Fantasy Tools Guide - Worldbuilding, Quests, NPCs, Taverns, Treasure & Maps

An in-progress guide to Fantasy, currently covering treasure, potions and maps and pointing at other guides such as fantasy city and fantasy seas. Worldbuilding, characters and other sections still to come...

[Image from Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator]

Starting Points

This guide is a companion to the Random Tables Titles for Fantasy Guide.

Fantasy is the most popular genre for roleplaying games, and there are several guides existing for different parts of fantasy, including:

Adventurers, Groups and Companions Guide and a separate pdf guide for characters
Fantasy Cities Tools Guide and a separate Fantasy City PDF Guide for all urban terrain.
Fantasy Dungeon Tools Guide and a separate Fantasy City PDF Guide covering all types of underground settings and dungeon adventure sites.
Fantasy Hinterlands Tools Guide and a separate Fantasy Hinterlands PDF Guide, covering farmlands, roads and villages outside of cities and large towns.
Fantasy Planes / Otherworldly Tools Guide and a separate Fantasy Planes PDF Guide
Fantasy Seas Tools Guide and a separate Fantasy Seas PDF Guide
Fantasy Wilds Tools Guide and a separate Fantasy Wilds PDF Guide
Dungeons and Dragons Tools Mega-guide.
Dark Fantasy Tools and a separate Dark Fantasy PDF Guide

But some aspects cross through all of fantasy, including treasure, characters, world-building, dark fantasy and other areas.

Nov 2024: Merged potions in to treasure. Updated gens list. Aug 2023: Added several new sections.

Worldbuilding

Velas, Goddess of the Dawn, Myria, Goddess of Health, Mithror, God of Chance, Korion, God of Ice.

from the God Names Generator at Names Nerd.

So for general fantasy worlds its time to start with worldbuilding tools!

For your weather there is PBE Games weather generator, with results such as "Much warmer than average. Cloudy with heavy precipitation. Light winds." and "Warmer than average and increasing. Cloudy with heavy precipitation. Light winds."

For darker themes, Glumdark has Festivals and Holidays, Quest Seed Generator, and Travel Encounters.

For some random heraldry at Create a Random Shield with drawshield.net, featuring many styles and options. Or many at once with Azgaar at Amoria. Another option is Scrontch's Flag Designer with several options for filters

At bit different are star constellations for the skies, gods and legends. Watabout has you covered with Constellations.

Iron Arachne has procedurally built generators, including a Culture Generator with names, organisations, religion, taboos and other cultural details. Also useful for worldbuilding is the Organization Generator, Region Generator and Religions Generator.

At 7Tools is a Group Generator, giving a faction with ideals, location and a symbol. This is complemented by Historical Events, Holidays and Weather.

Populate our world with all kinds of creatures with the Book of Monsters from Deep-Fold on itch.

If you want a calendar for your world, look at Fantasy Calendar, which has preset worlds and options for generating events and weather and phases of the moon. There is also a Fantasy Calendar Generator at donjon.

Random PDFs

Pulling from the more detailed Random Table Titles for Fantasy, we have

The Tome of Adventure Design (revised) from Mythmere Games has over 500 pages of tables and guidance for various fantasy adventures. If you have the older version you don't need the updated one as it's mostly a formatting update.
From Dicegeeks there is the Book of Random Tables. This and four sequels are collected in the Great Book of Random Tables. More focused is the Book of Random Tables: Quests.
Atelier Clandestin has a Sandbox Generator with hex maps and tables for filling them with settlements, npcs, dungeons and other pieces of interest.
At 300 pages of tables for a dollar (last time I checked), the Fantasy Tome of Lists from JEN Games doesn't fit in Free / PWYW. There is also a Fantasy Tome of Lists 2.
Never Engine has several highly rated Pay What You Want (PWYW) Encounter Generators including Fantasy Wilderness, Urban (Rough), Urban (Safe) and Civilised Countryside
Shielddice Studio has Swift: NPC Builder, full of many d66 tables to build and inspire memorable characters.

Nonplayer Characters (NPCs)

You'll need NPCs to populate your games, so let's start with Role Generator's Improvised Character Generator, with lots of details to help bring them to life.

The NPC Generator of OMGM has an overview, physical traits, personality traits and life events.

At 5thDnD is a Non-Player-Character Generator (system neutral), with results such as "Rageph (male). The grisled, drunken bloke is sitting down. He is impatient, mumbles too much, and juts his bottom teeth forward. He needs the weather to change.

Over at DndSpeak is a whole category of NPCs random tables. Examples include 100 Memorable NPC Appearances and 100 Interesting Travelling Merchants.

Quests

An ex-adventurer named Evel seeks a company of adventurers to slay the Wyrm of the Golden Desert and retrieve its eyes. Moreover, the party must complete the quest amidst a terrible plague.

from Quest Random Generator at donjon. There is also a detailed Random Adventure Generator at the same site.

Some games know what the characters will be doing, but quest ideas are popular for game prep, sandboxes, rumours and as backups for characters veering off-course.

