Homebrew gets complicated. Lots of things to keep track of, lots of cities and countries, factions and so forth. I've been organizing my games and personal writing stories in OneNote for years, but it gets a bit messy.
Like a lot of us, I also write stories for fun that have nothing to do with a DnD campaign.
I've been seeing ads on YouTube for World Anvil and Campfire, and was intrigued by the templates an article designs, which seem MUCH more streamlined than what I've been doing. Have any of you guys used them or both? Which would you recommend? so if anyone have suggestions on what would be better for that function,
I try to keep mine together on Homebrewery. I try to write it looking as official as possible so that it is an easy and familiar format. It takes time, but if I were t oever adapt it for publishing, it's already halfway there!
I've used both. World Anvil while offering more customization it has very tedious and complicated interface. Despite using it for a month, it would still take many times more time to create content there than it would on piece of paper. Sure it looks more fancy but the rate of time/result was not worth it. Interface feels very outdated as well. Campfire is bit more limited in some areas but the ease of use made it a much better option. Both are not designed specifically for GMs but also for writers/novelists, so both of them will have many features that will just overwhelm you before you realize you don't need them.
At the end of the day Campfire worked better for me.
Obsidian.md is a good place to take notes (with links between them). There's an active community on their discord (and Facebook) for using it specifically for TTRPGs.
Several of the users there are previously users of Realm Works (a campaign management tool by Lone Wolf Development).
I'm using obsidian.md right now and it's pretty decent but my only gripe with it is not "online", there are ways to do it yes but you have to pay $10 US per month (or $8 if you're doing yearly) for the easy syncing. You can use GitHub to back things up but this doesn't always work if I switch to my phone it sometimes won't sync and give me a bunch of errors and other times will sync just fine. I also need to have the application on every computer I want to use it on (I did find a way to box it up into a single file to run on USB but this is not convenient as having a web interface).
I found a couple of other tools as well that look promising, loremaster.io and masterscreen, between the two I prefer loremaster but it's very much in beta right now. I've just signed up for campfire and going to play around with it before I make a final judgment on how much I like it compared to obsidian and loremaster. The one thing I do like is it's got a web interface along with desktop software and an android/ios app.
While campfire starts as free they have all of its modules that you can add on, some you may find you don't need at all but others if you end up using more than what the free version allows, you'll have to pay for it (although their prices are fairly reasonable), they have monthly, yearly and lifetime payment options and are a lot cheaper than world anvil is. If I do decide to keep going with campfire I'll likely just pay the sub and if I can afford a module's lifetime cost then pick that up when I can and just keep adding a lifetime purchase occasionally and not have to worry about having that monthly fee, eventually getting all the ones I use.
An update on my previous post. Campfire in the end lacked severely a good permission system to manage groups and players' access.
Thus, I've moved to Kanka.io which so far is meeting all my requirements except timelines. Although it does have a timeline feature, it's not really good. However everything else is exactly as it should. Permissions, uploads, interface, cool design, available plugins etc.
Big fan of chronica.ventures. Recently introduced custom calendar and developments (events) which in turn creates a great timeline, that can be seen on each linked character/npc/place as well.
I can concur on that one. Campfire was decent for inputting the information but then I too looked into sharing pieces of it and it was not very easy to do. I checked out Kanka.io and tested a few things out and shared it and setting the permissions was a lot easier in Kanka compared to Campfire, I'll be able to only share things I want to as they discover pieces and so far my only complaint is the map size file limit on the free version being only 3mb but I may end up just upgrading.
I did like how Campfire had lifetime option for specific features that you would want and I may still continue using it to write but just not for my campaign I'm running.
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Homebrew gets complicated. Lots of things to keep track of, lots of cities and countries, factions and so forth. I've been organizing my games and personal writing stories in OneNote for years, but it gets a bit messy.
Like a lot of us, I also write stories for fun that have nothing to do with a DnD campaign.
I've been seeing ads on YouTube for World Anvil and Campfire, and was intrigued by the templates an article designs, which seem MUCH more streamlined than what I've been doing. Have any of you guys used them or both? Which would you recommend? so if anyone have suggestions on what would be better for that function,
I try to keep mine together on Homebrewery. I try to write it looking as official as possible so that it is an easy and familiar format. It takes time, but if I were t oever adapt it for publishing, it's already halfway there!
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: My Character is a Werewolf: balanced rules for Lycanthropy!
I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!
I've used both. World Anvil while offering more customization it has very tedious and complicated interface. Despite using it for a month, it would still take many times more time to create content there than it would on piece of paper. Sure it looks more fancy but the rate of time/result was not worth it. Interface feels very outdated as well. Campfire is bit more limited in some areas but the ease of use made it a much better option. Both are not designed specifically for GMs but also for writers/novelists, so both of them will have many features that will just overwhelm you before you realize you don't need them.
At the end of the day Campfire worked better for me.
Obsidian.md is a good place to take notes (with links between them). There's an active community on their discord (and Facebook) for using it specifically for TTRPGs.
Several of the users there are previously users of Realm Works (a campaign management tool by Lone Wolf Development).
I'm using obsidian.md right now and it's pretty decent but my only gripe with it is not "online", there are ways to do it yes but you have to pay $10 US per month (or $8 if you're doing yearly) for the easy syncing. You can use GitHub to back things up but this doesn't always work if I switch to my phone it sometimes won't sync and give me a bunch of errors and other times will sync just fine. I also need to have the application on every computer I want to use it on (I did find a way to box it up into a single file to run on USB but this is not convenient as having a web interface).
I found a couple of other tools as well that look promising, loremaster.io and masterscreen, between the two I prefer loremaster but it's very much in beta right now. I've just signed up for campfire and going to play around with it before I make a final judgment on how much I like it compared to obsidian and loremaster. The one thing I do like is it's got a web interface along with desktop software and an android/ios app.
While campfire starts as free they have all of its modules that you can add on, some you may find you don't need at all but others if you end up using more than what the free version allows, you'll have to pay for it (although their prices are fairly reasonable), they have monthly, yearly and lifetime payment options and are a lot cheaper than world anvil is. If I do decide to keep going with campfire I'll likely just pay the sub and if I can afford a module's lifetime cost then pick that up when I can and just keep adding a lifetime purchase occasionally and not have to worry about having that monthly fee, eventually getting all the ones I use.
An update on my previous post. Campfire in the end lacked severely a good permission system to manage groups and players' access.
Thus, I've moved to Kanka.io which so far is meeting all my requirements except timelines. Although it does have a timeline feature, it's not really good. However everything else is exactly as it should. Permissions, uploads, interface, cool design, available plugins etc.
Big fan of chronica.ventures. Recently introduced custom calendar and developments (events) which in turn creates a great timeline, that can be seen on each linked character/npc/place as well.
I can concur on that one. Campfire was decent for inputting the information but then I too looked into sharing pieces of it and it was not very easy to do. I checked out Kanka.io and tested a few things out and shared it and setting the permissions was a lot easier in Kanka compared to Campfire, I'll be able to only share things I want to as they discover pieces and so far my only complaint is the map size file limit on the free version being only 3mb but I may end up just upgrading.
I did like how Campfire had lifetime option for specific features that you would want and I may still continue using it to write but just not for my campaign I'm running.