The mountain map generator draws a mountain pass on five-foot squares, for the fight that happens halfway up. A trail climbs from one edge of the sheet to the other, threading between raised rock with a shadowed cliff face along its edge and snow on the highest ground. A chasm cuts across the sheet the other way, and where the trail meets it there's a rope bridge. Somewhere in the rock face there's a cave mouth, below the cliffs there's a slope of loose scree, and a cairn beside the trail marks the way for whoever comes next. Pines grow on the lower ground. Every landmark is numbered and keyed.
How the pass is drawn
The rock comes first. A noise field decides how high the ground is across the sheet, and everything above a certain height becomes a raised shelf of grey stone with a cliff edge traced around it. A second, higher cut picks out the ridges, and the very top of the field is snow. Because the edges are traced through the field rather than along the grid, the cliffs bend and bulge like real rock instead of stepping in squares.
Then the trail and the chasm are laid across each other. The trail runs edge to edge in one direction and the chasm in the other, so they always meet; the bridge goes at the point where they're closest. If the trail crosses the high rock on its way, that stretch is keyed as a narrow ledge. The cave is placed at the foot of a cliff, facing down the slope, and kept away from the trail so the party has to decide to go and look. Pines, boulders and the scree fill in last, on the lower ground where they'd actually grow and fall.
Terrain that does the work
A mountain fight is a terrain fight. The cliffs are a drop and a climb: a creature shoved off the shelf takes falling damage, and getting back up costs an Athletics check and a turn. The scree is difficult terrain that slides underfoot. The chasm is a hard stop, so the rope bridge is the only way across, which makes it the obvious place for an ambush or for someone to start cutting ropes. The narrow ledge is a single file with nowhere to step aside. The cave mouth is somewhere to shelter from weather, or the lair of whatever made the bones near the cairn.
Using it at the table
It suits a journey through the mountains, an ambush on the road to a dwarven hold, a chase across the bridge, or a giant's hunting ground. It works with D&D 5e, Pathfinder and any other fantasy game on a grid. Roll several in a row for a long climb; the trail always runs edge to edge, so the sheets chain together into one route.
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 the bridge, add a second cave or cover the whole thing in snow. All of it 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 stretch of one pass, at battle-map scale. It doesn't draw a whole mountain range, the inside of the cave, or the dwarven hold at the top. For a range on a regional map, roll a fantasy map or a hex map; for the cave, a cave map; for the mine the dwarves dug into the mountain, a mine map.
Name the mountain, then climb it
The mountain name generator names the peak and writes its history, and draws this same pass beside its result with the generated name on the sheet. The dwarf name generator names whoever guards the pass, and the giant name generator names whatever lives above the snow line.