Buy It, Build It, or Steal One Island: How to Actually Get a Campaign World
You have two paths to a campaign world. You can take one someone already built, or you can generate your own from scratch. Both work. Both have trade-offs. And honestly, neither one is the method I actually ended up using on its own.
Let's walk through both, then I'll show you the third option, the one that got me from "I have no idea where this campaign is set" to "here's an island with a name, five capital cities, and a reason for the players to care" in an afternoon.
Option 1: Where do you buy a finished campaign world?
DMs Guild is where the cheap finished settings live. As of August 2026 a fully developed world runs about $5 through pay-what-you-want pricing, and Raging Swan Press gives regional maps away for nothing. You get lore, factions and a map that already agree with each other, tonight, with no building required.
If you don't want to build anything, there are solid pay-what-you-want settings out there for around $5, plus free options if you know where to look.
1. Iskandar City Sourcebook by MT Black
Cost: about $5 | Scope: One city, plus a lot of world
Roughly $5, with free additional material available on his website. It's focused on the city of Iskandar rather than the world, but it gives you a lot of worldbuilding info and inspiration.
MT Black's Iskandar Player's Handbook is a different product — that one is a rules replacement, and it turned up in the free game system roundup. This is the setting half.
Find it here.
2. Fateforge 4 — Lore Book & Toolbox: Encyclopedia by Studio Agate
Cost: PWYC (I choose $5) | Scope: 360 pages, whole world
Pay-what-you-want, so I choose $5, with a mind-blowingly rich world fully developed with lands, power groups, histories, customs etc. Very pretty and stuffed with information in its 360 pages.
Same publisher as the Fateforge corebook from that same roundup. The corebook is the rules; this is the world.
Find it here.
3. Raging Swan Press free areas
Cost: Free | Scope: Regional, not a complete setting
The Lonely Coast, Picaroon Peninsula and Citadel on the Wilderlands maps are the free route. These are the maps of areas of this world with some basic info about cities and villages, but they are not 'complete' campaign worlds in any sense. However they may entice you to purchase some more complete offerings.
Find them here.
The verdict: this path is for time-starved DMs who want something finished tonight. If your session is this weekend and you need lore, factions, and a map that already makes sense together, buying a setting solves that problem instantly.
Option 2: Can you generate a campaign world for free?
Yes, and the free generators are genuinely impressive. Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator builds an entire world in a browser — geography, cultures, states, religions. Watabou's Perilous Shores does islands and coastlines faster and more stylized. Both are free as of August 2026. Neither of them will tell you why any of it matters.
If you'd rather build something that's entirely yours, there are free generators that do a genuinely impressive amount of the heavy lifting.
1. Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator
Cost: Free | Scope: An entire world
Free and browser-based. Click a button and it procedurally generates an entire world: geography, cultures, states, religions, the works. It's the kind of tool that makes you feel like you cheated.
Find it here.
2. Watabou's Perilous Shores
Cost: Free | Scope: An island or a stretch of coast
Available on itch.io, also free, and leans faster and more stylized. It can create a land or island, and there's also a village, city, neighbourhood and dungeon generator, each one built for quick, usable output rather than sprawling world-scale detail.
Find it here.
Here's the honest limitation, though: generators give you shape, not meaning. You can create a cool map of a land, a country or a world, but they will not tell you why any of them are interesting, why your players should care about the war between two of them, or what secret is buried under the capital. That part is still on you.
So, as you'd expect, the free path can actually take more prep time than just buying a finished setting, because you're doing the creative labour a paid book already did for you.
Option 3: The one I actually used — buy a seed, steal one island
You don't have to pick a lane. Buy a seed, then expand it yourself using the free tools. I picked up the Iskandar City Sourcebook, went to the website, found the maps of the islands there, and expanded one of them. That is the whole method, and it cost $5.
Here's what that looked like for me:
- Built out naming conventions for the five little kingdoms on that island.
- Roughed out borders based on the location of the five capital cities supplied.
- Started with a free adventure mentioning a single starter village in one of the little kingdoms.
- Used free material and preview material to provide detail around each capital city.
The island maps are on MT Black's Iskandar page.
This is the part that makes the whole method worth it. You get the scaffolding and internal logic of a professionally written setting, but you're only committing to the sliver of it your table will actually see. Everything else gets built by you, for free, exactly to spec over time.
You don't buy more than you need.
You don't need to spend hours and hours taking a geography and history lesson written over thirty years.
If you want the tool I use to keep all of that findable mid-session, that's Fantasy Grounds, which went free in November 2025.
So which path is right for you?
Pick by whatever you are shortest of. Short on time, buy the setting. Short on money but rich in free evenings, generate your own. Want a professional world's credibility without committing to run all of it, buy the smallest piece that gives you a foundation and build outward from there yourself.
| Path | Cost | What you get | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Buy a finished setting | ~$5 PWYW | Lore, factions and a map that already agree with each other | A session this weekend and no prep time |
| Generate your own | $0 | Geography, cultures and states in seconds, all of it yours | DMs who love worldbuilding for its own sake |
| Buy a seed, steal one island | ~$5 | Professional scaffolding, plus only the detail your table will see | A long campaign built a piece at a time |
If you need something finished tonight, buy the setting. If you love worldbuilding for its own sake and have the time, generate your own from nothing. And if you want the credibility of a well-constructed world without committing to running all of it, don't buy a whole world just to steal one island. Buy the smallest piece that gives you a foundation, then build everything else on top of it yourself.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does a D&D campaign setting cost?
About $5 if you use pay-what-you-want pricing on DMs Guild. The Iskandar City Sourcebook is roughly $5 and the Fateforge Encyclopedia is pay-what-you-want. Raging Swan Press gives regional maps away free. The world our campaign runs in cost $5 in total, and that was one purchase.
What is the best free fantasy map generator?
Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator for a whole world — it produces geography, cultures, states and religions in a browser at no cost. Watabou's Perilous Shores for an island or a coastline, faster and more stylized. Both are free as of August 2026, and they solve genuinely different problems.
Is it cheaper to build your own campaign world or buy one?
Building your own costs nothing in money and considerably more in time. Generators give you shape, not meaning, so you still have to invent why any of it matters. A $5 pay-what-you-want setting has already done that creative labour, which is why the free path can end up more expensive in prep hours.
Can you use just one part of a published campaign setting?
Yes, and it's the method I'd recommend. Buy the smallest piece that gives you a foundation — one city sourcebook, one island — then expand it with free tools. You get a professional setting's internal logic while only committing to the sliver your table will actually see.
Do you need to read a whole setting book before you can run it?
No, and that's the main argument for stealing one island instead of buying a world. You don't need hours and hours of geography and history written over thirty years to start a campaign. Read the piece your players will touch, then build outward as the table gives you reasons to.
The Receipt
Here's what this actually costs, laid out honestly:
- Free path (Azgaar + Watabou, build it yourself): $0
- Paid seed (Iskandar City Sourcebook or a similar PWYW setting): about $5
- What I actually spent building our world: $5
One island, one small pay-what-you-want purchase, and a stack of free tools to do the rest.
Next up: Customizing a published adventure
The published adventure is a parts bin, not a script, and there's a whole method to taking one apart. I'll walk through how I strip a free module down to the pieces worth keeping and rebuild the rest around my table.
Roll high, spend low.
— The Two Dollar DM
Resources Mentioned
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