Export of Copyright Material
 

Somewhere I thought I remember Rob explaining how to deal with copyrighted content market material and sharing that material between your realms. I cannot locate that post.

What I recall is that you cannot export copyrighted material, but you can import material you own into any realm you want. I cannot remember how he recommended dealing with revising that material.

So, I guess my question is, what exactly can you export if a topic is copyrighted material from content market? What if you revise a content market topic? Can you export that to import into one of your other realms?

From memory a content provider can mark the content as restricted which stops the export option on the content. Having not seen it though, I'm just guessing.

So you still won't be able to print material you own because you cannot export it. Boy, that will make the print maniacs upset.

Exported files can be password protected which seems to protect the material from having the images removed and prevents the material from being exported from realms into which it has been imported.

I would assume that the underlying DB record is marked so editing the topic and even changing its name might not free a topic from such.

Well given the only print ability we have now is provided by a community member and is not supported... it's hardly something to get angry over. I would not expect any printable content to come out of WOTC if that license ever happens.

I don't get the need to print myself. But each to their own.

I wonder how many thousands of dollars in ink it would cost to print my realm actually...

There is no way I could see to export only the entries modified since a given date/time, right?

I would think timestamps for entries are definitely available to RW but maybe not to us end users. Changes are trackable in RW. This sounds like a good thing to request in the Request Forum for the advanced exports.

*Gets out a pair of binoculars and looks around.*

Oh, hey, there. Over there. Hey, Bid, I think I see were your barbs landed. Waaaaay over there. Wow, they really missed the mark.

No, not upset. Not even close. In fact, I'm quite pleased. Rob has said from the start that one of his concerns with printing was the protection of copyrighted material. This isn't news. This isn't a surprise. This was the expectation from day one of me asking about the ability to print.

And from day one, I've said I understood Rob's position on this point. I have some frustrations with the copyright holders, but not with Rob wanting to stay in business and wanting to stay legal. But still, all I wanted was the ability to print my own content, and I have that.

Not only do I have that, but since I was able to write my own script, I was able to tailor the output to my specific taste. And I've got a good set of command line options that allow me to make each conversion a little bit different. I can include inline images at different sizes, according to percentage. I can print stat blocks inline or just leave them as clickable links. I can choose to indent or not. And the output comes out looking really nice.

After I wrote the script, even though I wrote it primarily for myself, and tailored it to my own taste, I decided to share it with the community here. I have enjoyed the fruits of the labors of everyone here who have contributed to the community packs and to other data sets, so I give back when I can.

I'm no expert with data sets. I get frustrated with them rather easily sometimes. And they are very time consuming. But this script ... this I was able to do. So I shared it for your and for everyone else here.

And make no mistake, it's not JUST for printing. Once you export it to HTML, you can transfer it to a tablet if you wish. You can have access to view your realms anywhere you go, with or without internet access. You can be kicking back on the beach, or in an underground, concrete bunker with no cell or satellite signal. But so long as you transferred the file to your tablet, you're good to go.

You can print to a PDF file for whatever reason you might want to. Maybe you use a VTT that allows you to incorporate PDFs as handouts.

Maybe you want to format your document more professionally in a word processor or desktop publishing application. Well, now you can either import the HTML directly or copy and paste larger blocks of text instead of having to go snippet by snippet.

Other people may come along and do a better job than I've done, but for now at least, I can point at this thing and say, "I did this. I made this possible. Not just for myself, but for the whole community here."

So yes, I am a "print maniac", but in the best possible way. And far from upset, I'm quite giddy. :-D

It's not just about printing. It's about flexibility and portability. If you want to convert your export to a readable document and transfer it to your tablet, you can do that now. If you want to import the content of your realm into some other application to format it differently, you can do that now. If you want to share some of your realm content with someone who doesn't have Realm Works, you can do that now. If you want to display your realm content on your own web site, you can do that now.

These are some valid issues you raise. To be honest, as much as I love Realm Works, it's still not a complete solution for me (yet). Consequently, my work flow (prep, world building, etc.) looks like this:

Scrivener = World building, writing, backstories, all writing pre-realm works. RW doesn't have solid editing and error correction or printing, etc. Therefore, my base copy of my RW realm exists here. I consider this my development environment. I develop and print all campaign guides, lore sheets, cheat sheets from here.

Realm Works = Once I'm through with development and my content is ready for prime-time, I "deploy" from my scrivener project to Realm Works. I use realm works as my live game tool. I don't want to look in books or any other source, everything to run my games exists here.

VTT. I have a custom built game table with a recessed 46inch flatscreen in the center and I run all of my maps and content on the tv screen in the game table. I use various 3rd party apps to project my maps as RW is still maturing in this area.

Obsidian Portal. Campaign Notes, Session Notes, Revealed Lore, World Atlas. This is the "group" for my campaigns. All of the players at my table go here. This is our Campaign Bible, Lexicon, etc. We tried the player view and client versions of RW. Players didn't like that and wanted a more web-centric way of accessing our campaign.

My point is, rather than work hard to find a way to make RW do everything I want, I love it and use it for what it does right now and then look for other tools that handle the other components of my development work flow and live games.