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 and expansive sandbox campaigns, or when you want to prepare, run, write, and share your campaign with a complete set of worldbuilding tools. Impressing and intriguing your players with secret revelations and deep lore is easier with World Anvil.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Everything you need to run your RPG campaign & write novels | A basic worldbuilding tool with a few RPG features. | |
| Worldbuilding Essentials | ||
| Wiki-style linked articles Build an interconnected "wikipedia-style" encyclopedia of your world, linking articles. | Yes | Yes |
| Customizable worldbuilding templates Create and adapt layouts for worldbuilding articles in your setting. | Yes | Yes |
| See article backlinks See which other articles link to the article you’re viewing. | Yes | Yes |
| Interactive maps Add clickable pins that link to articles and other worldbuilding information, directly from your map | Yes | Yes |
| Fantasy calendars Create a calendar with your own months, weekdays and year structure. | Yes | Yes |
| Whiteboards & flowcharts | Yes | Yes |
| Variables & reusable content blocks Reuse values or content across multiple articles, then update the original to change every linked instance. | Yes | Yes |
| Forever free option | Yes | Yes |
| Map layers Switch between layered images of the same map, such as political borders, historical periods or underground levels. | Yes | Deprecated |
| Worldbuilding timelines (with scale) Display events on a timeline where their spacing reflects the time between them, including events happening in parallel. | Yes | 3rd party plugin only |
| Guided worldbuilding prompts An optional menu of structured questions, helping you develop details of your setting. | Yes | No |
| Autolinker Detects matching articles in your text and (optionally) adds links | Yes | No |
| Family trees & bloodlines (automatic) Generate family trees automatically from your characters’ recorded family relationships. | Yes | No |
| Diplomacy webs (automatic) Generate relationship diagrams from recorded alliances and rivalries between factions, organizations or countries. | Yes | No |
| Chronicles (timelines & maps together) Explore your world’s history through connected timelines and maps, showing when and where events happened. | Yes | No |
| Automatic article hierarchy charts Automatically builds charts of your sub-locations, sub-species and more. | Yes | No |
| Content trees / taxonomy charts Generate hierarchy charts, organograms, and other content trees, and present them as interactive charts or a list | Yes | No |
| Lifetime purchase | Yes | No |
| Game Master Tools | ||
| RPG session reports Record what happened in each session and connect the recap to relevant characters, locations and events. | Yes | Yes |
| Party inventory | Yes | Yes |
| Quest tracking | Yes | Yes |
| Track current world date Set and advance the current date in your fictional world as your campaign progresses. | Yes | Yes |
| System-specific Player Character sheets Use character sheets with fields and statistics tailored to your chosen tabletop RPG system. | Yes | 3rd party plugin only |
| RPG session chat | Yes | Deprecated |
| Live session Virtual DM screen Run sessions from an interactive dashboard that brings together campaign information, player characters and live session tools. | Yes | No |
| RPG session scheduler Schedule upcoming game sessions directly in your campaign, with dedicated session entries that connect to your game tools and reports. | Yes | No |
| Customizable roll tables Create tables of encounters, loot or other outcomes, then roll dice to select a result. | Yes | No |
| Create custom random generators Combine your own lists and generation rules to produce names, characters, locations and other worldbuilding ideas. | Yes | No |
| Sheets & Blocks for 100+ TTRPGs Access a community library of stat blocks covering over 100 tabletop roleplaying game systems. | Yes | No |
| Customizable stat block library Browse, customize and reuse ready-made game statistics for creatures, characters, items and spells. | Yes | No |
| Play by post support (discussion boards) Run downtime, asynch or text-only RPG sessions through discussion threads, with players posting their characters’ rolls, actions and responses. | Yes | No |
| Discord integration Send world or campaign updates to a connected Discord channel. | Yes | No |
| Novel Writing Software | ||
| Publish without preapproval? Publish without waiting for platform approval. | Yes | n/a |
| Fanfiction sharing permitted? | Yes | n/a |
| NSFW sharing permitted? Share writing intended for adult audiences, subject to the platform’s community rules. | Yes | n/a |
| Manuscript editor | Yes | No |
| Corkboard-style scene planner Plan scenes as cards, view their summaries and drag them into a new order. | Yes | No |
| Integrated world bible Access & edit your characters, locations and other worldbuilding notes from inside the manuscript editor. | Yes | No |
| Novel & serial-fiction publishing Publish novels online or release your story chapter by chapter for readers to follow. | Yes | No |
| Audio book support Add audio narration to chapters using embedded audio players, so readers can listen alongside the text. | Yes | No |
| Co-author support Give other authors access to edit and develop the same manuscript. | Yes | No |
| Beta reader support Share unpublished work with selected readers and collect their feedback before release. | Yes | No |
| ARC sharing Share digital advance reader copies before publication with reviewers, bloggers and other early readers. | Yes | No |
| Comments on chapters (optional) | Yes | No |
| Author Monetization options Earn money through book sales or exclusive content for paying supporters, including through external services. | Yes chapter by chapter | No |
| Reader Forums (discussion boards) | Yes | No |
| Professional Tools | ||
| Premade Visual Themes | Yes | Yes |
| Custom CSS Use CSS styling code to customize your world’s appearance beyond the built-in visual controls. | Yes | Yes |
| Patreon/subscriber exclusive content Give paying supporters access to private content, including when payments are handled on Patreon or another external service. | Yes | Yes |
| Custom Visual styling Adjust your world’s appearance through visual controls, such as colour and font settings. | Yes (all elements) | Interface colors only |
| Design & publish custom statblocks & SRDs Design statblock templates and publish a system reference document (SRD) explaining your tabletop RPG’s rules. | Yes | 3rd party plugin only |
| White Labeling Remove platform branding from your presentation mode. | Yes | No |
| Custom domains Publish your world website at your own web address, such as lore.yourname.com. | Yes | No |
| Bulk subscriber import (for Patreon, Kickstarter etc) Add multiple supporters to an access group at once using a list of their email addresses. | Yes | No |
| "Self-service" access codes Share a code with readers so they can join an access group without adding each person individually. | Yes | No |
| Password protected pages Set a password-protection to a page. These can also be gamified. | Yes | No |
| Custom SEO settings Set custom page titles and descriptions for search engines, separately from the titles shown to readers. | Yes | No |
| Google Analytics integration Connect your own Google Analytics account to understand visits and reader behaviour on your world website. | Yes | No |
| Subscriber groups Organize readers into groups and choose which private content each group can access. | Yes | No |
| Fan comments (optional) | Yes | No |
| Professional seminar programme Attend regular sessions on publishing, marketing and building a business around your creative work. | Yes | No |
| Worldbuilding Task Tracking / To Do list Prioritize worldbuilding tasks and track progress on the articles you need to create or revise. | Yes | No |
Which is better, Kanka or World Anvil?
