Starting Over Questions
 

So I've had the same realm for several years along with various bugs and issues.

I'm starting over with a new blank realm, mainly for Mechanics at this time, but I want to make sure I avoid issues when exporting/importing via RW.

My main question is this: Should I create all new categories from scratch (called for example Character Creation, Skills, etc.)? Or, should I duplicate existing Categories and Remove Protection on the custom one?

Again, this is mainly to avoid any issues when exporting/importing, since I'd like these rules to be the default for future games.

Clarification: In the above question, I would NOT delete or otherwise change the default Categories, only Remove Protection from the duplicate (which is also renamed and given different tags).

Protection only applies to the Global Categories. (Duplicates don't have Protection.)

FWIW, my custom Categories are almost all made from duplicates, but it shouldn't matter how you got there.

Hmm, weird. I started a fresh Realm and duplicated several Categories, but the dupes have protection on them...

I would be careful of custom categories. I very much regret creating any at all. They have caused me a lot of grief and have made some realms impossible to sync.

Great. So custom categories break syncs? Copied categories break sync. Changing standard categories breaks sync. Anything else? :D

I have found RW to be very buggy and not super stable. Others seem to have very few problems. User error? bad luck? buggy program? Perhaps a bit of all the above. I do know there is a known bug with custom categories that LWD has not fixed. I'm not sure of the details, but I have a custom category I can't delete and that stops my sync.

Yeah, it sucks. I love aspects of it, having played with it since the Kickstarter, but the lack of bug repair is annoying.

I have several custom categories in my main realm and have never had a problem syncing. Also duplicated categories should not have protection. Are you changing the name to something so its clear which is the new one?

There is a known issue with custom categories (not that LWD have communicated that though...) where you. Cannot delete custom categories without crashing. This is not a game stopping issue though. You can still use them and I sync realms all the time that have them. What you cannot do is delete them so I simply make it so they are not visible from memory until the time comes when an update is released that allows us to remove them the way we used to be able to.

Meek maybe try to move topics away from them to delete it, maybe try to add a topic and move it away again. Attempt to remove sections / settings in the custom category.

Personally I think that custom categories are no problem ( for me at the moment ).
In case it would no longer synch I would annoy LWD with mails until they fix it. Can't be that hard to provide you with information on how to prove a debug report or smth to thelp them locate the problem :/

Anyways, unless you go public with your realm and unless you want to import stuff from the content market I would recommend you to create custom categories whereever you feel that you need them.

Be sure to update to the latest version, before doing anything.