An advanced GM toolkit
Prepare sessions and use the digital Storyteller Screen alongside your world’s articles, maps, and statblocks.
Best worldbuilding tool for DMs
Kanka vs World Anvil
Choose World Anvil over Kanka when you’re worldbuilding and running homebrew campaign settings, expansive sandbox campaigns, or intrigue your players with secret revelations and deep lore. Prepare, run, write, and share with a complete set of worldbuilding tools.
Why choose World Anvil over Kanka?
Start your campaign
in a home it won’t outgrow.
Organize your sandbox
Develop history, dynasties, cultures, and conflicts that give every new adventure something to uncover & explore.
Go beyond the RPG table
Use the same worldbuilding foundation for a novel in Manuscripts, or publish as a setting other Gamemasters can use.
Session prep like a pro
An RPG campaign manager
built for both sides of the screen.
Choosing World Anvil over Kanka makes sense when you want RPG campaign planning and preparation for a robust homebrew setting you can share with your players. Pin your session’s articles — places, plot hooks, NPCs & monster stats—to your Digital Storyteller Screen. But when players swerve, don’t stress! All of your lore is just a quick search away.
And players can enjoy developing their player characters with journals, art, session chat, and more. They can write journals, keep track of their equipment and session notes, and manage their stats. All linked to our library of character sheets for over 100 different tabletop RPG systems. Control who sees what, when, with secrets and spoiler tags.
Connections with context
Relationships are more
than a bullet list of links.
Kanka includes a list of “related links” in their articles, lets you draw lines between boxes on a whiteboard, and calls that a “connected world.” But what kind of relationship? What about sentiment? Hierarchies? That context matters, and World Anvil shows it automatically.
World Anvil helps you easily see who’s in which organization—and what rank they hold. Lines of royal succession, or vampiric bloodlines. Who’s on which side in a 100 year war, and the diplomatic crisis that spawned it. If you’re building a dynamic world, you don’t just want to see what’s related. You want to see how they’re related.
Beyond the next session
One setting.
Infinite storytelling options.
Your campaign might inspire a short story, a novel, or web comic you want to share beyond the table. In Kanka, you’ll have to take that work elsewhere. But World Anvil gives those ideas a home, fully integrated with your worldbuilding.
Write novels & serial fiction with Manuscripts. Develop a world homepage so readers can explore your lore. Choose World Anvil when you want your campaign’s creative work to become a whole storytelling ecosystem.
Worldbuilding Tools Comparison
What is the best worldbuilding
software for gamemasters?
| Features | World Anvil | Kanka |
|---|---|---|
| All you need for running RPG campaigns & writing fiction. | A simple worldbuilding tool with basic RPG features. | |
| Worldbuilding Essentials | ||
| Forever free option | Yes | Yes |
| Wiki-style linked articles | Yes | Yes |
| Interactive maps (pins/layers) | Yes | Yes |
| Dynamic timelines | Yes | Yes |
| Fantasy calendars | Yes | Yes |
| Free-form flowcharts / whiteboards | Yes | Yes |
| Family trees (automatic) | Yes | Yes |
| One-time purchase option | Yes | No |
| Visual Themes & Custom CSS | Yes | No |
| Article autolinker | Yes | No |
| Article comments option | Yes | No |
| Customizable templates | Yes | No |
| Expert-created worldbuilding templates | Yes | No |
| Content trees / taxonomy charts (automatic) | Yes | No |
| Subscriber groups for advanced privacy control | Yes | No |
| Diplomacy webs (automatic) | Yes | No |
| Game Master Tools | ||
| Virtual DM screen | Yes | Yes |
| Session chat & notes | Yes | Yes |
| Character sheets & journals | Yes | Yes |
| Support for 100+ TTRPGs | Yes | No |
| Public stat block library | Yes | No |
| Player handouts screen | Yes | No |
| Customizable roll tables | Yes | No |
| Discussion boards for Play by Post | Yes | No |
| Novel Writing Software | ||
| Manuscript editor | Yes | No |
| Publishing platform | Yes | No |
| Integrated world bible | Yes | No |
| Co-author support | Yes | No |
| Beta reader & ARC support | Yes | No |
| Monetization options | 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 |
Which is better, Kanka or World Anvil?
Ready to go
a little deeper?
How do World Anvil’s diplomacy webs compare to Kanka’s relation tools?
Kanka’s relations explorer shows the connections around a single entry. That’s useful, but lacks context, and you can only see one entry at a time. World Anvil’s “Referenced In” feature shows all the mentions of an article in the same way, but Diplomacy Webs create a clear visual map of relationships and sentiment between factions and governments. So you can see alliances, rivalries and treaties across a whole setting in one view.
How does Kanka’s stat block support compare with World Anvil?
Kanka can approximate stat blocks with custom properties and plug-ins, but it has no built-in library. World Anvil lets you craft your own stat blocks, or copy (and customize) pre-made stat blocks and character sheets from a library that supports 100+ tabletop RPG systems, including D&D 2024/5e, Pathfinder, Daggerheart, and more. You can start from a shared stat block, instead of building monsters and NPCs from scratch.
Built with love, by geeks like you
Your world is always growing.
Your tools should keep up.
Always moving forward
Explore the changelog to see our newest features and most recent improvements to the everyday experience of creating. We forge the path others follow.
Your ideas have a voice
Use community suggestions to share the changes you want to see and support ideas from other creators. Your experience helps shape what comes next.
Begin for free
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?
Start worldbuilding
with the complete toolkit for every kind of storyteller.
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
World Anvil
vs Kanka
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
World Anvil
vs LegendKeeper
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
World Anvil
vs Campfire
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 CampfireEvery great world starts somewhere
Let yours start here.
Start Creating! It’s FreeDive deeper and learn about how World Anvil can help you!