Quote:
Originally Posted by rob
Um, I missed this comment before, so let me chime in here. You should NOT convert 20 realms to PF and THEN convert the PF realms to D&D. I'm pretty sure that's not exactly what you plan on doing, but just in case...
What you should do is leave all the existing realms as Legacy for now - or convert them to Other. Then clean them up all after I publish the Content Sharing Guidelines, for which I'll have an initial draft available in a few days (hopefully sooner). That way, you do that work once, since it will apply to both flavors (PF and D&D). At that point, you should then COPY each of the realms so that you have two clones of each. You can then convert each of the realm a single time to PF or D&D. When you're done, you'll have a PF version that can be tailored with PF-specific material and a D&D version that can tailored with D&D-specific material. And you won't have to do anything general between them in duplicate, so this is the past of least work for you to get this stuff across the finish line.
Hope this helps!
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And now I'm replying to myself on this stuff. Ugh.
After further consideration, it's quite possible that the approach I outlined above won't be the optimal approach for you to use. You may find it best to NOT use the copy mechanism. Instead, you may want to employ a cascading export/import chain. Let's focus on one realm as an example.
You start with the realm as either Legacy or Other - or perhaps even System Neutral. You setup the realm with all the material that is applicable to both Pathfinder and D&D5E. Then you export the realm and import it separately into both a Pathfinder realm and a D&D5E realm. Within those two realms, you make the appropriate revisions unique to the game system. Then you ultimately export from those two realms for publishing the content.
With this approach, you can go back to the original source realm and make any revisions there in a single place (i.e. non-game-specific errata). After making those changes, you export from that realm and import back into each of the two game-specific realms, which will update the pertinent records within the two game-specific realms (unless you've edited the specific snippets involved within the game-specific realms). Once that's done, then you can export from the two game-specific realms to release the official errata for each.
The only caveat with the above approach is that you'll be a guinea pig with this stuff. We've tested the above process ourselves, and it appears to be solid. But I'm honestly not sure if anyone on the Beta team really focused on testing this more complex series of steps - I find that unlikely. So I'd be remiss if I didn't warn you that you may be the first person to leverage this capability in the field, and there may be landmines that we missed in our testing. And the moment you introduce game system conversion into the mix, which you will, things get more complicated under the covers, which means it's more possible that we overlooked something.
Given the above caveat, you'll probably find it safest to convert the original realms to System Neutral. If you do that, you're eliminating the complications of game system conversion to the greatest extent possible. Then it's a matter of testing out the process.
If you want to proceed with this approach, I recommend that you copy one of your smaller realms to use as a test case. Starting with that copy, you can go through the process and see how it works for you. You can also go back to the copy, apply revisions/errata, and verify that those propagate through the chain appropriately. If you run into any hiccups in the process, absolutely let us know and we'll do our best to get them fixed in a timely manner. Supporting this complex process was an import design goal for us, so we're definitely going to be ensuring it all works. The only question at the moment is whether it's bulletproof for someone to leverage it for lots of different books to be published. I hope so, but I honestly can't be sure yet.
Let me hear you squeak like a lab rat!
