Best Campaign Management Product/Site?

R

Retreater

Legend

• Jan 16, 2019

• #1

I am running 4 simultaneous campaigns, and it is sometimes challenging to keep details straight. Also, I am creating a lot of setting information that I would love to be easily accessible to the players. I've been looking at sites such as Obsidian Portal and World Anvil, and I'm curious what are the best solutions to organizing my information (currently, I am using Google Drive as well as three-ring binders).

If the detail is important, I am running in different systems, so the suggestions need to be system agnostic. (So D&D Beyond - using only 5e - would not be a good option.)

Thanks for the suggestions!

 

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Blue

Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal

• Jan 16, 2019

• #2

I've actually had a lot of luck with one of the the free wiki sites instead of a dedicated one. Gave my players access to it as well and tasked them (with reward) to writing up recaps and adding their own notes about NPCs and places. Between categories and the ease of linking ti was very easy to find and update information, I didn't miss RPG-specific breakdowns. And it would definitely be system agnostic.

 

S

Shunni

First Post

• Feb 24, 2019

• #3

My wife and I just launched Chronica which is a online campaign manager. Tracking npcs, quests, maps, ect.

 

MNblockhead

A Title Much Cooler Than Anything on the Old Site

• Feb 25, 2019

• #4

I spent a lot of time looking at various options and still check out new products, but I've not found anything as good as RealmWork by Lone Wolf Development for creating a homebrew world and managing multiple campaigns in it.

Some caveats:

1. They've had some development challenges as they try to roll out their content market, which has upset many of their customers. But I find the product incredibly useful as is.

2. There is a learning curve. I don't think it is difficult software to use. I think the learning curve is mostly deciding how to set up your realm and how to use various topic and article categories.

3. While there is a player's edition, it is not a great tool for sharing and collaborating with other players. It is mostly a DM campaign creation and management tool.

4. It is not a VTT. You can throw up a player view on a second screen to show and reveal maps, etc. But it is not a VTT and does not intend to compete with Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds.

Anyway, check it out here: https://www.wolflair.com/realmworks

I'm happy to answer questions you may have from an end-user's perspective. Also, check out Josh Plunket's YouTube videos. These will give you a good idea of how the product is used to help you decide if it is what you are looking for. You can find them here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y6-riuI71U&list=PLV5XWfKkFpk6_sDYWWKwvP8zs_qVSrzoM

 

C

cthulhu42

Explorer

• Feb 25, 2019

• #5

Honestly, One Note is the single greatest leap forward in my organizational life. It's free, it's easy, it is the one bit of tech I cannot do without.

 

M

mrrockitt

Explorer

• Feb 25, 2019

• #6

I started on Obsidian Portal but have now switched over to World Anvil. Far more complicated than Obsidian Pirtal but sooo much more you can do with it! Both about the same price I believe.
Will check out Chronica too though

 

M

mrrockitt

Explorer

• Feb 25, 2019

• #7

Should also add, World Anvil has this great repository for community-added info and supports multiple systems including 5e.

 

Samloyal23

Adventurer

• Feb 26, 2019

• #8

I am building a campaign on Scabard.com, it has made expanding on my early notes a lot easier and has actually spurred a bunch of new ideas by letting me see how things are connected.

 

MNblockhead

A Title Much Cooler Than Anything on the Old Site

• Feb 26, 2019

• #9

cthulhu42 said:

Honestly, One Note is the single greatest leap forward in my organizational life. It's free, it's easy, it is the one bit of tech I cannot do without.

Click to expand...

OneNote is impressive. I'm sticking with Evernote since I have so much content and time invested into it and I primarily use it for web scrapes, organizing PDFs, and notes. But if it was between Evernote and OneNote for a campaign management tool, I'd go with OneNote.

But the reason I use RealmWorks instead of either is that it gives a structured framework (which you can customize) for entering in your content. There is an underlying standard it enforces, which allows you to share your campaign content with other users (via export/import), but still allows an impressive amount of customization.

Even more important for me is the autolinking capabilities. With OneNote, you can link to another note, but it is a manual process. Same with wikis. Autolinking topics and articles is one of the killer features of RealmWorks.

But when I want to brain storm or write up some quick session notes, I'll do that in Evernote.

 

S

Sword of Spirit

Legend

• Feb 26, 2019

• #10

My experiences with RealmWorks are similar to [MENTION=6796661]MNblockhead[/MENTION]’s. I initially was looking for something simpler, but when I gave it a try I was hooked. The auto-linking is huge. There are also a lot of options for how to additionally connect information, and one of the biggest initial difficulties can be recognizing that you don’t have to use them all just because you can, and should just use the ones that work best for you. So I don’t really need to worry about using the info tag about how each deity (or NPC, or organization, etc) feels about each other, as well as how they publicly act like they feel about them, but using the feature to indicate where different people live is something I do extensively. And I don’t use the storyline organizational feature, because my campaign is more exploration-based, but I do use map pins with links that can take me to other maps and topics to allow me explore my world(s) starting from whichever level I want. But you can always start using features you weren’t, they aren’t something you are locked into and have to redo if you decide to using them. Just add them wherever and whenever you want. One thing you might end up doing is a lot of customization of the initial default organizational structures if you are picky like me. If you aren’t, then it’s just good to go as-is.