What is Watabou's Procgen Arcana?
Watabou's Procgen Arcana is a free collection of browser-based procedural map generators made by developer Oleg Dolya. It creates fantasy cities, villages, one-page dungeons, caves, dwellings and whole regions in seconds, and is widely used by tabletop RPG game masters, worldbuilders and writers who need ready-to-use maps with PNG, SVG and JSON export.
Drawing a city or dungeon by hand can eat a whole prep session. Watabou's Procgen Arcana generators use procedural algorithms, not image AI, to build a new map every time you press Enter, and you can tweak styles, tags and labels through a right-click menu. Because the output is vector or data as well as images, maps can be edited further or loaded into the companion 3D City Viewer.
Main Features
- Medieval Fantasy City Generator builds city layouts of adjustable size with walls, districts and streets.
- Village Generator and Neighbourhood Generator produce smaller settlements and street blocks.
- One Page Dungeon creates a dungeon map with room notes, using tags such as compact, winding or multi-level.
- Cave/Glade, Dwellings and Perilous Shores generators cover caves, multi-storey house plans and whole fantasy regions.
- Maps export as PNG and SVG, and several generators also export JSON; One Page Dungeon adds Markdown room descriptions.
- Style presets, color-blind friendly palettes and high-contrast options change how maps look.
- City Viewer displays cities made in the city and village generators in 3D.
- Everything runs in the browser on desktop or touchscreen with no install.
How to Get Started with Watabou's Procgen Arcana
- Open watabou.github.io and choose a generator such as City, Village or Dungeon.
- Press Enter to generate a new map until you find a layout you like.
- Right-click the map to change style, size, tags and labels.
- Export the result as PNG, SVG or JSON for your game or document.
Watabou's Procgen Arcana Pricing
All generators are free to use in the browser. The creator accepts optional support through Patreon and itch.io, but no features are locked behind payment.
Who Should Use It?
- Dungeon Masters preparing towns and dungeons for a session
- Fantasy writers mapping settings for a story
- Indie game developers prototyping level or world layouts
- Worldbuilders designing regions and settlements
- Teachers illustrating medieval town structure
Watabou's Procgen Arcana Alternatives
- Leonardo AI: generates painted map art from prompts, not editable layouts
- Canva AI: better for laying out handouts and posters around a map
- Stable Diffusion XL: open-source image model, needs prompting and setup
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Watabou free?
Yes. Every generator runs free in your browser with no account. The developer, Oleg Dolya, accepts optional support through Patreon and itch.io, but you do not need to pay to generate or export maps.
Can I export Watabou maps?
Yes. The city and dungeon generators export PNG images and SVG vector files, and JSON data is available too. One Page Dungeon can also export Markdown room descriptions, and city JSON can be opened in the 3D City Viewer.
Is Watabou an AI image generator?
No. Watabou's Procgen Arcana uses procedural generation, meaning algorithms build each map from rules and random seeds rather than a trained image model. That keeps output consistent, editable and reproducible from a seed.