Giving players a wiki without spoiling the campaign
A player-facing wiki has exactly one hard problem: some of what you have written must never be visible, and which parts changes every session. Everything else is easy. So the tool question is which one gives you per-entry visibility rather than a per-world switch.
Why per-world sharing fails
A single “make this world public” toggle forces an impossible choice: publish everything including the twist, or publish nothing.
What DMs do instead is maintain a private world and a public one, copying entries across by hand. This works for about three months. Then the copies diverge, you update the wrong one, and a player reads something that is no longer true.
Per-entry visibility removes the second copy entirely. One world, with a flag per entry.
What the tools actually offer
| Tool | Player-facing control |
|---|---|
| World Anvil | The most mature: per-article permissions, reader groups, and secrets inside otherwise-public articles |
| LegendKeeper | Per-entry sharing works; the rest is thin over a general notes tool |
| vvd | Public, password-protected or invite-only publishing; custom domain on Pro at $10.75/mo |
| Kanka | Per-entry permissions, free tier |
| Obsidian Publish | Per-note publish control, but coarse: you choose what leaves the vault, $8/site/mo annual |
(Verified 22 September 2026.)
World Anvil’s “secrets” mechanic, a block inside an article visible only to chosen readers, is the most refined version of this idea anywhere, and it is why a lot of long-campaign DMs stay on it despite the learning curve.
What belongs on the player side
Places they have been. Not places they have heard of. The distinction is what makes the map feel earned.
NPCs they have met, as the party understands them. The fence they think is trustworthy stays trustworthy on the player wiki until the table learns otherwise. The player wiki records the party’s model of the world, not the true one.
Factions, once named. Who they are, what is publicly known about them. This is the highest-value page type, because faction politics is exactly what players cannot hold in their heads.
Their own session recaps. Let players write these. It costs you nothing, they enjoy it, and it tells you what your table thinks is happening, which is regularly not what you think you communicated.
The open promises list. What the party owes and is owed. Shared, this becomes a to-do list they act on rather than a thread you have to keep reminding them about.
What stays off it
Anything provisional. A player wiki is a commitment, and contradicting it is worse than never having published. If you have not decided, do not publish it.
Anything upstream of a reveal, including things that look harmless. A family name on a minor NPC’s page is enough for an attentive player to draw the line you were saving.
Your prep. Notes on what you are planning belong in the private half of the world.
The habit that keeps it alive
Update the player wiki at the same moment you update your own entries, usually as part of the fifteen-minute promote step after a session. Two separately-maintained records will diverge, and once they have, nobody trusts either.
The practical version: keep one world, flag entries as player-visible when the party learns them, and let the wiki be a by-product of the notes you were keeping anyway. Every tool above supports that. Copying by hand into a separate public site does not survive contact with a busy month.
Is it worth it?
Under about ten sessions, probably not. The value comes from accumulated history the party can no longer hold in their heads, and that takes time to build.
Past twenty sessions it is one of the highest-return things you can do, for a reason that is easy to miss: it moves lore from something you have to tell players into something they look up. That is time at the table given back to play.
Frequently asked
What is the best way to share campaign lore with players?
A wiki with per-entry visibility, so you reveal pages as the party learns things rather than choosing between showing everything and showing nothing. World Anvil has the deepest controls; vvd supports public, password-protected and invite-only publishing; LegendKeeper does it too, though it adds little over Obsidian or Notion otherwise.
Should players be able to edit the wiki?
Let them keep their own pages for session recaps, their characters and their theories, and keep canon read-only. Player-written recaps tell you what your table actually thinks is happening.
How do I stop players reading ahead?
Structurally, not by trusting them. If a tool only offers per-world visibility you will eventually publish something you meant to hide. Check per-entry permissions before you commit a campaign to a platform.
Is a player wiki worth the effort for a short campaign?
Probably not under about ten sessions. The value comes from accumulated history the party can no longer hold in their heads, and that takes time to build up.