Kickstart your creativity
Nothing’s more intimidating than a blank page. LegendKeeper has empty articles. World Anvil’s worldbuilding templates offer useful prompts to get you started (but only if you need them).
Best DM worldbuilding tool
LegendKeeper vs World Anvil
If you need a complete worldbuilding tool for your RPG Campaign or novel, choose World Anvil over LegendKeeper. With World Anvil, you can worldbuild your vision without limits, using layered maps, timelines, quest hooks, NPCs, monsters, and loot, plus a connected, searchable wiki.
And to make game prep faster, World Anvil also offers a huge library of pre-made statblocks you can customize. You can build your own roll tables and random generators, get character sheets for 100+ TTRPGs, including Dungeons & Dragons, Daggerheart, Pathfinder and Call of Cthulhu. And run your game with a sleek virtual storyteller’s screen, that lets you share player handouts, manage your NPCs, and keep track of your party’s shenanigans ALL while playing atmospheric tracks.
World Anvil has a forever-free plan that’s enough for many DMs, with premium features for more.
Why choose World Anvil over LegendKeeper?
Not just worldbuilding basics,
your complete DM toolkit.
An atlas for your homebrew setting
Combine articles and maps with advanced timelines that show time and space, automatic family trees & bloodlines to track your dynasties, and sophisticated diplomatic relationship webs to make complex factions clearer to navigate.
A playground for your players & fans
Turn your RPG session prep into a streamlined process. Grab statblocks from the library for quick encounter building. Craft an illustrated world your players can explore, while controlling access to what you share (and what stays secret!)
Support for your creative spark
Guidance when you need it.
Freedom when you don’t.
When you compare World Anvil vs LegendKeeper, think about what happens when your tired brain draws a blank. LegendKeeper is a daunting, empty notebook. World Anvil’s templates provide questions to help you develop a culture, character, or settlement enough to make it memorable. To make it uniquely yours.
Use any worldbuilding prompts that appeal to you. Hide any you don’t need. Start by brain-dumping bullets, then add details as you want (or need) them. Other worldbuilding tools give you a blank page, or AI tools meant to replace your own creativity. World Anvil supports your imagination with smart questions that get you thinking.
Watch your world evolve
Not just maps & timelines.
A complex, visible world in motion.
Your worldbuilding only becomes clear when you can see the true scale of history—and how people and events shape a setting over time. Basic chain-of-event timelines, like LegendKeeper’s, only take you so far. World Anvil’s timeline maker has both list and timescale mode, so you can get perspective on your historical eras. Chronicles helps you plan your whole world through time and space, ideal for tracking complex story lines and West Marches campaigns. In World Anvil, your adventures impact the setting, and you can display how battles, treaties, and historical events shaped the map over time.
On LegendKeeper you must painstakingly draw out any charts and graphs. World Anvil can autogenerate a family tree in seconds, without drawing anything! Then craft and share bloodlines for your vast dynasties and great houses, stretching generations into your world’s history. And, in seconds, display their current machinations using diplomacy webs.
Choose World Anvil for interactive visual aids that help your players understand your world, and help you grow it. Interactive maps that can shift over time, timelines with multiple ways to explore your world’s history, and family trees that show how power and influence moves through generations.
Control who sees what
You decide what to share.
World Anvil keeps it safe.
World Anvil helps you turn your session prep into a guide to your setting, or a portfolio of your creations, with illustrated articles, world themes, and linked lore that invite your audience to explore. Reveal specific information to a single player, or the whole party. Set up campaign permissions for one party, or several if you’re a pro DM.
If you create 3rd party content for D&D or other tabletop RPGs like items or adventures, you can make some content publicly available, while reserving others for Patreon or other subscribers. And trust that our secure backups will protect all your content.
Choose World Anvil when you want a professional-grade creative toolkit and security, with membership options for privacy and advanced presentation.
Worldbuilding Tools Comparison
What is the best worldbuilding
tool for gamemasters?
| Features | World Anvil | LegendKeeper |
|---|---|---|
| Everything you need to run your RPG campaign & write novels | Basic worldbuilding & GM support. Not for authors. Limited privacy & display options. | |
| 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 |
| Autolinker Detects matching articles in your text and (optionally) adds links | 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 |
| Worldbuilding timelines (with scale) Display events on a timeline where their spacing reflects the time between them, including events happening in parallel. | Yes | Yes |
| Guided worldbuilding prompts An optional menu of structured questions, helping you develop details of your setting. | Yes | No |
| Map layers Switch between layered images of the same map, such as political borders, historical periods or underground levels. | 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 |
| Variables & reusable content blocks Reuse values or content across multiple articles, then update the original to change every linked instance. | 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 |
| Forever free option | Yes | No |
| Game Master Tools | ||
| RPG session chat | Yes | Yes |
| Customizable roll tables Create tables of encounters, loot or other outcomes, then roll dice to select a result. | Yes | Basic |
| Live session Virtual DM screen Run sessions from an interactive dashboard that brings together campaign information, player characters and live session tools. | Yes | No |
| System-specific Player Character sheets Use character sheets with fields and statistics tailored to your chosen tabletop RPG system. | 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 |
| RPG session reports Record what happened in each session and connect the recap to relevant characters, locations and events. | Yes | No |
| Party inventory | Yes | No |
| Quest tracking | Yes | No |
| Track current world date Set and advance the current date in your fictional world as your campaign progresses. | 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 | ||
| 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 |
| Premade Visual Themes | Yes | No |
| Custom Visual styling Adjust your world’s appearance through visual controls, such as colour and font settings. | Yes (all elements) | No |
| Custom CSS Use CSS styling code to customize your world’s appearance beyond the built-in visual controls. | Yes | No |
| Patreon/subscriber exclusive content Give paying supporters access to private content, including when payments are handled on Patreon or another external service. | Yes | No |
| Design & publish custom statblocks & SRDs Design statblock templates and publish a system reference document (SRD) explaining your tabletop RPG’s rules. | 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 |
Not just bigger. Faster & easier.
