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Fantasy Creation

In the course of writing a novel and creating an AD&D campaign, I've needed a resource for fresh, believable names. I also looked up a land generator and several sites on etymology. Rather than find them over and over again every time I need them, I thought I'd create a directory for me to refer to. Hope there's something useful for you as well.

World-Building and Campaigns

Developing Culture

World-Building and Campaigns

Azgaar Fantasy Map Generator: create continents, climates, armies, and names for it all with this beautiful illustration tool.

Donjon: generators for names, worlds, calendars, adventures, inns, weather, demographics... just all sorts of things.

Elven Tower Adventures: cartography, full adventures, and fantasy writing.

Inkarnate: fantasy map creation platform.

Obsidian Portal: tool for cataloguing your own world-building with cross-referenced links. Share some pages with players, DMs keep notes in hidden pages.

ProFantasy Software: more cartography and dungeon design, doing it differently than everyone else.

World Anvil: complete array of tools for building characters, creating worlds, and constructing campaigns, plus space to store it all.

Developing Culture

The first thing you'll want to do is develop your society's culture. Many of the below sources recommend this, in order to develop the values of the culture that the gods will govern or to which your people will appeal. Your culture will also inform your population's vocabulary, so it's important to be familiar with their priorities.

An Easy Guide to Crafting Fictional Cultures: the Well-Storied Podcast explores the elements of culture.

Biology, Families, and Dynasties (World Anvil): thoughtful overview of aspects to address.

Creating Cultural Notes for D&D Settings and Characters: how to summarize diverse cultures for quick reference.

Fantasy Calendar: make up your own calendar for your story/campaign.

Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions — Peoples and Customs: foundational questions from an author I've heard of.

Worldbuilding Checklist: Creating Cultures and Religions: a review of how cultures are sourced and influenced.

Worldbuilding: Creating Fictional Cultures: issues to consider when developing a fictional culture.

A Worldbuilding Guide to Crafting Diverse Cultures: questions to help define your fictional society's values.

Creating a Pantheon

8 Tips for Creating a Pantheon for Your Novel: advice for teen writers on creating gods and supernatural creatures.

101 Damnations: Creating a Pantheon: reviewing categories of gods.

Building a Pantheon: How to Choose Your Gods: concepts on the origins and jurisdictions of gods.

Create a D&D 5e Pantheon: great ideas on thinking about how and why to create gods.

Let's Build a Pantheon: basics to consider when constructing a roster of gods.

List of Deities by Classification (Wikipedia): classification of gods by Stith Thompson's Motif-Index of Folk-Literature.

Pantheon (Wikipedia): the most general concept of how gods are formed and why.

Random Godly Domains: roll for your alignment, then roll for what the god's in charge of.

Worldbuilding: Fantasy Religion Design Guide: more ideas for the design, nature, and manners of gods.

Creating a Language

Conlang Wikia: a Discord forum for people who create artificial languages.

Conlanger's Library: vast resources and links for creating a fictional language.

Curlie Constructed Languages: links to more resources on creating your own language.

ConWorkShop: create an account to access tools and resources for building your own language in a society of hobbyists.

Jörg Rhiemeier's Conlang Pages: massive link resource for communities, linguistics, sample languages.

Constructed Language (Wikipedia)

"Machine learning reveals role of culture in shaping meanings of words": earning a huge "no fucking shit" from linguists everywhere.

Calendars

Quark and Dagger Calendar Creation (article): "an informative worldbuilding guide to calendar creation."

Roll for Fantasy Calendar Creator: make up days and months, schedule moons, track weather, and list holidays with descriptions.

d20 SRD Fantasy Calendar Generator: design a complex and attractive calendar with lunar cycles.

Tiki-Toki: custom timeline design

Nerdarchy Worldbuilding: Fantasy Calendars (article): more advice and things to think about when making a calendar.

Town Generators

Oskar Stalberg's City Generator: a plaything that organically develops a living city, but you'll need to screenshot it to use it.

"Let's Design a Medieval Village": describing the components of a European medieval village.

Watabou Medieval Fantasy City Generator: a truly gorgeous application that lets you poke through neighborhoods/districts, all of which are labeled and ready to go.

"Medieval Inn and Tavern": article outlining the role of the tavern in medieval society and all aspects surrounding and involving it.

d20 SRD Random Inn and Tavern Generator: includes location, innkeeper, menu, rumors, etc.

Donjon Random Inn and Tavern Generator: exactly like d20 SRD, but in black-and-white.

Inkwell Ideas Random Inn Floorplan Generator: laid out on a blue square grid and everything.

Donjon Random Town Generator: name, tributary, layout of neighborhoods, and interesting facts.

Kassoon Random Town Generator: size, demographics, surrounding locations, locations of interest.

Fantasy Name Generators Temple Name Generator: quickly produce the name of your town's churches.

