D&D 5E Best Online Platform for D&D Campaign Management?

[Zulgyan]

I'm looking for a good (and free) online platform for managing the campaign between sessions. Some sort of message posting board where I can run the player's downtime activities, such as crafting or buying magic items, handle social and political relations, train new skills, etc.

I would also like to have a section where the campaign's information is always readily available, such as basic info about the gods of my homebrew world, info about the most important cities, stores, NPCs, houserules and such.

Which platform do you use and recommend?

Thanks

 

[iserith]

I use Roll20 even if it's an in-person game. There are campaign forums where you can sticky important threads, plus you can put stuff in the in-game Journal which exports to the External Journal that players can access on the site. (I think the latter is a free feature, not sure.) Plus, if you need someone to roll something, they can do it in-game real quick and have it be on the record.

Of course, whether your players actually read all the stuff you post is a different issue!

 

[Oofta]

I use Obsidian Portal, but I use the pay version ... and I'm not 100% sure I'd recommend it.

Have you considered just using google docs or similar? Set up a drop box account and invite other users? You get what you pay for (sometimes), so free options are going to be somewhat limited.

 

[Bupp]

Google docs works well for me. You can invite people with either read-only status, or give them the ability to edit as well.

You could also use a play-by-post type of site, such as tavernkeeper.com Set up a game as invite only, so only your players are involved.

 

[SkidAce]

I use Obsidian Portal, but I use the pay version ... and I'm not 100% sure I'd recommend it.

Have you considered just using google docs or similar? Set up a drop box account and invite other users? You get what you pay for (sometimes), so free options are going to be somewhat limited.

I am still at Obsidian Portal, but I no longer recommend it.

 

[dropbear8mybaby]

D&D Beyond is shaping up to be pretty good, albeit taking it's sweet time to get through the beta. They've promised that Phase 2 (character creation and sheet) will be available sometime this month and that Phase 3 will come very shortly after that so hopefully it will be in a useable form for campaign management soon.

 

[Sotik]

I second roll20. I personally run my game on it since my IRL friends now live thousands of miles from me, but it has all the tools needed to run a campaign. Your players can roll dice, talk in chat, store their characters sheets so either you or them can reference it, upload handouts, and so on. And as said above it has a personal forum section that only your group can see where you can post things.

Discord is also another free option. You can make and lock chat rooms that other players can still see, so you can make rooms specially for topics like your gods and cities. It is also a good texting program as well as voice, and you can even get a dice rolling program in case you want it. In fact my DM has a in character chat that our party uses for the exact things you are talking about between our game nights.

 

[S'mon]

I use a couple awesome platforms - Blogspot & Facebook.

Blogspot blogs do a great job self-organising my material plus I keep an index of important stuff on the right.
Most people already use Facebook, a private Group is the perfect place to post between-game stuff.

Couple examples of my campaign blogs:
http://nentirvalecampaign.blogspot.co.uk/ (a new one, few months old)
http://smonscurseofthecrimsonthrone.blogspot.co.uk/ (a big old one, 3.5 years so far)
http://frloudwater.blogspot.co.uk/ (a big 5.5 year campaign, now concluded)