A D&D campaign website your players will actually read
Players forget names between sessions; a campaign site fixes that. Keep three things current: session recaps, the people and places the party has met, and the lore they've actually discovered. Store each as a collection so a recap takes ten minutes after the game, and add a small dice roller or initiative tracker as an app if your table wants one.
What players open it for
A game master's notes are for the game master. A campaign site is for the table, and players use it in narrow moments: the evening before a session ("what happened last time?"), mid-session ("what was the name of the dwarf with the debt?") and when writing their own backstory. Build for those moments. A beautiful page of world history nobody reads is less useful than a reliable list of non-player characters.
Three collections that do most of the work
- Session recaps
- Session number, date played, title, a 150 to 300 word recap, loot gained, open threads. Write it within a day while it's fresh, or rotate the job between players.
- Characters
- Name, portrait, where met, faction, what the party knows, status (alive, dead, missing). Only what players know, never your secret notes.
- Places and lore
- Name, region, a short description, related characters, and the session it was discovered in.
In Anticode these are CMS collections with typed fields you choose, edited in the dashboard. Each collection is served at its own address, so /sessions/ lists every recap and /characters/mira-ashdown is Mira's page. A link from a recap to a character page is what turns a pile of notes into a campaign wiki for players: when someone asks who Mira was, you send a link.
Keeping secrets
Published sites are public, and there's no password protection or player login. Treat the site as something your players, and anyone with the address, can read. That's a feature for a player-facing site, but it rules out keeping your plot notes, stat blocks for upcoming encounters or the villain's real identity there. Keep those in a private notes tool. A tabletop RPG campaign site should only contain what's been revealed at the table.
- Add a character or place only after the party meets it.
- Write what the party believes, not the truth, if those differ; the twist lands better.
- Leave out players' real names if they'd rather; use character names throughout.
A dice roller or initiative tracker as an app
Anticode can build small interactive tools as apps: the model writes the whole program as one HTML document. For a campaign that might be a dice roller with advantage and disadvantage, an initiative tracker that sorts combatants and marks conditions, or a party loot ledger. Apps run in a sandbox with no network, so nothing is shared between players live; each person's tracker saves in their own browser. Owner-edited content such as the character collection can be read by an app, read-only, so a "who's who" quiz or a searchable list of characters can draw on the same entries.
Building it
Describe it: "a site for our Wednesday D&D campaign, The Ashen Coast, with session recaps, characters and places collections, a party page with each player's character, and a world map image". Upload your maps and character art, provided you made them or have the right to use them. Brutalist (Archivo) or Editorial (Geist) suit a grim setting; Playful (Fredoka) suits a lighter one. One font family per site keeps it readable at the table on a phone.
If players take turns writing recaps, have them send the text to you and add it as a new entry, so the site keeps one editor and one voice for headings. The fan website page covers sites about published settings rather than your own.
What it doesn't do
- No player logins, private pages or GM-only sections. Everything published is public.
- No comments or player edits. Players send corrections and backstories through a contact form or your group chat.
- No live shared dice or maps. Apps have no network; use a virtual tabletop for that.
- No character sheet sync with D&D Beyond or other services. Link to them instead.
- No embedded maps from other sites. Upload a map image, or link to an interactive one.
Questions people ask
Is a D&D campaign website better than World Anvil or a shared document?
It depends on what you need. Worldbuilding platforms offer deep lore tools and secrets; a shared document is quickest. A site like this suits a GM who wants a clean, fast, player-facing record.
Can I use official D&D art?
Check the publisher's fan content policy before using any official art or text. Your own drawings, commissioned art you have rights to and photos of your table are safest.
How long should a session recap be?
Short enough to read before the next game: 150 to 300 words, with a list of loot and open questions at the end.