RPG Tools Guide to Fantasy Wilderness

Flower. A giant flower that grows up to 13.8 feet (4.2 meters) tall, with petals that are generally green; each flower tends to be a variation of this colour. 3 to 5 medium-sized flowers grow on alternate sides up the length of the stem. Thin, turquoise leaves alternate on the stem.

A guide to random tools for fantasy wilds with sections for wild areas, details, pdfs and maps.

[Image from Gozzys Wilderness Map Gen. Text from RanGen Plant Generator]

Starting Points

Exploration is a large part of many fantasy rpgs, and the wilderness is a perfect place for it. Pristine forest, ancient mountains, endless savannah. There might be inhabitants in the wilds, but it's not settled lands...

Expect talking trees, wounded animals, land spirits, isolated hamlets, monster lairs, fey realms, overgrown ruins and gargantuan beasts...

On the Todo list is sections by different wilderness types!

Related Guides includes Fantasy Cities and Rural Fantasy

For PDFs try Random Table PDFs for Fantasy Wilderness.

Jun 2024; Added more gens. Started mountain section.

Wilds Tools

A group of dwarven pilgrims travelling to the Kibarak Crags. They are bearing the body of a fallen companion.

From Wilderness Encounters Generator at donjon.

Fantasy Name Generators has a few Description tools for Wilderness, including Animals, Forests, Plant, and Treants.

Wilderness Travel at Kasoon lets you choose your biome/terrain, giving sights, climate, weather, encounter and other details.

Over at Oh My Games Master (OMGM) there is a Landmark Generator with options for many Wilderness areas including arctic, canyon, jungle, lake, volcano and wetland! Also available is the Travel tool, letting you find out what happens for a journey across many types of terrain.

Random PDFs

For events in the wilds, Atelier Clandestin has Wilderness Travel Events with several different tables for weather, npcs, night, resting and more. they also have Bad Things Happen - In the Wilderness.
Inkwell Ideas has Sidequest Decks: Wilderness & Frontier Fantasy, 50+ cards with adventure outlines and encounters.
Grinning Skull Studios has 100 Wilderness Encounters with detailed encounters for the middle of nowhere.
Outdoor Encounter Cards from Philip Reed Games is a deck of 36 cards with encounters and locations on them.
From Raging Swan Press there is Campaign Backdrop: Forest & Woodlands with more titles for Hills & Mountain, Marsh & Swamp and Desert. Each has wilderness dressing, encounters and settlement backdrops.
A Pay What You Want option is Encounter Generator - Wilderness from Never Engine with d100 tables for three levels of danger.

Wilds Details

This low-growing plant has tiny feathery leaves. It reproduces via clusters of orange five-petaled flowers.

From Random Plant Generator at Springhole.net

Wilderness is sprawling and varied, from glaciers to forest canyons to desert dunes and grassy plains.

Filling in the details at donjon there is a quick Wilderness Location generator.

At RanGen you'll find a Plant Generator with simple and detailed options. Plus a Journey Gen to estimate travel times...

The Travel Location Generator from Glumdark gives descriptions such as "Overhead are blue skies and golden sunshine. You're standing in a vast waste, and you can see a long-dried riverbed. There are footprints all over this place. Before you the path becomes faint." for the desert. Aquatic, forest, mountain, plains and swamp locations are also there.

Generator Mix has random images for Insects, Plants, Birds, and Animals to give ideas in the wilderness.

Over at Chaos Gen (my site) there are a number of wilderness generators, of which the most unique is probably Wilds Rumours and Plot Hooks.

Forests

From 100 Interesting Forest Locations at DnD Speak, which also has a table for putting in some Art Installations

Get your Forest Names from Skeddles such as "Blackbrush Pines" and "Sourwood Grove", and find out what is in the forest

Forest Descriptions on Fantasy Name Generators gives lots of details about the forest. And also many names for the creatures inhabiting them.

Glumdark has a lovely Cabin in the Woods to get an ominous place to hangout.

brownies, centaurs, changelings, dryads, elves, ents / treants, fairies, faery courts, firbolgs, goblins, green dragons, nymphs, pixies, satyrs and fauns, selkies, sylphs

Plants and trees are at the heart of forest terrain, for which we have Plant Descriptions from springhole.net, Plant /Tree names at Fantasy Name Generators and Fantasy Plants at Chaos Gen (one of mine).

For maps with a good amount of tree try Gozzy's Wilderness Maps, which have a filter for the amount of foliage shown

Plains and Grassland

Grasslands adventures can cover plains full of sprawling farmlands, steppes of horse nomads, grasslands of vast herds and endless savannah.

There is a dedicated section for plains-themed pdfs in the wilds pdf guide.

At Fantasy Names Generator is the grasslands names generator such as "Stonecarres Steppe" or "Eastern Grasshopper Prairie". An alternative Grassland Names generator at The Story Shack has results such as "Niagamau Gardens" and "Dodown Range".

If you want creatures to fly or have a different appearance here is a pair of wings generator from Springhole.net.

There are also a few grassland / plains specific generators at Chaos Gen (my site)

Mountains and Hills

The Quiet Pinnacle, Worcook Heights, The Gloomy Bluff

...Mountain Names from Fantasy Name Generator. There's also name generators for Volcanoes, Dwarves, Dragons, Giants and Trolls.

Mountains are places of stone and clouds, ice and ancient titans.

Generator Mix will show you a Random Mountain image.

Chaos Gen (my site) has some Mountain and Hill specific generators.

Wilds Maps and Hexcrawls

The best (and really only) Wilderness Map generator with battlemap capabilities is at Gozzys with toggles for streams, foliages, ruins and a path.

If you would like a small settlement Kassoon has a Hamlet Map generator which has options to customise it for supporters. There is also a Hex-based Exploration Map with sliders for towns, dungeons and encounters.

For a different scale HexTML is a map-maker for hex-based wilds. For the random option type "random" in the Search or look under settings where there is a Generate button.

Then Hexroll is another Hex-based wilderness area which creates an entire mapped campaign area. With notes, settlements, dungeons and factions for each hex using dnd creatures.

For something more unusual Unchartered Atlas on Twitter creates wilderness maps with labels every hour.