help you shape your world, then consider using donjon's free fantasy world generator as your muse.

Generating your initial land formations is a quick and painless process, leaving you more time to get into the details — whether that's printing it out with pen and paper, or uploading your map into a separate tool like World Anvil! After you pick out the customization options that suit you, the result will appear on a new tab as an easily downloadable image.

If you need more inspiration, try sparking up your creativity by using Reedsy's fantasy plot generator as you create your map to enrich your map-making with some awe-inspiring lore. With Campaign Cartographer , you can draw cartoon maps, hex maps, medieval maps, and far more than that, whether you choose to use the inbuilt landmass generation tools, or draw your own with tools to assist you.

You will have a huge variety of mapping symbols, styles, and types that are easy to access right away, without any additional paid expansions. The variety of what's available is part of what makes this map generator so good, as you're not limited to a single map style. If you want to make an 8-bit pixel art map one day, and a map inspired by the Witcher books the next, Campaign Cartographer has all of the tools to facilitate that.

Nortantis is a simple fantasy map generator that creates hand-drawn-style maps. Once you've created a map you like the style of, you have the option to customize the terrains, icons, background, color, and text font.

Fancy making a spooky swamp map? Why not choose a purple background combined with a darker purple terrain outline? Or maybe your characters are journeying through a land of volcanoes — combining a dark red background with Nortantis's handy lighter red terrain outlines will surely fit the bill. Once you've created your ideal story setting , you can easily export it in whatever image file you prefer, or send it to print straight from the app.

FlowScape stands out from the rest of our list as the only 3D map generator. With FlowScape you can curate multiple different types of terrain, from snowy mountains to beach paradises, or choose from 20 presets you can edit. If we listed all of the elements you can edit, you'd be here all day so here's a sample list of what you can do on FlowScape: simulate living animals, build castles, play with physics perfect for creating accurate castle ruins , rotate the sun, and even build on top of giant turtles.

Sounds pretty fun, right? You might be thinking that it's impractical to use a 3D map generator for the purpose of worldbuilding and writing, but many writers have confirmed the opposite. It's the ultimate way to control your map and put yourself in your character's shoes.

Inkarnate is well-known among fans of fantasy map generators for its intuitive user interface, fast generating, and the numerous assets it has to offer. You can create large cities with sprawling angular roads or landscapes with winding hills, or, if none of that interests you, why not try building a whole town on a bridge in a canyon? There are several styles of maps that can be chosen from as well. For instance I could pick a Lord of the Rings styled map or even a regular black and white style.

I can relate this system best as the photoshop of fantasy map making. The reason this is also a bonus entry is because there is an upfront charge for the software. You can check it out here! Well that is all I have for you today. I was not paid by any of these companies, I just wanted to let everyone know what I like the most.

Comment below and let me know! For more content like this be sure to check back in at dickwizardry. I have never seen a more epic bag that can fit so many books to make me feel prepared as a DM. Thank you for subscribing! If there is any content that you would like covered you can reach out to us at [email protected].

Powered by Squarespace. Privacy Policy Contact Us. Articles Find articles on fantasy related news events! Donjon Donjon is an incredible site that has all sorts of world building tools.

Inkarnate Inkarnate is a very powerful map making tool that has a free version to it. Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage Review.

Waterdeep: Dragon Heist Review. Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft. Tasha's Cauldron of Everything. How to Create a Dungeons and Dragons Character. Tomb of Annihilation Review. Baldur's Gate Decent Into Avernus Harry Potter and the Prisoner of It's possible to save your map and get back to it later, you can do so by simply clicking the 'save map' button.

This will save the map with all the pieces, including draggable pieces, locally in your browser. This only works if you don't use incognito mode and only if you use a modern browser so no IE7 for example.

You can close your browser after you've clicked save, it'll still be there when you open it again. Do note that if you changed the map size you will have to change it again before loading the map.

It's also possible to save the map data locally. Simply click the "Save local" button to have the code create a text file with all the map code in it, then click on the download link to download it directly to your computer.

Now you can use the "Choose file" field to upload your map data and use it in the future. This method makes sure there's no risk of losing all your data in case your browser data is wiped, for example, but it does mean keeping track of your downloaded file.

This tool is mostly meant for planning purposes, at least if you want a detailed map. Natural elements are extremely varied, not just in size and shape, but also in positioning, their effect on other natural elements and much more. A tool like this won't be able to replicate nature well, a square grid system with predefined images would require far more images to do so.

But it still works great as a tool to help you plan the ideal version of your map. You can still place elements where you roughly want them to be. To illustrate this, I made a map using this generator as a planning ground and I then fine tuned that map in an editing program to get a more natural looking map. You can obviously go way beyond this, like DeviantArt user TheFrenchedCanadian who made the piece below. With a little time and skill you can turn the rough, planning version into a fully fledged map.

If you wish to save the map you've created all you have to do is click the 'Turn into image' button and an image will appear below it that looks exactly like what you've created.

The only difference being that this is a single image, rather than a whole lot of separate images. Simply right click it, select 'save as' and name it what you wish. That's all there is to it. Many of you have asked how they can use the maps created with this map creator. You're free to use maps you've created in books, games, and similar projects as long as my site's credited.

Everything else the tool, the assets, etc.