Topics vs Articles vs Mechanics
 

I've used Realm Works since it released and have created and deleted realms, and tried numerous ways of organizing content. One thing I keep coming back to is the separation between the core (topics) from the Mechanics (articles). Flipping back and forth between the two seems like a waste of time and I really don't see any benefit to setting up my data this way.

Is there any serious draw back of just making copies of all of the mechanical articles and then moving it all to the World side? As far as I can see, all of the original setup stays in tact in order to facilitate importing new content.

Once the content market is released this approach will cause you alot of rework if you use pre made content. Youre the first person I've heard of not wanting to use the mechanics section so I don't see any authors structuring content like this meaning you will have to migrate everything that is entered.

I would suggest waiting for LW to release the free content as it will show you how they think it should be setup and give you insight into whether you like what they have done before proceeding with such a significant change.

Fair enough; however, that essentially means that when you input the data from a sourcebook, you have to create an entry for the book on both sides and split the chapters putting all of the adventure (places, people, things, scenes) on the world side and the mechanics (monsters, treasure, etc..) on the mechanics side. Seems counterintuitive. I think I would rather see it all in one and organize it in its original book form pretty much as you suggest in your videos.

Affirmative on waiting for the next build; but since we have no clue or word when that will be.....

that's how i do it Strategon (everything in one place).

I reserve the "Mechanic"s section for core game mechanics and other things that fall into mechanics but ARE NOT part of an adventure or such.

This works very well for me, keeping the relevant monsters et al in the same section of the adventure that references them.

One of the advertised features of the cloud service, after the content market is released, will be that you can share realms. So you can create (or buy) a realm just for whatever book you want, then you can have a different realm for your adventure. You can share the realm for your book with the realm for your adventure. So you can still have an all-in-one realm for the book and an all-in-one realm for your adventure.

This will also allow you to enter (or buy) the book content just once, then share it multiple times with whatever other realms use it.

I am not a big fan of it either. All my original campaign realms never used it as it really does not provide any "benefit". The only reason I use it now is that for Pathfinder realms the monster, spells, magic item stuff is all setup for me making data entry easier.

If not for "pre-built" categories I would have left it all in the Story area of RW. Actually thinking back I don't think Mechanic section even existed when I started to use RW. :D

No i'm saying the content will already be organised into the world/story and mechanics sections. You won't need to manually arrange it if you plan on using it as intended or you decide to import it in a special way because you chose to manually sort it.

What you are talking about however will require a significant amount of re-work as its not native to just move content from one to the other.

I missed there "sharing" part somewhere, that is good to know. For some reason I was under the impression you couldn't link realms or share them out; but rather you would import said purchased resource, into an existing realm.

Just to be clear you do know that an Article and a Mechanic topic can link to each other without issue. Story stuff is not separated by a wall from Mechanic stuff.

So if in your story article it references a monster from the mechanic section you can just click the link to go it. Really Mechanic vs Story is just like a different "view" is all.

I see it as having my PHB, DMG and MM in one view and module / adventure books on the other.