What's a good way to generate random clusters and paths?

Question

I\'m toying around with writing a random map generator, and am not quite sure how to randomly generate realistic landscapes. I\'m working with these sorts of local-scale map

Answer 1

To expand on academicRobot's comments, you could start with a default marsh or forest seed in some of the grid cells and let them grow from the source using a correlated random number. For instance a bog might have eight adjacent grid cells each of which has a 90% probability of also being a bog, but a 10% probability of being something else. You can let the ecosytem form from the seed and adjust the correlation until you get something that looks right. Probably pretty easy to implement even in a spreadsheet.