Folks,

I was checking out a video and the website World Anvil was being promoted.  Would anyone care to share their experience over at World Anvil with me (us)?

I have been worldbuilding by writing word documents on elements of the world including general lore, government, clergy behavior, economy notes, ... and making maps.  I was curious if there were some special tools there that you have found helpful.

World Anvil does an excellent job at presenting your world in a very good way. Interactive maps, aritcles on the gods, regions, races and geography to name a few and a presentation that doesn't bore the eyes. The problem with it though is that it is a presentation, so who are you presenting it to? I've made a page for my world but my players don't care to look at it, so it is really only something I use. And between World Anvil or OneNote to keep track of all my world building, I go with OneNote because there is a free online version and I've never found myself wishing I was on World Anvil after trying it. If my players cared enough to research the world, then sure World Anvil has increased use, but if it's just me then there is little point.

I use it. I love it.

Of my 4 players, I suspect 2 of them use it a lot, 1 a little, and 1 hardly at all. Which is fine.

WA is very good at helping organize things. But you do need to pay for the higher tiers to get some of the best features. I live without some of those.

If you want to see what an ongoing campaign site can look like in WA, here is my world's example. I'm way behind on things like the Bestiary but most of the other stuff is up to date. I primarily add it as they encounter it. So for example, I only detail one of the gods when they find a temple or encounter a follower of that god.

I find WA to have a very confusing and non-intuitive interface. And I really want to like it, I think the creators are doing a good job in providing an elaborate tool. So I've spent ages trying to get a character to become a hero and then be a member of a party, but all i got was extremely frustrated by my lack of understanding of the creators thought process. The site needs a ton of explanatory articles and videos too, which is another indicator of its non-intuitiveness. I really hope there will be a major UI and UX update to make things more understandable for simple people like me.

So... I do not have my players make up their characters in WA and insert them into the campaign. I don't use the "campaign" features at all -- just the world-building ones. It's great at auto-indexing stuff for you and making it easy to cross-link articles.

There is a learning curve, but I have found it worth it. This, of course, is just me. Not everyone will feel the same way.

I thought it was really cool and set up a page... and then I just never used it again and went back to my terrible Google docs. Maybe it was just me, but it didn't hold my interest. Maybe part of it was the interface as Joah mentioned.

I have recently learned that the campaign features, especially Heroes, are really aimed at players more than at the DM. I think BioWizard makes a valid point here. To keep things simple i will try and use the world building features only, until i understand it better. Again, i really do like the completeness of it all, as well as the charming team behind the service.

For my needs it's a little too indepth. LegendKeeper is a viable alternative although the development pace is slower than a snails pace.

I find that it is too easy to get caught up in irrelevant details due to the way it’s designed. Kanka is way better imo 

I find LegendKeeper to be a lot easier to use than WA.   

Since joining WA in early 2020 I have dumped about 30 years of Homebrew into it (a gobsmackingly titanic chore) and found creating the wiki incredibly satisfying.  I am also no good with web design or CSS so I enjoyed how I could make the site look cool with little effort.  The interactive maps were the real reason I jumped into it and have gotten some good use out of them.  I love linking from a map to an article or another, more detailed map. Most of my players don't really use World Anvil but a few (I run multiple campaigns) are REALLY into it.  It even inspired one of my old mates to start running a game again.  One of my other players wanted editorial privileges because he wanted to write his own articles.  So that part was awesome.

I do have issues with the campaign features.  I've found its hard to sell my players on joining another site (past DnD Beyond, Discord, and Roll 20), creating and managing a character, inserting it into the campaign... its a little chunky and clunky for most of them.  I also don't like how you can't integrate the easy CSS options into the campaign mode.  It means that you can't make it look as cool as the regular wiki features.  I think if I could get the campaign modes to look nicer it might entice my players over.

I went ahead and signed up for it sometime after I started this post hoping it would give me another level of utility.  It certainly is capable of making the content better looking and has tools to link everything together, but ...

You still have to do all the work.

Until I have enough of my setting fleshed out that it would deserve this extra "zing" I'm not sure I'm paying for something I really need.  But it doesn't cost me too terribly much and I want to support those folks making real contributions to the hobby, so I'm going to stick with it for a while more.

Concerning your group(s) Knightmare13, maybe your players could stick with running the game with D&D Beyond and Roll 20, but keep the WA page open to refer to during the game.  I sure wish I was that far along.  I would love for my players to write up their own account of what happened during each session.  It is real fun as we start a session when I ask, "OK, what happened last time we got together?"  I want to hear it from their point of view.

Quote from MusicScout >>

Concerning your group(s) Knightmare13, maybe your players could stick with running the game with D&D Beyond and Roll 20, but keep the WA page open to refer to during the game.

 That's exactly how a couple of them use it. They keep their own notes, but the WA search bar is quicker than flipping through pages. It keeps the narrative moving because it cuts down a little of the "What was his name again?" type questions.