You could try a diamond square algorithm or perlin noise to generate something like a height map. Then, assign ranges values to what shows up on the map. If your "height" goes from 0 to 100, then make 0 - 20 water, 20 - 30 beach, 30 - 80 grass, 80 - 100 mountains. I think notch did something similar to this in minicraft, but I'm not an expert, I'm just in a diamond square mindset after finally getting it working.
