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Filroden's World Map Builder is a system-agnostic cartography tool. It generates terrain, moisture and temperatures using a procedural, deterministic model so using the same "seed" will generate the same model. It then calculates appropriate biomes taking into account the latitude and underlying models including wind patterns. You can scale and offset the result to frame a map that is close to your idea so that you can apply the final edits to the world using non-destructive vector brushes, then place terrain features, infrastructure, regions, etc.
Maps are saved in Journals and stored in a Journal Compendium. The procedural plus non-destructive brush approach means the resulting saved journal is very compact in size.
- Advanced Procedural Generation: The underlying engine calculates authentic topography using layered noise and geological stretch parameters. It dynamically simulates climate by mapping global temperature gradients and tracking geographical orographic lift (rain shadows) to accurately determine Whittaker biomes.
- Four procedural terrain models: Choose from standard, flat, advanced (tectonic) or guided procedural terrain models. Each provide different benefits.
- Dynamic Hydrology Systems: Rivers are carved procedurally using greedy downhill algorithms, naturally pooling into lakes until they overflow their basins, and freezing intelligently based on altitude and regional climate thresholds. Additional river sources can be placed manually, and procedurally generated sources can be removed.
- Non-Destructive Vector Brush Engine: Edit the terrain (raising, lowering, and smoothing) or paint custom biomes with a responsive freehand brush tool. Under the hood, edits are saved as a spatial vector history rather than static pixels, preserving your exact strokes for future map scaling and regional zooming.
- Vector Information Layers: You can add infrastructure (points of interest, routes, etc), regional polygons, labels and cartographic decorations to any map, fine-tuning their placement, size and style.
- Easy Regional Map Creation: Once your master world map is created you can generate regional maps that faithfully match the original but at much higher resolution. Because of procedural generation, this provides almost infinite ability to "zoom in" and create larger and larger scale maps (from World to almost street level). There are limits, so the more you increase map scale, the flatter the map will become.
- Export to Scene: All features (and entire layers) can be set to be visible to players, GMs or no-one. When you export the map to create a new Foundry Scene, it will export the player visible elements to the background image and place a map tile over it containing the GM-only features. A Scene Journal is also created which contains any feature names and descriptions and each feature is linked from the map to the journal using map pins.
- Export to PNG: If you want to save the map for external use, you can also export the current visible features to a PNG file.
- Interactive 3D Visualisation: View your 2D cartography in an interactive 3D web view. The biome map is draped over your custom topography, complete with topographical river vectors, ocean planes, and dynamic lighting. This feature is purely visual and included for fun. It will not update to any changes made until it is toggled again.
- Compendium Integration: Maps are saved directly to a dedicated compendium. Each save automatically generates a readable journal showing your parameters. The application UI contains map management tools which let you to load, duplicate, rename, or export your worlds as shareable JSON files.
New to the module? Start with Getting Started — a walkthrough of a full mapping session from a blank canvas to an exported scene, with tips along the way.
Looking for how a specific part of the interface works? These pages are organised the same way the toolbar is:
- Map Canvas — the main view: panning, zooming, undo/redo, and the map controls.
- Creating and Managing Maps — starting a new map, choosing a generation engine, and extracting regional maps from an existing one.
- Map Making Tools — the editing tools for Terrain, Biomes, Terrain Features, Infrastructure, Regions, Labels and Cartography, each with its own page.
- Mass Edit Visual Properties — batch-editing the style of multiple features at once.
- Module Settings — 3D View, reference images, and the map's own hydrology/climate/visual defaults.
- Style Library — your custom biomes, Quick Styles, and pin icons, plus exporting and importing them to share with other GMs.
- Map Management Tools — exporting to PNG or a Foundry Scene, saving, and loading existing maps.
- FAQ — common questions, plus a note on performance at larger map resolutions.