At dndspeak are 100 Morally Ambiguous Side Quests and 100 Side Quest Hooks. Those side hooks are also available at Dareheart in a Job Board Posting Generator. And at the same site is a Treasure Map Generator with a textual description.

Over at Chaos Gen (me) there are Fantasy Rumours and Plot Hooks, with a filter by environment such as city, wilderness and sea. For something quite different, I also created Fantasy Adventure Icons at Chartopia, with 5-8 fantasy-themed icons to interpret.

At 7Tools there is a Quest Generator with detailed notes, and the possibility to expand out details mentioned in the description, using linked sub-generators.

Last up is a Wanted Poster Generator, without images, from Dungeon Masters Vault. For a Wanted Posters with Images try one at Perchance

Wanted Poster from **Dungeon Masters Vault**

Taverns and Inns

Devil's Hall, Fisherman and Wolf, Spider's Inn, Leaky Cup, Rusty Sword Alehouse

...from Tavern Name Generator at Seventh Sanctum

Inns and taverns are a staple for many roleplaying games. A cliched and yet reliable start to many adventures is to start them in a tavern. Taverns can also be the the place to find new recruits, search for rumours, restock on supplies. And even to have entire adventures.

For PDFs there is a Taverns section in the fantasy guide.

Donjon has a Random Inn and Tavern Generator with options of "Townsfolk" and "Adventurers" as patrons. It includes location, description, innkeeper, patrons, rumors and menu items such as "Braised Goose and Boysenberry Tart, Glass of Brandy (2 sp)"

For a venue with a battle map Taverns at Here Be Taverns has one for each location. Menu, characters and rumours included.

The Copper Sanctum has a standalone Not Another Tavern Generator with entries for tavern backstory, bartender, clientele, accommodation and an extensive Food and Drink list. For more layouts Inkwell Ideas has random floorplans at the Random Inn Generator – Floorplan with the option to include things like a cellar, 2nd level and hearth. There is also a separate Random Rumors tool. And one for Inn Menus tool

Role Generator's Random Tavern and Inn Generator has menu, customers and an event such as "A promoter is working his way around the tables looking for challengers to fight the local champion pugilist". Filters for type of tavern include "Island", "On the Road" and "Dwarfs"

OMGM has an Inn Generator with lots of information and full owner attributes.

To generate taverns try DnD Speak's Tavern Generator. And a related 100 Jobs Posted to a Tavern Community Board.

For a grimmer version, Glumdark has an Inn and Taverns name generator.

Menu from Not Another Tavern Generator at the Copper Sanctum

Treasure

The Hellish Scrolls of Phosoli, a set of scrolls bound by leather cords. When first opened, it unleashes an ominous howl

...from ancient tomes at donjon.

Many adventurers are most interested in the treasures that can be found in dungeons, especially coins or crystals and gems from Springhole. And art from Chaotic Shiny

For an option without magic items, 5th DnD's treasure tool returns 4 sizes of loot at once, from "minor personal loot" to "treasure hoard". For more specific items generate arcane tomes, magic rings and potions

Then DnD Speak has interesting books, fantasy drugs and rare art objects

For other items try ordinary items and more books from Cosmic Peril Adventure, and artifacts, charms, weapons from Chaotic Shiny

Roll for Fantasy has a sophisticated tool for random loot generation is a (example below).

Potions are an important part of many fantasy experiences. The first generator to cover is the Potion Shop at the Magic Gurll! site.

For decent generators, Geek Native has a Random Potion Generator,

D4 Caltrops has One Hundred Unconventional Potions with unique effects and Dnd Speak has a Random Potion Generator, combining effects from a few 1d100 tables. Fantasy Name Generators has generators for Potion Names and Potion Descriptions.

Fantasy Maps

The place to start is Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator by Azgaar. It has a many features and options for creating new continents, including names by culture, biomes, canvas size, number of towns and which elements to show. The maps can be edited and saved, parts can be regenerated and configured and style elements changed. There is also an option to use it offline with some reduced features.

Donjon has The Fantasy World Generator, making a hex overlaid map with terrain, castles, cities and ruins. The Fractal World Generator will make you a global map (with filters). And the Fantasy Town Generator creates settlements of various sizes with winding layouts.

Hexroll is a standalone generator that creates a hex-grid map with various terrains and marked location. Each map has encounters, settlements, npcs, dungeons and factions.

Watabou has Perilous Shores which generates realms with a few marked locations. There are several options to show and hide elements such as cities, hex overlay and forest type. Also known for Medieval Fantasy City Generator which has options for rerolling parts of the city, what legends to display, city size, features to include and number of roads. Cities can also be viewed in City Viewer.

Kassoon has several map generators, including the unique House Map Generator.

Fantasy Tool Recommendations

I'll come back and update the Guide so send me any recommendations for tools, tables and pdfs.

If you liked these there are Generators at Chaos Gen and a monthly random tools Newsletter. Or find us on the Rand Roll Discord or an instagram of Random Tables.