Free fantasy town generator for D&D / TTRPGs. Enter settlement size and economic prosperity to instantly generate gold-piece purchase limit, total available cash, and counts of common trades (smiths, alchemists, innkeepers, farmers).
Built and maintained by Paul Clark, Redmoon Software · Changes and corrections
Use whenever your party walks into a new town. The "What can we actually buy here?" question is the #1 GM time-sink.
Old D&D supplements gave static tables. This tool is a live calculator that responds to your size, prosperity, and magic settings.
| Trade | Count |
|---|---|
| Farmers | 3000 |
| Innkeepers | 60 |
| Blacksmiths | 30 |
| Carpenters | 25 |
| Bakers | 40 |
| Brewers | 20 |
| Tailors | 25 |
| Healers / clerics | 15 |
| Alchemists | 5 |
| Scribes | 10 |
| Merchants | 25 |
| Guard / soldiers | 200 |
Population sets the base scale. Prosperity (×0.5 / ×1 / ×2) and magic level (×0.5 / ×1 / ×2) both multiply the gold-piece purchase limit; prosperity also scales available cash.
Trade demographics use rough historical fractions of medieval populations: 60% farmers, 1.2% innkeepers, 0.6% blacksmiths, 4% guards. Prosperity scales merchants; magic level scales healers and alchemists.
Use as a starting point for session prep; tweak counts manually for plot-specific NPCs.
Historical medieval demographic estimates, lightly tuned to feel right for D&D-style settings.
Partially. Population scaling is universal; gold-piece limits and trade names are fantasy-coded.
It is the value of the most expensive single item a settlement can readily sell, reflecting how much wealth circulates there. A tiny hamlet might cap at a few gold while a large city can supply items worth thousands.
Prosperity multiplies the purchase limit and the available cash (×0.5 when impoverished, ×2 when wealthy) and scales the number of merchants. The other trades, including the 60% farming share, stay fixed proportions of the population; the magic level is what scales healers and alchemists.
Input
Town (5,000) — standard prosperity — standard magic.
Output
GP limit: 5,000. 30 blacksmiths, 60 innkeepers, 200 guards.
Town size sets the gold-piece purchase ceiling. Trade ratios follow medieval demographic baselines: ~0.6% blacksmiths, ~1.2% innkeepers, ~4% guards.
The size tiers run from a thorp at around 50 people through hamlet at 200, village at 500 and small town at 1,500, upward from there. Those bands come from tabletop convention and align reasonably with pre-industrial settlement patterns.
The number matters because population determines what can exist. A settlement of 200 cannot support a full-time specialist of any kind — everyone farms, and the smith does it part-time. Supporting a dedicated baker, let alone a bookbinder or a jeweller, needs a population large enough to keep them fed, which is the constraint that quietly shapes what a party can buy.
Prosperity and magic level scale what the base population supports — a wealthy trade town sustains services a subsistence village of the same size cannot, and a high-magic setting changes the economics of everything from lighting to agriculture.
What the model does not know is geography, and geography usually dominates. A settlement of 500 on a trade route at a river crossing has markets, inns and news that a settlement of 5,000 in an isolated valley does not. Treat the output as a floor for what plausibly exists, then add whatever the location argues for.
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