Best worldbuilding tool for writers
Choose World Anvil over Campfire when your ideas are too big for just one novel or campaign. If your fictional universe is home to many amazing stories, heroes, and adventures, it deserves a worldbuilding tool that supports you. If you’re a prolific storyteller whose audience wants to explore your lore, choose World Anvil to present it to your readers with ultimate control.
With professional-grade creative tools and a thriving community of geeks, World Anvil is the ideal home for prolific fantasy authors, gamemasters, writers and artists who don’t want to be pigeon-holed into just one creative outlet.
Why choose World Anvil vs Campfire?
Unique worldbuilding becomes a plot twist in your novels. Character choices shape your world. Develop the people, places, and history that set the stage in World Anvil’s worldbuilding tools, while drafting in Manuscripts.
Want to turn your novel into a tabletop RPG setting? No problem. Expand into webcomics, audio dramas, indie films? With World Anvil’s autolinker, you can easily maintain consistent continuity across your world bible, novel, and any other projects.
World Anvil is an ideal platform for your author website. With subscriber groups, advanced privacy permissions, and collaborative tools, you can give co-authors, beta readers, and fans more than a home - give them an interactive world worth revisiting.
The best worldbuilding tool for authors
If you’re comparing World Anvil with Campfire, start with scope. A standalone novel can live almost anywhere – even a note on your phone! But a series, or several series in the same expansive universe, needs a foundation that grows with you.
World Anvil rewards writers who think deeply and dream big. Use advanced worldbuilding templates to create depth, then draft your novels in Manuscripts with ready access to your world’s wiki. Plot character journeys on interactive maps, trace your setting’s history with Timelines, or combine the two with Chronicles. Keep dynasties and bloodlines straight across generations with Family Trees. Track court politics and house rivalries with Diplomacy Webs.
This depth pays off as your story expands. A minor character can become the protagonist later, without losing track of their home, relationships or history. A new series can open centuries earlier, or light-years away, and still inherit the rules you’ve established. And a detail you’ve established can help you fix a plot hole in a later book! Every tale draws on one connected world.
More ways to use your worldbuilding
World Anvil is built for creators whose worlds travel from novels to short stories to tabletop campaigns (or vice-versa!) And even if your muse leads you into web comics, indie games or audio dramas… World Anvil provides one connected source of truth.
Prepare RPG campaigns with the digital storyteller screen and integrated virtual play space. Run a session using the same linked articles and interactive maps that supported your novel. Bring a city from fiction into your game, or let your campaign party inspire the cast of your next novel.
Your creative collaborators can reference (and edit, if you choose!) your Interactive Maps, Timelines, Family Trees and wiki to stay consistent. Use World Anvil’s advanced permissions and privacy settings to control what each co-author, player or reader gets to see. Tell stories in whatever medium fits, because World Anvil is big enough to hold it all.
An ideal author website platform
Choose World Anvil over Campfire to reward your most passionate readers. The ones who want to know what lies beyond the border, and why those families have been enemies for centuries. Publish your world with beautiful visual themes, interactive maps, and Timelines. Link your Patreon, Ko-fi or Kickstarter, and invite readers to follow your world, subscribe and comment while you work on your next book.
Reward super-fans with bonus content: extra chapters, deleted scenes, character profiles, sneak peeks, and deep lore. Use Subscriber Groups to control who sees what, whether that’s early access for Patreon or Kickstarter backers or advance chapters for beta readers. You can even import your supporters in a single step.
World Anvil is the best choice when you want more than a novel writing tool and a worldbuilding software. When you want to grow your readership and brand, turn your worldbuilding into marketing material and backer rewards, and turbo-boost your sales.
