Worldspinner: Fantasy RPG Worldbuilder & Map Maker

[Johnny Au]

See here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...r-and-map-make

It is a Kickstarter project that would allow for the creation of a randomly generated map, the placement of races, and it automatically generates a story.

Worldspinner makes it easy to create richly detailed maps of your own fantasy world in minutes.

Spin a World. Make a Map. Find Adventure.

"Worldspinner is the online worldbuilding tool that gamers and authors have been waiting for. It will give your world a solid foundation upon which your own imagination has limitless room to expand." - Philip Athans, best-selling author of Annihilation and The Guide to Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction
Worldspinner makes it easy to create your own richly detailed fantasy world in minutes, including continents, mountain ranges, cultures, kingdoms, cities, and more. Then, delve as deeply as you like into customizing your world. You can create beautiful maps without spending hours with paint tools, and without needing to be an artist.
Worldspinner is a tool, not a game. It doesn’t replace your creativity, but multiplies it. It is hosted online, so you don’t need to download anything and it is available anywhere. The technology is almost complete; the maps and screenshots you see below are all real examples from the working system.

"Worldspinner is going to be huge for everyone who loves creating fantasy worlds." - Wolfgang Baur, Publisher, Kobold Press and author of Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding
You can quickly create a world by selecting from a list of themes and letting Worldspinner figure out the details, or you can carefully control the world creation steps yourself.
Create the physical world. Every world is approximately the size of the Earth, and has its own topography: continents, islands, mountain ranges, oceans, lakes, and rivers. Geophysical processes are used to model climate and biomes, so forests, deserts, tundras, and other biomes end up where they make sense.
Populate your world and watch history unfold. You choose which cultures you want in your world: Celtic, Persian, Dwarf, or a dozen others? If you’re particularly fond of one, you can even order physical coins for it (courtesy of our partners: Fantasy Coins LLC and Conquistador Games). Then watch as a history simulator fills in the backstory of your world, charting the rise and fall of nations, and populating the map with cities.
Cities & Points of Interest. Each city is automatically named based on its culture. You'll never again have to say “that city to the West” if you aren’t feeling inspired at the moment, or lose track of the name of that little market town that’s on the road to the capital. The world also contains points of interest such as "dragon's lair" or “King Aethelwulf’s Tomb.” You can influence which things show up by choosing the themes you want to highlight in your campaign.
Explore your world and make it yours. Worldspinner creates an entire world with incredible detail, and no two are the same. Explore your world to make sure it aligns with your vision and imagination. You can move, delete, rename or create new points of interest and cities. It’s your world, after all, and you have the final say.

What do you think?

[Corilliant]

Uh...this puts us out of a job

I'm joking! But this is looks like excellent upcoming software. And the scary thing is, in-between when I first looked at the kickstarted and when I refreshed the page, your pledges went up by about $200...
I'm very impressed; how long did this take your team?

[Chashio]

That sounds like an amazing bit of software. Very interesting. I'm especially intrigued by the history-building aspect. Though I do wonder how much overlap of original story content would happen within one world and also between different worlds. Would there be dedicated writers and artists adding much new content to it over time or would it be just whatever is in it when it launches? Seeing as it's being presented as an online tool, I'm guessing the former... I'd hope for the former. But anyway, pretty cool stuff.

[Johnny Au]

Hahaha.

I am not the creator of the Kickstarter project. I live in Toronto, not Seattle.

By the way, I did not pledge yet.

Oh, and it reached its goal of $10,000 already.

Perhaps the Cartographers' Guild admins can put this up on the front page. It looks too interesting for those here.

If any of you pledged, you should tell the people behind Worldspinner in Kickstarter about the Cartographers' Guild as well.

They have plans to have steampunk and sci-fi themes as stretch goals.

[Johnny Au]

Here is what a generated map looks like (it may seem huge, but it is actually scaled down from 12,000 pixels wide)

Right-click and view image to see the image at 4000 pixels wide.

[The_Listener]

Okay so this actually looks kinda cool. I'm excited to see how the culture/language systems play out. But I also agree with other people on this thread, they must have some sort of frequently updated new content to keep the maps/lore/ideas fresh. Otherwise concepts would eventually overlap.

[Chashio]

Thanks for posting an example for us. I could nitpick a few small details which caught my eye but, considering what it is, it is quite impressive.

[Johnny Au]

This would be the thing people in the guild will be talking about years to come. A website that randomly generates a map that is hand-drawn in style, custom placement of races/cultures/kingdoms, automatic generation of towns and roads, and even automatic generation of lore and changes to the map. Worldspinner is this.

Registered members can have up to five worlds per account.


Printed maps can generate fun discussions with regards to the automatically-generated stories.


Automatically-generated political map


Automatically-generated aged parchment map

If enough funds are raised, then there would be plans to allow members to create an entire custom culture (and story elements) that can be randomly generated, as well as an option to have the map printed on cloth (vellum is too expensive).

As of this post, it raised over $20,000, which is more than twice its initial goal of $10,000.

I am curious to know if you pledged or are planning to do so.

[Johnny Au]

Worldspinner confirms the ability to print off square and hex grids on the maps to facilitate travel with miniatures.

[Johnny Au]

Read here about themes: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects.../posts/1012868

It looks very interesting.