In my original post, I asked two questions.

Are those fair questions to ask?

OH! So no exporting at all - just choose which parts we want at import from the rwsecure file. That would be elegant, if it could be done.

I'm confused. Haven't people been paying attention? Secure content was never going to available for export. That was made clear when the import/export stuff was added over 2 years ago.

@kbs666 Most people are not going to remember discussions from 2 years ago. Lots of folks don't follow the discussion board closely. I do, but forgot about this. I don't particularly care as I'll just follow the process that daplunk recommends. It does make it more important, imo, to keep a copy of the purchased realm file handy since you'll need to import from that file to get purchased content into a realm.

This is why I would eventually like to see a web version of RW and have all this handled server side. With D&D Beyond, as a comparison, once I buy a book than its content is available for any character in whatever campaign. I don't have to worry about moving it around or doing multiple imports. Now, what DDB provides is not where near as complex and rich as what RW does. This is all blue-sky wishful thinking.

Bottom line, I'm extremely happy with the CM. It has greatly increased RW's value to me, even with the inelegant import functionality for secure content.

I was able to purchase Kobold Press's Tome of Beasts and Book of Lairs, download, import and was ready to run a game for my sons in under an hour. Smart maps, Hero Lab portfolios, and all the topics and linkages all done and ready.

I was also able to add Kobold Press's Creature Components to my current ongoing campaign realm and instantly have a system for harvesting and using monster parts added to my campaign.

Now if they could only license the official WoTC publications....

If you're confused, please reread my initial comment.

In my opinion, wht could make this possible without requiring to export secure content, and that could be useful in a lot of other user cases, would be a "copy to another realm" function for topics.

Sorry, I didn't get this :(
If secure content can't be exported, after I add to that realm the Pictures and descriptions from purchased secure content, how can I export that modified content to make the import pack?

I haven't tried it, but I would expect that RW would not export a snippet that you modified from a secured import; otherwise you could modify every snippet (add a dot) and then export the entire secured realm.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that there was supposed to be a way within Realm Works to share content between realms, but it relied on the Content Market to work. The export/import functionality as we now have it was a crutch that they released to appease the user base because the Content Market was so delayed.

I'm hoping that is still the plan - the export/import functionality is great for putting info into Realm Works or getting it out (especially with all of the work Farling has put into it), but it's still really clunky for sharing info between realms. Realm Works should make such inter-realm sharing easy, and in the process could continue to protect secure content.

-Ian

What was publicly stated when import/export was announced was that there had been plans for a different sort of functionality for getting content in/out and shared between realms but that it was turning out to be too complicated/taking too long to implement. Import/export is what we have for all of that.