Worldbuilding Tools Comparison
| Features | World Anvil | Campfire |
|---|---|---|
| Everything you need to run RPG campaigns & write novels. | Fiction support but no tabletop RPG Features. Limited worldbuilding features. | |
| Worldbuilding Essentials | ||
| Forever free option | Yes | Yes |
| Wiki-style linked articles | Yes | Yes |
| Interactive maps (pins/layers) | Yes | Yes |
| Customizable templates | Yes | Yes |
| Fantasy calendars | Yes | Yes |
| Dynamic timelines | Yes | Yes |
| Free-form flowcharts / whiteboards | Yes | Yes |
| One-time purchase option | Yes | No |
| Visual Themes & Custom CSS | Yes | No |
| Article autolinker | Yes | No |
| Article comments option | Yes | No |
| Expert-created worldbuilding templates | Yes | No |
| Subscriber groups for advanced privacy control | Yes | No |
| Diplomacy webs (automatic) | Yes | No |
| Family trees (automatic) | Yes | No |
| Content trees / taxonomy charts (automatic) | Yes | No |
| Game Master Tools | ||
| Support for 100+ TTRPGs | Yes | No |
| Virtual DM screen | Yes | No |
| Public stat block library | Yes | No |
| Player handouts screen | Yes | No |
| Session chat & notes | Yes | No |
| Character sheets & journals | Yes | No |
| Customizable roll tables | Yes | No |
| Discussion boards for Play by Post | Yes | No |
| Novel Writing Software | ||
| Novel Manuscript editor | Yes | Yes |
| Drag and drop chapters | Yes | Yes |
| Novel & Serial Fiction Publishing Platform | Yes | Yes |
| Integrated world bible | Yes | Yes |
| Co-author support | Yes | Yes |
| Mobile view for readers | Yes | Yes |
| Digital plotting corkboard view | Yes | Yes |
| Beta reader & ARC support | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization options | Yes | Yes |
| Audiobook embed support | Yes | No |
| Styling templates for novel readers | Yes | No |
| Professional Tools | ||
| Real-time collaboration | Yes | Yes |
| White Labeling | Yes | No |
| Patreon/subscriber exclusive content | Yes | No |
| Design & publish custom statblocks & SRDs | Yes | No |
| Advanced privacy settings | Yes | No |
| Professional seminars & support | Yes | No |
| Custom domains (a completely personalised URL) | Yes | No |
In the world of IP creative content and branded franchises, the world-builder is king. Thirty-two of the 50 top-grossing movies of all time are films that belong to identifiable fantasy universes
Why settle for less?
World Anvil gives you way more: three tools in one platform, for less than the cost of Campfire. Write your books with Manuscripts. Run your tabletop campaigns with the digital Storyteller Screen, character sheets, and statblocks. Build your setting with worldbuilding templates, interactive maps, Timelines, Chronicles, and Family Trees to support your whole series and beyond. If your world is meant to grow beyond just one book, you get the full toolkit without adding a second app.
Because your world stays connected. A city you wrote for your novel can become the setting for your next campaign. A character who emerged at the gaming table can become the lead of your next book. Every article, map, and timeline lives in one place, so you’re not copying notes between apps or reconciling two versions of your lore.
World Anvil is built for deep lore and expansive worlds. Start with templates for more than 25 aspects of your worldbuilding, including cultures, religions, species, and settlements. Then autolink everything together with articles that cross-reference each other. Add interactive maps with markers and layers, and chart your history with Timelines. When you’re ready to share, publish your world for readers and players to explore.
Built with love, by geeks like you
Explore the changelog to see our newest features and most recent improvements to the everyday experience of creating. We forge the path others follow.
Use community suggestions to share the changes you want to see and support ideas from other creators. Your experience helps shape what comes next.
Create a free account and start with a small project. Explore memberships when you need more capacity, privacy, or advanced tools. Choose the tools that serve your next step.
Should you use World Anvil?
You never know where imagination might lead. So why choose a worldbuilding tool that only does half of what World Anvil can? Get a software that fully supports gamemasters, novelists, game developers, and more.
For the campaign that keeps growing
Bring your session prep, your player discoveries, your shared lore and your future adventures into one creative home. Get inspired by expertly crafted templates. See why pro GMs & published ttRPG writers use World Anvil.
Compare with KankaFor a dynamic world with deep lore
Connect your world’s map to timelines, family trees, characters and more. Dive into our library of customizable stat blocks & character sheets for 100+ TTRPGs. Oh — and World Anvil’s forever free plan won’t end in 7 days.
Compare with LegendKeeperFor stories too big for just one book
Track world details for a series (or multiple series). Plot, draft & share your stories with Manuscripts. Turn your world bible into bonus content for your readers and let fans explore beyond the page.
Compare with CampfireYour next creative chapter
Explore our worldbuilding software, prepare your next adventure with the RPG campaign manager, or compare worldbuilding tools.
Begin with the part of your world you cannot wait to create. Give it a home, make a connection, and let the next idea follow.
Every great world starts somewhere
Dive deeper and learn about how World Anvil can help you!
