Catan Board Generator — FAQ

The best Catan board generator is one that produces balanced random boards by default, lets you toggle adjacency rules independently, ships every board with a permanent share URL, supports the major expansions (5–6 player, Seafarers, Seafarers 5–6), and works on mobile. This site is built around exactly those properties.

Both — the terms are used interchangeably. A Catan map generator and a Catan board generator produce the same thing: a randomised hex layout with terrains, number tokens, ports, and a starting robber position. We use both terms.

Yes — Catan was originally published as The Settlers of Catan, and the layout, terrain types (forest/wood, hills/brick, fields/wheat, pasture/sheep, mountains/ore, desert), number tokens, and ports here all match the official Settlers of Catan rules. This site is an unofficial fan tool.

The generator places random terrains across the hex board, then random number tokens on the non-desert hexes, while honouring whichever balance rules you have enabled. If a placement violates a rule mid-board the generator restarts the attempt; up to 400 attempts are made before falling back to a relaxed pass.

This site adds Seafarers and Seafarers 5–6 modes, deterministic seed-based shareable URLs, server-rendered HTML so previews and AI tools see the board, a dedicated probability table for number tokens, and four toggleable balance rules with explanations. The board itself uses original visuals.

Click the Share button (or copy the URL from the address bar). The seed and rule flags are encoded into the URL itself, so anyone who opens the link sees the exact same map — no account, no database, no expiry.

Yes. The generator is deterministic — given the same seed and the same rule flags, it always produces the same hexes, numbers, ports, and robber position.

Yes. The /board/{seed} URL is permanent and bookmarkable. Bookmark a tournament-favourite layout and load it whenever you want.

They are not stored anywhere — the seed in the URL is enough to regenerate the exact same board on demand. No database, no account, no privacy footprint beyond standard server logs.

Yes. The 5–6 expansion mode produces a 30-hex board (rows of 3-4-5-6-5-4-3) with two deserts, 28 number tokens, and the expansion resource distribution.

Yes — switch to Seafarers mode (3–4 players) for a "Heading for New Shores" inspired layout with a main island, two discovery islands, sea hexes, and gold-field tiles. There's a dedicated 5–6 player Seafarers mode too.

A new terrain introduced by the Seafarers expansion. When the gold field's number is rolled, every player adjacent to it picks any single resource of their choice from the bank — instead of being tied to a fixed resource type.

Cities & Knights uses the same physical board layout as the base game (or 5–6 expansion), so the existing generators work for it. The expansion adds card decks, knight pieces, and metropolises — those don't affect the board layout.

By default yes. The generator enforces the official red-number rule (6s and 8s never share an edge), keeps 2s and 12s apart, and prevents identical numbers from being adjacent. Each rule is independently toggleable.

Open the homepage, leave all four rule toggles in their default (off) state, and click Shuffle. The result is a tournament-grade balanced Catan board.

The 6 and 8 number tokens are printed in red because they roll the most often (5 pips, ~13.9% probability per roll). The official Catan rule is that two red numbers should never share an edge.

Yes — toggle "Allow 6 & 8 touching" in the controls panel. The generator will then permit red-on-red adjacency. Useful for chaotic, high-variance games.

Casual term for boards with relaxed adjacency rules (6/8 touching, same numbers touching, etc.) that produce more variance and decisive openings. The opposite of "tournament balanced".

Yes. Click PNG to download the current board as a 2× resolution PNG, suitable for printing or pinning.

Yes. Click PNG to download a high-resolution image, then print it. The 2× resolution looks good even on full-page A4/Letter prints.

It is built mobile-first. The board scales to fit any viewport, the controls are sized for thumb interaction, and you can install it as a home-screen app via your browser's "Add to Home Screen" option.

No. CATAN® is a registered trademark of CATAN GmbH. This is a free, unofficial fan-made Catan board generator with original placeholder visuals; no copyrighted artwork is reproduced here.

Yes. The generator and all its features are free and unlimited. A small number of subtle ad slots support the site; the generator itself is unaffected.

No account is required. The generator is fully usable without signing up, and we don't store any personal data beyond standard server logs.

Yes. The site is served over HTTPS, no executable downloads are offered, and the generator does not require any browser permissions beyond standard JavaScript. The PNG export uses an in-browser SVG-to-PNG converter — nothing is uploaded to our servers.