The market map generator draws a town square on market day, on five-foot squares. A cobbled square is closed in by buildings on all four sides, with streets running out of the gaps on the left, the right and the bottom. The town hall faces the square from the top, up a short flight of steps behind a row of columns. A guildhall and an inn stand on the sides, each with its sign hanging out over the square. In the middle is a fountain or a statue of the town's founder, with a clear ring of cobbles around it. Rows of market stalls under striped awnings fill the rest, with aisles between them and goods laid out along the front of each counter. A notice board, a well and a pillory are placed where they fit, a carter's wagon waits in the bottom street, and the crowd is scattered through the aisles. Every landmark is numbered and keyed.
How the square is laid out
The buildings come first: the town hall across the top, then rows of houses down the sides and along the bottom, broken where the streets come in. Two of the houses facing the square become the guildhall and the inn. The centrepiece goes in the middle with room to walk around it. Then the stalls are laid out in rows across the square, skipping a few at random so the market isn't a perfect grid, and keeping clear of the centrepiece and the town hall steps. The props go in the remaining gaps, and the crowd goes wherever there's floor.
Every stall is drawn the same way a real one works: a striped awning over a counter, with the goods at the front where buyers can reach them. Between twenty and thirty of them fill the square, enough to hide behind and get lost among.
What happens on market day
A market is a crowd scene, and the map is built for crowds. A pickpocket works the aisles and the chase goes between the stalls, under the awnings and out through one of the streets. A meeting at the fountain is in plain sight, which is either the point or the problem. The notice board carries the bounties and the rumours, the town hall is where the mayor makes speeches, and the pillory is where the town shows what it does to people who cause trouble. The inn on the corner is where everyone goes afterwards.
Free SVG and PNG downloads
Both formats are free for your games, streams and published adventures. The PNG is a 1920-pixel render ready for Roll20, Foundry or Owlbear Rodeo, and the Print button gives you a black-and-white sheet for the table. The SVG is the vector original: open it in Inkscape, Affinity or Figma to move stalls, clear the square for a festival or name the shops. 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 square at battle-map scale. It doesn't draw the whole town, the inside of the buildings or the stallholders' wares in detail. For the town around it, roll a city or village map; for the inn, a tavern map; for a single shop, the shop map generator.
Name the town, then go shopping
The town name generator and the city name generator name the place, the shop name generator names the stalls, and the guild name generator names whoever runs the guildhall.