Watabou Toy Town Generator: fly through a 3D model of a generated medieval city.

Watabou Village Generator: a tastefully illustrated, bare-bones village with no details.

Name Generators

Behind the Name: select nationalities and genders to create authentic names for people from anywhere, plus their life stories.

Dehumanizer Fantasy Name Generator: choose the flavor of the names you'd like, then modify by length.

Reedsy Fantasy Name Generator: come up with names for your human, elf, or dragon.

Rink Works Fantasy Name Generator: more detail-oriented as you choose the phonetic tendencies of the source language.

Fantasy Name Generators: various generators based on various videogames and MMOs.

Masterpiece Generator: massive name generator for all sorts of purposes.

Medieval Names Archive: resource of historical, regional name trending.

Seventh Sanctum Name Generators: all sorts of specific categories to choose from.

Serendipity: name generators for people and cities.

Story Generators

"42 Fantasy Writing Prompts and Plot Ideas": article by Chelle Stein as she brainstorms story kernels.

"50 Fantasy Writing Prompts and Fantasy Plot Ideas": article by Bryn Donovan listing fantasy story ideas.

Wizards of the Coast Adventure Hook Random Generator: choose from D&D Classic or Faerie Tale story prompts, or a bare-bones outline of an adventure/story.

Warpcore SF Fantasy Plot Generator: enter some parameters and chunk out the rough idea for a story.

Donjon Fantasy Random Generator: creates a substantial list of possible quests.

Orteil's Generic D&D Quest Generator: somewhat janky but serviceable adventure premise generator.

RanGen Plot Generator: produces the synopsis for a story idea for a fantasy adventure.

Fantasy Name Generators Quest Description Generator: generates simple quest ideas in a nice storytelling format.

Many-Sided Dice Quick Fantasy Side-Quest Generator: break out your dice and assemble your own results for a side quest.

d20 SRD Random Adventure Generator: exactly like Donjon's but on a parchment background.

Donjon Random Adventure Generator: creates the complete storytelling elements for an entire story, including theme, hook, and climax.

Kassoon Random Plot Hook Generator: provides the basic concept for an adventure, which needs to be fleshed out.

Inkwell Ideas Random Rumor Generator: when you ask enough questions, NPCs may provide hints of an adventure.

Springhole Really Random Plot-o-Tron: a simple, sometimes nonsensical premise generator not unlike Mad Libs.

Character Generators

Fantasy Name Generators Background Description Generator

d20pfsrd Background Generator: Roll your own backgrounds for various fantasy races.

Kassoon Backstory Generator

Springhole Character Motivation Generator

Myth Weavers D&D 3.5 NPC Generator

RanGen Motive Generator

Dungeon Generators

Dizzy Dragon Games Adventure Generator: produces a customizable grid map and room descriptions for 1e AD&D.

Dave's Mapper: enables you to create grid maps that look like they were hand-drawn by an artist of your choice. Options for caverns, cities, sci-fi, &c.

Donjon d20 Random Dungeon Generator: produces grid map, dungeon name and level, features of each room, monsters and treasures.

DunGen Dungeon Generator: creates decorative maps, with no details or features.

Myth Weavers Dungeon Generator: creates grid map with terse descriptions and features of rooms for 3.5e AD&D.

Kassoon Dungeon Map Generator: creates basic map with icons, monsters, descriptions, traps, and treasures for 4e and 5e AD&D.

Secret Geek Random Dungeon Generators: a collection and review of diverse random dungeon generators.

Gozzys Random Dungeon Map Creator: creates decorative maps, with no details or features.

Watabou One-Page Dungeon: produces attractive map, summary of each room and a plot hook.

Wizards of the Coast Random Dungeon Generator: produces grid map, wandering monsters, room descriptions for 3.5e AD&D.

Twitter Accounts

Bad D&D Hooks: true player experiences with unfortunate storytelling.

Bad DM: bot that replicates the DM we love to hate.

Dungeon Junk: it's popular to create bots that create comically useless artifacts.

Elder Scrolls Items: random generator of magical artifacts, useful or not.

Mythology Bot: references Thompson's Motif Index, pulling selections from historical, worldwide mythology.

You Found Loot: random generator of 1e AD&D useless artifacts.

Other Resources

Seems I'm not the first to think of assembling lists of the various aspects of worldbuilding and campaign design.

D&D Compendium: all sorts of gaming, storytelling, and worldbuilding resources.
d20 SRD: robust support and generators for all aspects of fantasy role-playing.
Donjon: an astonishing array of generators and tools.
Inkwell Ideas: RPG software and accessories.
Kassoon: articles, adventures, and RPG tools.
Master the Dungeon: massive resources for supporting Dungeon Masters.
NPC Base: create NPCs, cave maps, random magic items, or tavern names.
Roll20: play online, networked RPGs with friends or randos.
Watabou: beautiful, well-done fantasy map generators (and online experiments).

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