I use a handful of tools for my D&D games and one of the big ones is World Anvil! In a new series of blog posts I will be taking a look at the tools I use to plan, manage and run my games.
Using the many pre-made templates and my own custom ones, I can create articles for all of my content types including settlements, terrain areas, buildings, NPCs, plots, professions, organizations and more.
I can display all my relevant information, link to any related articles using the mention system and display custom lists of information with the tagging system.
Notes can be added to each individual article as well as the notebook which is its own separate entity. They can be broken down into sections and pages to keep things organized too.
I can choose what data is visible to everyone and what is for my eyes only. This lets me keep everything in one place and really makes for smoother gameplay.
I can choose to make whole articles private or just specific areas so that my players can read the general info while I hide my secrets all over the articles without them knowing and even reveal things as they become known or relevant.
I have a private article that serves as my DM screen with links to anything and everything I might need for running my game.
All my playable species, classes, NPC professions, locations, groups/factions, custom rules, homebrew content and world information (far too much to list properly here) displayed in one place!
After creating a custom NPC generator I can get fully fleshed out, unique NPCs with a click of a button. Additionally, these can be exported to new articles to join my world right away.
Generators can be created for just about anything like names, descriptions and colors to name a few examples and can be stitched together to make truly unique and layered templates.
These topics may be not be discussed as in depth as the others as I do not personally use them (yet) for my campaigns. Some newly released features such as the whiteboards could serve to replace my current mind mapping software and further reduce my amount of tools used.
If you want to know more about World Anvil you can join for free using the link below.