One tool. 100+ RPG systems.
Limitless adventures.
World Anvil’s campaign manager keeps your player characters, NPCs, stat blocks, roll tables, and session reports in one easily searchable location. So when your party goes off the rails, you won’t panic. Update your plan, with just a few clicks.
Another advantage of choosing World Anvil vs LegendKeeper? True support for 100+ RPG systems, with pre-built character sheets and SRD stat blocks you can copy (and customize if you like). No building every monster and NPC from scratch.
Running games in different genres or systems? Or multiple campaigns or parties? No problem. World Anvil doesn’t just handle it. It makes it easier.
RPG Campaign Manager
- Session prep with styleDon’t just make handouts. Get players psyched!
- Build a campaign fastEmbed stat blocks, roll tables, maps & more in a virtual DM screen.
- Notes become loreThe session stream provides a record of epic character moments.
World Anvil advantages
A free plan with no deadline,
for a world that won’t stay small.
What’s the difference between World Anvil and LegendKeeper?
LegendKeeper is a collaborative worldbuilding wiki with maps, timelines and whiteboards. World Anvil combines all those features, plus a dedicated novel-writing software, live RPG Campaign Management tools and professional publishing features. Choose World Anvil if you want one setting to support books and RPG campaigns, with tools for developing, running and sharing your creative projects.
Is LegendKeeper or World Anvil better for D&D and other RPG campaigns?
World Anvil is the stronger choice when you want dedicated session tools alongside your worldbuilding. LegendKeeper organizes campaign information through blank wiki pages, maps and boards. World Anvil’s RPG campaign manager brings together a complete worldbuilding toolset and adds an interactive virtual DM screen, session scheduling, party inventory and quest tracking. Your campaign’s lore, preparation and game tools stay connected before, during and after play.
Is World Anvil or LegendKeeper better for writing novels?
World Anvil has software for planning, drafting and publishing novels while LegendKeeper does not. World Anvil’s Manuscripts is a dedicated novel editor and scene-planning tools connected directly to an advanced world bible. Keep character details close as you write, then share your novel or serial fiction online. If you plan to publish your novels, World Anvil also supports you with building your audience.
Can I use World Anvil or LegendKeeper for both novels and RPG campaigns?
Yes. World Anvil offers advanced support to organize the lore behind fiction and RPG campaigns. World Anvil also connects that setting to dedicated writing and campaign tools, so you can draft in Manuscripts and prepare adventures using the same world bible. A character from your novel can become an NPC, or a memorable game session can inspire your next chapter. On the other hand, LegendKeeper offers basic world wiki support.
How do World Anvil and LegendKeeper compare for character sheets and statblocks?
World Anvil provides dedicated system-specific character sheets and statblocks for 100+ tabletop RPG systems, plus a community library of completed blocks you can copy and customize. That gives you reusable monsters, NPCs and game statistics alongside your campaign lore, with system-specific tools ready to use. LegendKeeper has generic character articles in wiki pages.
Which is better for beginners: LegendKeeper or World Anvil?
World Anvil is ideal for beginners who want help developing their ideas. Both platforms organize worldbuilding, but World Anvil’s templates include guiding questions designed by professional worldbuilders. Start with one character or location, follow the prompts that inspire you, and add maps or timelines when useful. Video tutorials and a creative community provide support as you learn. They also offer a worldbuilding course for beginners, created by a professional game writer & published author.
Which is better for free: World Anvil or LegendKeeper?
World Anvil is the better choice for continuing to create your own world for free. Its free plan lets you build public worlds without a time limit, subject to content and storage limits. LegendKeeper’s free trial lasts 14 days.
Can I buy World Anvil or LegendKeeper with a one-time payment?
World Anvil offers Grandmaster and Sage Lifetime memberships for a single payment, including future features developed at your chosen tier. Lifetime refers to the operational lifetime of the World Anvil platform. LegendKeeper only offers monthly or annual subscriptions, with no one-time purchase option. If you prefer to pay once for your worldbuilding toolkit, World Anvil gives you that choice.
Which is better for professional creators: World Anvil or LegendKeeper?
World Anvil is the stronger fit for professionals who are looking to develop a rich world, build an audience, and publish their worlds. Users can collaborate through co-author roles, offer exclusive content to subscriber groups, and use Sage’s customer management tools. World Anvil also offers professional seminars for its Sage tier. LegendKeeper’s remit stops at a world wiki.
Can I create a custom world website with World Anvil or LegendKeeper?
Both platforms let you publish worldbuilding online. World Anvil is the stronger option for a branded public world website: it offers visual themes you can customize, and a full custom CSS option, with white labelling and custom domains at Sage level. SEO settings let you customize search titles and descriptions, while Google Analytics integration helps you understand how visitors explore your world.
Can I use World Anvil or LegendKeeper to build a TTRPG creator business?
Yes. World Anvil helps you develop and publish campaign settings, adventures and even your own RPG system. Create custom character sheets and statblocks, publish a linked rules reference or SRD, and manage private playtests. Use Patreon or your own storefront to sell your work to customers, then manage access to exclusive material through World Anvil’s subscriber and monetization tools.
Built with love, by geeks like you
Your world is always growing.
Your tools should keep up.
Always moving forward
Explore the World Anvil 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 CampfireYour next creative chapter
Follow your
next idea.
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
Let yours start here.
Start Creating! It’s FreeDive deeper and learn about how World Anvil can help you!