The desert map generator draws a stretch of open desert on five-foot squares, the place where a caravan meets trouble. Dune ridges run across the whole sheet in one direction, their shadowed sides showing which way the wind blows. Outcrops of wind-carved rock break up the sand, a caravan track crosses from edge to edge, and on it lies a wrecked wagon with its cargo spilled. Somewhere in the open, the ribs and skull of something enormous are half buried in the sand, and the tops of old columns show where a building once stood. Half of the maps also have an oasis: a pool ringed with green and a few palms. Every point of interest is numbered and keyed.
How the desert is drawn
The dunes come first. They're long curves set side by side across the sheet at one angle, each with a bright crest and a darker lee, so the whole map has a single wind direction. The rock outcrops come from a noise field: the highest ground in it becomes rock, traced with smooth outlines and cross-hatched, with a shadow cast to one side. That gives you a few big formations and some scattered boulders rather than a uniform spread.
The caravan track is laid edge to edge and drawn as worn ruts in the sand. The wreck sits on it, because that's where wagons break down. The giant's bones, the buried columns and the oasis each need open sand and space around them, so they're placed away from the rock and from each other.
Open ground and hard cover
A desert fight is about distance and cover. The sand is open for long shots, and the rock outcrops are the only real cover, so whoever holds them holds the fight. The dunes can hide a creature on their far side, the giant ribs make a strange half-cover cage, and the wreck is a natural barricade. If there's an oasis, everyone wants it, which makes it the obvious place for an encounter to start.
Using it at the table
Use it for a raid on a caravan, a giant scorpion or a sand worm, a duel at the oasis, or a stop at ruins the sand is slowly giving back. It suits any fantasy game on a grid, D&D 5e and Pathfinder included, and works just as well for a sword-and-planet or post-apocalyptic game with the names changed. Decide what the bones belonged to and what the columns were part of, and the map hands you the next adventure.
Free SVG and PNG downloads
Both formats are free for your games, streams and published adventures. The PNG is a 1920-pixel render for a VTT, and the Print button saves a black-and-white version for a home printer. The SVG is the original vector file: open it in Inkscape, Affinity or Figma to move the wreck, add a tent camp or rename the rocks. Everything on the map is drawn by our own code, so there's no attribution to carry and no asset licence to read.
What it won't do
It draws one desert encounter site. It doesn't draw a whole desert region, desert cities, or the ruins under the sand. For the region, roll a hex map; for what's under the columns, a battle map.
Name the desert, then cross it
The desert name generator gives the waste a name and a history, and draws this same map beside its result. For the people of the sands, try the genasi name generator. For other wild places, try the forest map generator and the swamp map generator.