Deleting pre-existing tags
 

Hi folks,

just getting started with RW, but my first impressions are quite positive. I will go into more detail later, but there is one thing I am wondering about:

Is it safe to delete predefined tags and categories if I do not intend to share the RW file itself with anyone and only use it for myself? I have read the notification window that shows up when attempting to do so, but found it fairly vague as to what issues this may cause.

Also: this only affects the data file of a single campaign but not future campaigns, right?

I am aware that I could just hide them, but for ease of managing tags and categories, I'd like to get rid of those I don't need (Race, for example) entirely in the mangement view as well.

I am pretty sure it's not safe for the following reason:

The tags exist in a specific space in the database. When you remove them you are playing with the database on a large level. If you never plan on integrating other content into your Realm, you might be safe.

If you do plan on adding in other content when content sharing becomes available, then the new content might not know exactly where to "stick things" when merging into your content, and make a mess of things.

I know I renamed a lot of Race tags and when an update came down that reverted all that work, I had no idea what I renamed them to, so it was a lot of work tracking down which races got overwritten.

Alright, thanks for the heads up. I'll stick to deactivating things for now. Or would, if my realm hadn't apparently shot itself without my doing anything beyond creating a few entries.

It is actually NOT possible to delete pre-defined structure elements. You'll find that the "Delete" option remains greyed out, even though you remove protection. The reason for this is basically what @DeckOfManyThings outlined. If you ever choose to import shared material from someone else in the future, that content may reference to elements and needs to be able to find them correctly in your realm. So the proper approach is to simply hide them and then you'll never see them when working with your content.

Any changes you do make to the structure is LOCAL to the realm in which you make those changes. So you can run one game with everything enabled, another with only a small number of things enabled, and yet another with something in between.

Hope this helps!

P.S. If you experienced a problem with your realm, please post about it in another thread. If that problem was a crash or other nasty failure along those lines, please submit a bug report. There's a sticky thread with the details at the top of the forum.