I like playing Dungeons & Dragons with friends and family. When I run a campaign, I prefer to use a campaign manager to help keep me and the players organized and informed. I have tried out many different online campaign managers. Below I have reviewed the ones I have tried.
City of Brass
City of Brass is great for building your campaign. I really like that you can create your own worlds and adventures. It includes rules, creatures, spells, and items from some of the popular games, so you do not have to recreate them. Using the included materials doesn’t use a free slot, so if you are going to have a free membership, using the those will help. It doesn’t have features like a forum or calendar. It is a little complicated getting started but they have tutorials on almost everything.
EpicWords
EpicWords is my favorite, and I used it for the last campaign I ran. Most of the features I want are free and the premium ones only cost $12/year! That is a price I am willing to pay. I love the XP feature, especially since I had some issues with players not adding up their XP correctly. It will even email you when your character levels up! I was planning on using again but it now takes forever to load or I get load errors. The owner doesn’t do any upkeep on it either. I am not sure how long this one will stay around for.
Obsidian Portal
Obsidian Portal is one of the more popular campaign managers. I really like this manager, except some of the important features, like the calendar, are for paid members only. I like how easy it is to use and that it can be styled to look how you want it to, which can give ambiance to your game when the players visit the site.
Scabbard
Scabard is hard to navigate. It took me a while to figure out what is what. There are some videos you should watch before using for the first time. It looks like it is useful for a GM to plan and run a game, but not for interacting with the players online. There is no calendar or forum.
Comparison Chart
| City of Brass | EpicWords | Obsidian Portal | Scabard | |
| # of Free Campaigns | 1 | 1 active | 2 | unlimited |
| System | Any | Any | Any | Any |
| Private | Free | Free | Paid | Paid |
| Custom Styling | NA | Paid | Paid | NA |
| Email Notifications | NA | Free | Paid | NA |
| GM Only Section | Free | Free | Free | Paid |
| Secret Sharing | NA | Free PM | Paid | Paid |
| Forums | NA | Free | Paid | NA |
| Calendar | NA | Free | Paid | NA |
| Journal/Blog | Free (Recaps) | Free | Free | Free |
| Media Library | Free | Paid | Free | Paid |
| Storage (free/paid) | 10 images / unlimited | 0 / unlimited | 10mb / 10gb | 0 / unlimited |
| Wiki | Free | Free | Free | Free |
| Character Info | 2 Free (complete) | Free (basic info) | Free (complete) | Paid (complete) |
| XP Tracker | NA | Free | NA | NA |
| Paid Fee | $5.00/month | $12/year | $4.99/month or $39.99/year | $29.99/year |
None of the campaign managers I reviewed worked well for what I wanted so I made my own private campaign manager using WordPress (self-hosted) and several plugins. If I want more than one campaign, I can use the multisite option to quickly add another one or even allow others to create their own. If you are interested in this option I could post about how I did this.