Today, I want to share with you a website and service called World Anvil. In short, it is a very in-depth platform you can use to create a game world, run your game sessions, create an entirely new tabletop system, and monetize all of it! You can also run and organize an already established system. There is so much that you can do with this system that I don’t believe I can personally analyze it in its entirety. For those who have the spark for creativity to do this, you have so many options and systems to accomplish your goals.
Since there is so much that I could discuss, I feel it is best to focus on a determined scope and stay within it. The areas I will be discussing today are:
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Character/NPC Sheets
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Articles
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Maps
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Tables
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Timelines
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Manuscripts
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Subscription Prices/Affiliate Program
This will be based on my personal experience using the platform as well as news from the site itself. I will also quickly mention that World Anvil support a long list of tabletop systems, including big ones like D&D, Fallout, Call of Cthulu, and a good selection of the World of Darkness/Chronicles of Darkness games.
Without further ado, let’s dive in.
Character/NPC Sheets
As I have previously stated, many tabletop systems are supported. This means that you can likely roll up a character in your favorite game system and use it in games.
Based on my interactions, nothing seems to be missing from the sheets that I have used. All trackers and fields that are supposed to be on any given sheet is present and where it should be. The two systems I’ll use as examples are Vampire: The Masquerade 5e and Fallout. Starting with VtM, it has all fields and trackers that are found in the rule source book except for one thing. The specialty lines next to the skills are not currently present. While it is a minor detail, it is disappointing that it is not possible to input a character’s specialty next to their associated skill and have to instead add it as a note at the bottom of the page.
On a serious note, it looks as if the only trackers that can be directly edited is the hunger tracker and the humanity tracker, though you cannot track stains to humanity. This is a major issue as it effectively means that you cannot use the sheet on the site to keep track of superficial and aggravated damage to a character’s health and willpower. Seeing this as the case, it is my assumption that the character sheet is not intended to be used in real time and is rather intended as a stat block that others can check in on and follow. I say this, however, without having had a chance to properly test the live session functionality (which sounds very useful) and seeing if the character sheet has new functions during those sessions.
I should mention that when I say you can edit the sheets, it means that you get taken to an editing page and cannot directly edit the display sheet. This, again, is going on the assumption that live sessions do not change this functionality. As I have not properly tested this, I can only speculate and cannot say for certain.
Changing gears and looking at the Fallout character sheet, it does indeed appear complete with all relevant stats and fields. Again, it cannot be edited directly from the display sheet. It does, however, have the ability to directly roll your d20s from the display sheet. It’s a neat feature.
Overall, it’s important to note that the features that are present work as intended. As far as I can tell there’s just the matter of what’s missing in terms of functionality.
Articles
Articles are info pages that you write to describe something in your game world or campaign. You can write an article for anything, such as characters, weapons, places, customs, religions, wildlife, plants, etc. These are what you’d use to explain all the details that you’d want people to know about. You can even write secrets within articles or write an entire article as a secret and let only specific people know by using subscriber groups. While I personally don’t like the idea of essentially selling spoilers, it’s an option to entice subscribers to pay for a higher subscription. Of course, you could use it for things other than secrets and spoilers. While I’m uncertain of how, you might find a better use for it.
Maps
The usage of maps are rather handy here. You can upload any image and begin marking it up however you want/need. It is important to note that the options available to you depend on what subscription fee you’re willing to pay. Example: with the basic subscription (Master Worldsmith, as if by sounding cool it becomes better) you’re able to put pins wherever you like on your map and link them to their respective articles, but you can’t draw circles or polygons to mark territory. For that you’d need at least the Grandmaster Worldsmith subscription.
Looking at the tools themselves, they are very useful and handy. You can create a very interactive overview of your world, a city, a village, a building, etc. I have to admit that it’s impressive. For those who are dedicated to such creative endeavors, the only thing you could really complain about (because you’d just want to) is that you can’t create a map from scratch. If you’re that dedicated to world building though, you’re likely using other software/methods for that anyway.
Tables
Creating your own tables is not only useful for having a dedicated randomness to certain aspects of your game, but it’s also fun! Yeah, you can call me a total nerd. I think the fun part comes from the satisfaction of creating another working aspect of your game/world.
Sometimes you want/need to have a set of outcomes for something. While it’s obvious that you’d need to start from scratch if you’re creating your own game system, established game systems may not have a table to meet your specific needs. Understandably, this isn’t their fault as it’s impossible to prep for everything. Creating a table is simple with World Anvil and it automatically integrates dice rolling straight from the table! Once you’ve defined the roll and other columns, you simply click to roll for an instant result! Pretty handy and pretty quick to create, ensuring rapid deployment if you needed/wanted to make one in a pinch. The interface is easy to understand too, meaning that it’s a self-explanatory process that you won’t be frustrated with.
Timelines
Every world needs history if it hopes to feel real and established. The tools provided to do this are seemingly complete and interact with maps, articles, and other timelines.
By far the best tool they’ve implemented is chronicles. Chronicles is essentially a studio workspace to create and edit multiple overlapping timelines. Each event you create can be fully fleshed out and link to maps, articles, and pretty much everything else (which just seems standard in World Anvil). The end result is one of the most interactive and understandable overview of the history of your game world.
Not only is this a fantastic resource for people who want to follow along or learn about your game, but it can essentially serve as a very helpful and organized note system for you to use when you need to reference that history.
Manuscripts
If you love creating stories or comics, this is something you’ll really enjoy. Manuscripts is the tool you can use to accomplish just that. The tool starts you with a generalized layout where you can start writing and organize your pages into chapters and scenes. Once again, you can link your pages/chapters/scenes to the other resources you’ve created.
If you’d like to tell the stories that you can’t or won’t tell through game sessions, this is perfect. You can start your own series of books, write one-offs, or whatever your creative mind can come up with!
Subscription Prices/Affiliate Program
This is where you’ll really have to consider the worth of it all and if you’ll be taking advantage of what World Anvil offers. The four tiers are Freeman, Master, Grandmaster, and Sage. Freeman is self explanatory, and the other tiers each have increasing benefits such as extra features and tools, more world slots, etc.
While you can pay for your membership in either monthly, annual, or lifetime (for Grandmaster and Sage only), I will just focus on the annual memberships for comparison. If you’re just looking to start creating and want the main bulk of features and tools, the Master tier will likely be your go to at $54 a year. With it, you’ll shake the restrictions of the free tier and be able to build up to 10 worlds (with the help of up to 4 other people if you choose) using their interconnected features.
Grandmaster and Sage are where you’ll need to decide what’s useful. At $97 annually, Grandmaster will essentially get you everything except the more important management and integration tools. By getting the Sage Worldsmith membership, you will get those features. They include things like Google Analytics integration, Patreon member import and management, extended statistics of your world, priority for support, password protected articles, custom domain, free seminars, and a handful of other features. With all these extra features and a price tag of $299 annually (seriously, where does that $1 go?), it’s clear that Sage is intended for those who have dedicated themselves to crafting and running intricate games and have a following to back them. When you consider the tools at the disposal of Sage members, it’s impressive. Definitely not for the casual hobbyist though.
World Anvil does offer an affiliate program that allows members to earn 5% on all sales from referrals with the potential to earn up to 20% if you reach the requirements. Unfortunately, I am unaware of what those requirements are, but 5% from membership costs isn’t bad.
Overall
World Anvil is a solid service that bridges the gap between having ideas and solidifying them for all to experience. There are more features that I did not touch on and encourage you to check out for yourself. Even if building worlds is not your thing, World Anvil provides plenty for you to just be a player and explore content from other users.
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