Importing a different data source - the Doomsday Book
 

So if we can import a properly tagged XML file, it seems like it is possible to import data from other sources into Realm Works.

The Doomsday Book (King William I's first census of Norman England) is online and available via a creative commons attribution sharealike (cc-by-sa license). That's nearly all of medieval England down to the manorial level. Their data includes info not actually in the real Doomday book like WSG4 coordinates (to use with googlemaps of course).

You can access the json data of each entry via an api: http://opendomesday.org/api/

So, theoretically, we could write a script to query the Doomsday api for all its data and spit it out in xml and then import that into Realm Works.

That still would only be the skeleton of a Realm. We'd have the names of 12,000 manorial lords but no other identifying info. We'd know how many peasant households on how many hides of land, how many sheep they had, who the feudal lord and overlord were, etc., but no maps of roads, etc.

You'd need resources like the stuff in Harn to make use of it. Some things could be extrapolated, so many peasants to support a man-at-arms, sample village maps, etc.

Still, pretty tantalizing as a potential project? Buy Realm Works and get all of Norman England at your fingertips. heh.

That's an interesting idea...

I wasn't aware of that one but there are a number of such data sources out there. The challenges would be writing the script to produce the XML and turning the raw realm into a playable realm.

This would be an amazing project. Many gamers are history buffs. Translating the WSG4 coordinates into pin locations would result in an amazing view. Add in feudal relationship links. I would have loved this when I was in college as a side project.

I'm sure there's someone around here that has already figured out how to import from XML.

I have a laborious method of importing an Obsidian Portal backup file, but the process needs tidying up before I post it :-)

There's some GIS data on Domesday for the geographical stuff, but it's currently restricted to academic instituations (I asked).

Older geographic information is available in print form in the Domesday Geography series edited by HC Derby.

For roads, the best source I've found is later than Domesday - Paul Hindle's Medieval Roads and Tracks (Shire Archaeology 26), which is predominantly 13th century onwards (it uses records of royal perambulations to recreate main roads). Again, this is a print source.