Wyrdli vs World Anvil: which one runs your campaign?

I built Wyrdli, so read this knowing which side I'm on.

Which one should you use? If you want to write your world, its history, its maps, the royal family tree, use World Anvil, and it isn't close. If it's Thursday afternoon, the session is on Friday and you have no idea what happens when the party reaches the old mill, I built Wyrdli for that evening.

What is World Anvil good at?

Worldbuilding, deeper than anything else I know. Article templates for everything. Interactive maps with markers, layers and maps inside maps. Timelines, family trees, a diplomatic relations web, statblocks. More than 3.5 million worldbuilders, a free plan, and export on every plan.

The campaign side is real too: a Storyteller Screen for your notes during play, secrets and spoiler controls, articles and timelines for what the party did.

The complaint I read most in GM forums? Too many options on every screen, and a long climb before you get anything done. Plenty think the climb is worth it. Others are back in a Google Doc within a month.

What is Wyrdli good at?

Wyrdli is built around situations, not plots: scenes the party can walk into, secrets they can find out, and clues that lead there, each carried by an NPC or an item. Open a secret and you see every clue pointing at it and who carries each one, and the campaign keeps track of what the party has found and what's still buried.

Take the sample campaign, The Dragon of Thornwick. Farms are burning and everybody blames the green dragon in the marsh. The secret: the baron's court wizard is paying kobolds to set the fires. Four clues point at it: lamp oil on the straw that didn't catch, a healer who sees oil burns and no dragon poison, a nine-year-old who saw little men run to the mill, and a brass button under a charred beam.

In World Anvil the secret is an article, the healer and the kid get one each, and you link them by hand. On Friday they sit on your Storyteller Screen. It works.

In Wyrdli each clue knows its secret, so the secret lists its four ways in. After session two it tells you the party found the oil and ignored the kid. Two clues are still buried. In World Anvil you'd write that down yourself.

If your group plays on Discord, Wyrdli can also record the session and draft the recap. The AI is optional, never writes your players' characters, and the Essentials plan has none.

What doesn't Wyrdli do?

Most of what World Anvil does.

Maps are one image per campaign, no markers or layers. No family trees, no manuscript editor, no public world for readers, no community. No free plan either: the sample campaign opens without an account, but your own costs money after the trial.

Side by side

What do they cost?

Prices checked on 23 October 2026.

World Anvil (US dollars, before tax):

Secrets, private articles and no ads start at Master.

Wyrdli (euros):

Every plan starts with a 14-day free trial. Players never pay. Export works on every plan, even after your subscription ends.

Can I keep World Anvil and use Wyrdli too?

Yes. If you love writing your world there, keep doing it. World Anvil holds the lore. Wyrdli holds what's in play: the next two or three secrets, their scenes, the NPCs carrying the clues, and the calendar of what happened when.

There's no importer, so you rebuild only that. One evening of prep you were doing anyway.

Open the Thornwick campaign, no account needed: wyrd.li/demo.

Then go find out what's in the old mill before your players do.