The best D&D campaign management software for long-running games
Past about session twenty the bottleneck in a campaign stops being prep and becomes recall. You need the NPC your players met in session four, at the table, in under ten seconds, and you need to know whether you already named the innkeeper. These are the tools that do that, and the tradeoff each one asks for.
The quick picks
| Tool | Best for | Price | Tradeoff |
|---|---|---|---|
| vvd | Lore, maps and player wiki together | Free tier · from $5.75/mo | Younger, fewer system templates |
| Kanka | The most free capability | Free tier | Functional interface |
| LegendKeeper | Player sharing, not much else | Free · Pro $9/mo | Thin over Obsidian or Notion |
| World Anvil | Deepest structure and player views | Free tier · paid tiers | Steep learning curve |
| Obsidian | Notes you own, offline, forever | Free personal | You build it yourself |
| Foundry VTT | Running the actual session | $50 one-time | Setup and hosting effort |
| Roll20 | Getting online tonight | Free · from $5.99/mo | Costs more over years |
| Notion | A campaign beside your other work | Free tier | Relations are manual |
(Pricing verified 22 September 2026.)
Two different jobs
Most comparisons go wrong by treating these as one category. They are two.
A virtual tabletop runs the session. Maps, tokens, initiative, dice, lighting. Foundry and Roll20 live here. Their note features exist but are not built for a large body of lore.
A campaign wiki holds the world between sessions. Entries, relationships, timelines, player-facing pages. vvd, Kanka, LegendKeeper and World Anvil live here.
You can run a campaign with only a VTT, and many do. What you cannot do is run a long campaign with only a VTT, because journal entries in a session tool are documents, and documents do not tell you that the innkeeper belongs to the thieves’ guild.
Campaign wikis
vvd
Entries, interactive maps and a shareable wiki in one world, with markers on the map linking to real entries. Relationship views are generated from the entries rather than drawn by hand, so they cannot drift out of date.
Free tier covers one world, 20 documents and 100 MB. Hobbyist $5.75/month or $69/year. Pro $10.75/month or $129/year adds unlimited worlds, public publishing, a custom domain and API access. (Verified 22 September 2026.)
Tradeoff. Fewer ready-made templates for specific systems than World Anvil, so 5e-specific scaffolding is something you may set up yourself.
Kanka
Open-source, around twenty entry types, maps, timelines, calendars and permissions, on a free tier that is genuinely usable rather than a trial.
Tradeoff. Functional rather than polished. Everything works and little of it is a pleasure, which matters more than DMs admit, because the tool you enjoy opening is the one you keep updated.
LegendKeeper
Per-entry player sharing that works, in a tidy interface. Free Basic plan; Pro $9/month, or $7.50/month billed annually. (Verified 22 September 2026.)
Tradeoff. It has been around for years without becoming the tool anyone reaches for first. Run against the test campaign it did little that Obsidian or Notion could not, and it reads as a thin layer of campaign vocabulary over a general notes tool. A single paid tier means no cheap way to test that judgement for yourself.
World Anvil
The deepest structure available, with mature player-facing features built over years: reader groups, per-article permissions and secrets.
Free Freeman tier, then Master at $7/month, Grandmaster at $12/month and Sage at $34/month, billed monthly and excluding VAT. Co-author seats scale with the tier: 4, 9 and 20. (Verified 22 September 2026.)
Tradeoff. The steepest learning curve in the category.
Obsidian
Plain Markdown on your own disk, with backlinks. Works offline, which at a physical table with bad venue wifi is not a small thing.
Free for personal use; Sync $4/user/month annually. (Verified 22 September 2026.)
Tradeoff. You are assembling and maintaining a plugin stack. Excellent if you enjoy that, a liability if you do not.
Virtual tabletops
Foundry VTT
Self-hosted, one-time $50 licence, and only the host buys it. Players join free. Dynamic lighting, fog of war, and a module ecosystem that covers nearly everything. Self-hosting is free if you leave a machine on; managed hosts such as The Forge run roughly $3.50 to $5 a month. (Verified 22 September 2026.)
Tradeoff. Setup is real work, and you are the sysadmin for your group.
Roll20
Browser-based, nothing to install, the shortest path from nothing to a first online session. Free tier is usable; Plus at $5.99/month adds dynamic lighting and storage; Pro at $9.99/month adds API scripting. (Verified 22 September 2026.)
Tradeoff. Cost over time. Roll20 Pro runs roughly $240 over two years against $50 once for Foundry, with break-even somewhere around eight to ten months.
The loop that actually keeps a campaign findable
The tool matters less than the habit, and the habit is two steps.
Capture at the table. One line per name your players invent or latch onto, rather than a full entry. Anything more and you stop running the game.
Promote afterwards. Anything mentioned twice earns a real entry. Anything mentioned once stays a line in the session log.
That second rule is what stops the wiki filling with nouns nobody will ever search for. A campaign wiki with 400 entries where 300 came up once is functionally the same as no wiki, because search stops discriminating.
Which should you choose?
- Playing online, long campaign, cost-conscious: Foundry for the table, Kanka or vvd for the world.
- Playing online, starting this week: Roll20, and move later if the campaign sticks.
- Playing in person: skip the VTT entirely. Put the money into the wiki.
- Players need to read the lore: World Anvil for the deepest permissions, vvd if you want a published wiki with a custom domain.
- You want to own your notes forever: Obsidian.
Method
Each tool was set up with the same twelve-session campaign: 40 NPCs, three regions, one interactive map and a shared player wiki. The measures were time to find a named NPC from a cold start, whether a map marker could link to an entry, whether player-facing sharing worked without a paid seat, and whether notes were usable with no internet connection.
Pricing was checked on 22 September 2026 and is noted per tool. Anything that could not be verified directly from the vendor is marked rather than guessed.
Frequently asked
What is the best free tool for organising D&D campaign notes?
Kanka has the most generous free tier with real campaign features, including entry types, maps, timelines and permissions. Obsidian is free and gives you more control at the cost of building the structure yourself. vvd's free tier covers one world and 20 documents, enough to test with a real campaign.
Do I need a virtual tabletop and a campaign wiki, or just one?
They do different jobs. A VTT runs the session; a wiki holds the world between sessions. Foundry and Roll20 have journal features that stretch to light lore, but if your campaign has a large cast you will want a wiki alongside.
Is Foundry VTT worth it over Roll20?
If you will run more than about ten months of sessions, yes on cost alone, since Foundry is $50 once against roughly $6 to $10 a month for Roll20's paid tiers. Roll20 wins on setup time and on nothing needing to be installed.
How do professional DMs organise lore for long campaigns?
Almost universally with one entry per named thing, linked rather than foldered, plus a capture habit at the table and a promote step afterwards. The tool varies; the two-step loop does not.