About Dunier

Dunier (pronounced /ˈdu.ni.ər/) is a tool to help authors, gamemasters, and conlangers construct realistic fictional worlds in which their creations can thrive. It takes a random seed and several parameters and produces a stylized map, a historical timeline, and info sheets on each of the countries and languages. While no computer program can replace the joy and creativity of the entire worldbuilding process, Dunier can handle the parts that not all humans feel able or motivated to do.

Dunier is inspired by previous fantasy map generators like Azgaar's one, but has more of an emphasis on realism. It is not as interactive as some generators, and it does not generate as many fine details like mine locations and diplomatic relations. It does, however, account for several features missing in other generators that are noticeable on the macroscopic scale, such as planetary curvature, plate tectonics, and linguistic drift.

More detail about Dunier's algorithms can be found in the article "Dunier: a fantasy world generator", and the Dunier source code can be found in the GitHub repository.

Credits

Dunier is made by Justin Kunimune, a Wikipedia editor and linguistics enthusiast. It is heavily inspired by Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator. It makes use of Vladimir Agaforkin's Tinyqueue, Stefan Haack's Bootstrap Input Spinner, and Axel Rauschmayer's Enumify, as well as Plotly and Bootstrap.

License

Dunier itself is marked as dedicated to the public domain via the CC0 1.0 Universal license. Maps generated using Dunier are in the public domain because they are created by a computer algorithm and don't contain enough human authorship for a copyright claim. Thus, you may copy, modify, and distribute both – even for commercial purposes – without asking permission.