Ready to go
a little deeper?
What’s the difference between World Anvil and Kanka?
Kanka allows collaborative worldbuilding and RPG campaign organization through connected entries, maps, calendars and other tools. World Anvil has all the same features as Kanka, but adds dedicated worldbuilding tools with dedicated novel-writing software, live RPG campaign tools, a full statblock library, fiction publishing and professional website features. If you want your setting to support novels, games, more customization and a growing audience, World Anvil offers a broader creative toolkit within one platform.
Is World Anvil or Kanka better for running D&D and other RPG campaigns?
World Anvil is the stronger choice if you want detailed worldbuilding, easier session prep, a library of statblocks you can copy and edit, and dedicated tools for running live sessions. Both platforms offer RPG campaign organization, quests and inventories. World Anvil’s RPG campaign manager also adds an interactive virtual DM screen, session scheduling, and character sheets for 100+ RPG systems. Your setting, preparation and game tools stay connected as your campaign grows.
How does Kanka’s stat block support compare with World Anvil?
Kanka supports character sheets and statblock templates through its 3rd party plugin library. World Anvil provides built-in statblock tools and a huge community library of ready-made blocks you can copy and customize. With sheets and blocks supporting 100+ tabletop RPG systems, World Anvil helps you find reusable game material, adapt monsters and NPCs, and keep their statistics alongside your campaign lore.
Is World Anvil or Kanka better for writing novels?
World Anvil is the better fit if you want to worldbuild for a novel. Kanka can help organize basic notes on characters, locations and lore. World Anvil does all that and also includes Manuscripts, a dedicated novel-writing tool with scene planning and an editor connected to your world bible, plus online webnovel and serial fiction publishing.
Which is better for beginners: World Anvil or Kanka?
World Anvil is a great choice for beginners who want guidance as they create. Both tools help organize a fictional world, but World Anvil’s worldbuilding templates include prompts designed by professional worldbuilders to develop your ideas. You can start with one character or location, follow the worldbuilding prompts that inspire you, and add maps, timelines and other tools as your confidence grows. World Anvil also has excellent video tutorial support and a worldbuilding course for beginners.
Which is better for professionals: Kanka or World Anvil?
World Anvil is the stronger choice for professionals who need publishing and audience tools alongside their worldbuilding. Both platforms support collaboration; World Anvil combines team permissions with novel writing, fiction publishing and subscriber-exclusive content. Its Sage membership adds bulk customer management, branding options and monthly professional seminars, supporting authors, RPG publishers and studios as they develop their worlds into creative businesses. World Anvil also regularly promotes its professional users to its community and beyond to support their releases.
How do World Anvil and Kanka’s one-time pay option compare?
World Anvil offers Lifetime memberships at Grandmaster and Sage tiers for a single payment. These cover your chosen tier’s features, including future additions, for the platform’s operational lifetime. Kanka doesn’t have a lifetime or one-time pay option. Its published paid plans use monthly or annual subscriptions only. If you prefer a one-time purchase for your worldbuilding toolkit, World Anvil gives you that option.
Can I create a custom world website with World Anvil or Kanka?
World Anvil is the better choice for this. While both World Anvil and Kanka offer themes and CSS customization through paid plans, World Anvil’s Sage membership goes further, offering white labelling and a custom domain, SEO settings and Google Analytics integration. That makes World Anvil a stronger choice for presenting your setting as a branded public website that readers, players and customers can explore. On World Anvil you can also hide sections of pages that are public – meaning you can keep your teaser, your paying customer content and your private notes all in the same place.
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 RPG campaign that goes further
World Anvil
vs Kanka
You can build a wiki and track some RPG elements on Kanka. But with World Anvil, you can bring your entire RPG campaigns and novels to life.
Choose World Anvil for more control over the way your world looks, who sees what, and how far your campaign can go.
Compare with KankaFor a dynamic world with deep lore
World Anvil
vs LegendKeeper
LegendKeeper makes you build article templates from scratch. World Anvil takes the heavy lifting out of worldbuilding. With optional prompts, a statblock library, and a full virtual DM’s screen, World Anvil makes game prep inspiring & fun.
Not to mention, World Anvil has a full novel writing software, gorgeous presentation themes, and advanced privacy for ultimate control of your secrets and lore.
Compare with LegendKeeperFor ideas too big for just one book
World Anvil
vs Campfire
Campfire is fine for authors who want to write one book. World Anvil is built for writers who have a universe of stories to tell.
For deep lore, for worldbuilding tools that support creativity beyond mere pages, and for storytelling in RPG Campaigns, World Anvil is the gold standard.
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!