I know I’m not alone in saying that it’s stressful building a new continent. I’m referring to designing fictional worlds of course (although I’m sure doing it in real life would be tricky too). Attempting to give a landmass an organic-looking silhouette is frustrating. One walks the line between creating a shapeless blob and a squiggly jellyfish. And you can’t always cop out and make your island shaped like a skull! That’s a dark creative avenue to start walking down.
But campaign designers, your salvation is nigh! Donjon offers a fractal world generator tailored to meet your needs.
Punch in a few variables, and the application will generate a random world map for you. The options are about as comprehensive as you could ask for: set the size of the world, the ratio of water to land, and the projection type of the map. For you sci-fi junkies, there are seven different palettes to choose from. Feeling a bit festive? Why not generate a molten chthonian world?
Donjon’s application is an easy way to generate realistic looking continents on the fly, and is the best tool I’ve found so far for the job. It’s as simple as clicking the “random” button a half dozen times until you see a shape you like. There’s a ton of other great resources available on the site that are also worth a look, so take your time and poke around.
