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World Terrain Generator

by E.T.Smith
1 Rocky 2 Vegetation 3 Fluid
1 Jagged Peaks 1 Thick Scrubland 1 Coastal Tide Pools
2 Scattered Chasms 2 Shadowed Forest 2 Scattered Archipelago
3 Bare Plain 3 Mossy Carpet 3 Entrapping Mudflats
4 Gaping Caverns 4 Tangling Vines 4 Reefs & Atolls
5 Towering Plateaus 5 Flowing Molds 5 Stagnant Swamps
6 Jumbled Boulders 6 Waving Grassland 6 Grand River
7 Rolling Hills 7 Bulbous Fungi 7 Frequent Lakes
8 Yawning Canyon 8 Hardy Cacti 8 Gushing Springs

4 Desolate 5 Crystalline 6 Volcanic

1 Shifting Dunes 1 Forest of Shards 1 Smoke Shrouded Plain

2 Cinder & Shard Drifts 2 Faceted Mountains 2 Quaking Hills

3 Dry Mud Flats 3 Giant Gem Columns 3 Steaming Geysers

4 Wind-Worn Bluffs 4 Mounds of Glassy Stones 4 Volcanic Craters

5 Sweeping Sandstone 5 Smooth Glazed Plain 5 Boiling Mud Pits

6 Salty Plain 6 Frozen Waveforms 6 Glowing Lava Flow

7 Sea of Dust 7 Cubic Boulders 7 Billowing Ashfields

8 Jagged Spires 8 Fractal Branching Tunnels 8 Sulphurous Vents


What This is And How It Works

​ process of ​Stars Without Number gives a wonderful wealth of information to work with, but without further prompts my
The world generation
adventure locales tended to be like old science fiction TV: everywhere looked like Southern California. So I threw this generator together to
prompt some variety in the landscape.

To use, throw 1d6 & 1d8 to get a result. I usually throw twice for two terrain tags per world, and have some fun extrapolating how those
terrains interact between themselves and the other world data. I’ve tried to keep the tags environment-neutral (thus “Fluid” rather than just
“Water’) but some contradictions and overlaps are inevitable. As is the sandbox way, either take the opportunity to get creative, or just re-roll.

Obviously this generator doesn’t produce full details of a planetary surface. It’s just intended to invoke the world’s most dominant and/or
interesting terrain, or at least that which characters are most likely to interact with. I’m aiming for just a couple steps above “Ice
World”/“Jungle World” broad strokes, not full geological comprehensiveness.

Example Alpha
Rolling up a world gives: ​Thin Atmosphere, Temperate, Miscible Biosphere, Hundreds ​ of Thousands of Inhabitants, Tech Level 3, and World
​ ​
Tags of ​Local Specialty and ​Hostile Space. Throwing for terrain tags gets​ 3,7 ​Frequent Lakes and 1,6 ​Jumbled Boulders. Given the thin
atmosphere, this can be interpreted as a dry chaotic surface (the boulders) covering a rich subterranean network of natural reservoirs. This
​ could tie in nicely with the ​Local Specialty, as a mineral or lifeform harvested from the lakes that of course requires risk-taking individuals to
swim through the pitch-black predator-prowled labyrinthine networks.

Example Beta
Breathable Atmosphere, Cold, Immiscible Biosphere, ​ Tens of Thousands of Inhabitants, Tech Level 4, and World Tags of ​Seagoing Cities

and ​Abandoned ​
Colony. Adding terrain tags gets 4,6 ​Salty Plain and 3,4 ​Reefs & Atolls. The image that leaps to mind is a waterworld of
exclusively shallow seas, dense with stony native coral. The closest thing to solid land are sandbanks accumulated from the eroded coral
salts, vast but impossible to grow anything on and prone to shifting during storms.

Example Gamma
Breathable Atmosphere, Warm, No ​ Native Biosphere, Millions of
​ Inhabitants, Tech​ Level 4 and World Tags of ​Civil War and ​Freak Geology,

then terrain tags of 6,3 ​Steaming Geysers and 2,5 ​Flowing Molds. With no biosphere, molds are unavailable, so that result is re-rolled,

getting 5,4 ​Mounds of Glassy Stones. With ​Freak Geology, there’s lots of wild interpretations possible. Are the glassy stones naturally
piezoelectric, or even psychically charged? Or maybe the geysers spout raw radioactive mercury. Maybe all of the above, pity the natives.

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