Realm Works Users' Vent in the HLO Forum

[MNBlockHead]

I am using Foundry and World Anvil. The two integrate so that I can easily port WA content in Foundry. For my 5e game, I'm currently running Rappan Athuk, a massive mega-dungeon, and rather than copying and recreating everything I entered into RW into WA, I'm just using the PDF and focusing on prepping the maps in Foundry.

With my Mage the Ascension 20th Anniversary game, I am starting a homebrew world from scratch and so am finally making an effort to get the most out of World Anvil. It is taking some time to get used to. I miss the auto-linking of Realmworks, but the at-type-ahead (type @ and start typing to link other content) works well enough.

My work requires me to spend long stints out of country, I can't install gaming software on my work computer, and I really don't want to have to lug around two laptops, so having everything online is really nice. Even if RealmWorks development restarted, I'm not sure I would go back to it.

I don't play Pathfinder or Starfinder, so I've not had a use for HeroLab. For my 5e games, we use D&D Beyond with a third-party plug-in to Foundry that imports character sheets, monsters, spells, and equipment from DDB to Foundry.

[meek75]

I use Roll 20 to run my virtual games and just don't use a RW type tool anymore. If I was to go back to it, I would probably ho with WA, but my players just don't use the tool enough to merit the fee, so I either organize directly in Roll 20 or use Google Suite. Google makes sharing easy, and is web based. For my in-person game, which is 5e, I use DDB for characters and rules references, Roll 20 to display maps and pictures, and Google. DDB implemented the buy-as-you-go method very well.

[evildmguy]

I decided to take the plunge and went with World Anvil. Got a year with the thirty percent off sale. I think having that much of an investment means I will use it and spend the time to learn it. I currently use a (free) wiki and am also wondering if this will replace that at some point. I like to post session notes and plots, often in a form of prose, and to help remind myself. I don't know if I saw RW doing that or not originally but I was hoping the player versions would be more real time than what we got.

I'm maybe five hours into it and it's okay. I can make my own calendar. Heck, I can make several. I can put historical events on several timelines. This is not my full review of WA by any means.

• I go to put in an event and when I finish, instead of going back to the screen to enter a new event, I'm editing that event. It's not bad, just me getting used to how it works and not what I would prefer. While I use event here, that happens with everything. I want to enter a bunch of placeholders for various organizations but there are extra clicks to get out of editing the new one and back to adding one.
• Entering a new event and assigning it to a timeline doesn't mean it will show up nicely in the timeline. I can't figure out why but it creates orphan events.
• As the owner/GM, I can't easily see or figure out how to see a subscriber/player point of view. That's been annoying.
• I can't seem to enter PC information but have to invite them to do it? At least for me, my players might not so I want to be able to do that and maybe assign them

Having said that, this is a very shallow review. There looks to be potential for my wants, which is one timeline but holding multiple campaigns. It does appear that it can find some links or show me where things could link up. I will keep going and reporting. Further, there is a lot here, and maybe I shouldn't have reported, but hoping this will also nudge me to do more with WA and see how it works.

Here it is for any who want to see it or ask questions. Definitely a WIP. I'm trying to put events into this timeline for this version of FR. That means two previous campaigns, and the two current (lockdown) campaigns I have going. It does allow me to have one campaign use PF1 rules and another use 5E rules. They have character sheets for that but I haven't found a way to do anything with that yet.

https://www.worldanvil.com/w/forgotten-realms-evildmguy

Thanks!

edg

[Merion]

The big question is: is there an importer for RW in World Anvil?

Because if I can't automate that to at least some extent, I'm not using the tool. Right now I'm toying with the idea of just shoving everything into Foundry VTT. I'd lose some functionality like plots, relationships and my hirarchical order, but it might be worth a try.
Foundry has an open API and is written in Javascript while Realm Works allows a XML output. It should be possible to write an RWImport module for Foundry without 'too' much effort - take content from certain tags and put it into certain js object properties - but I've been using Foundry for a week now, so me writing a module for it is nothing that will happen short term. Mid-term I might think about it if no one else is doing it.

[Farling]

Originally Posted by Merion

The big question is: is there an importer for RW in World Anvil?

Because if I can't automate that to at least some extent, I'm not using the tool. Right now I'm toying with the idea of just shoving everything into Foundry VTT. I'd lose some functionality like plots, relationships and my hirarchical order, but it might be worth a try.
Foundry has an open API and is written in Javascript while Realm Works allows a XML output. It should be possible to write an RWImport module for Foundry without 'too' much effort - take content from certain tags and put it into certain js object properties - but I've been using Foundry for a week now, so me writing a module for it is nothing that will happen short term. Mid-term I might think about it if no one else is doing it.

At a very early stage for getting your requested RWoutput details into Foundry for running online. This is a module that runs inside Foundry and requires you to copy and paste the RWoutput file into a window, so not the perfect solution yet for big files:

https://github.com/farling42/fvtt-im...ad/module.json

[Maidhc O Casain]

That's fantastic, Farling! I recently bought Foundry - my first VTT program - and I'm just learning how to use it...

[Merion]

Originally Posted by Farling

At a very early stage for getting your requested RWoutput details into Foundry for running online. This is a module that runs inside Foundry and requires you to copy and paste the RWoutput file into a window, so not the perfect solution yet for big files:

https://github.com/farling42/fvtt-im...ad/module.json

Wow! You're a saint! Will test this the coming week - already stoked!

Is there a recommended size limit? My realm is well beyond the 1GB mark as an export file - is that feasible or should I break it down in chunks?

[Farling]

Originally Posted by Merion

Wow! You're a saint! Will test this the coming week - already stoked!

Is there a recommended size limit? My realm is well beyond the 1GB mark as an export file - is that feasible or should I break it down in chunks?

You should create an RWoutput file, not an RWexport file, for use with this tool. It might be smaller.

You might also want to break up your large realm. At the moment, each time you use the tool to perform an import, the data is going into a single compendium within Foundry. So to get data into separate compendiums, you can use separate outputs from RW and imports into Foundry.

[evildmguy]

There is a planned API for WA but it is in dev and GET only right now. So, no importer. Maybe? It is json at the moment, so a converter to that would have to be written from RW's XML.

In the end, I didn't use RW for much. I did a lot at the beginning but since I didn't feel like RW allowed me to do improve and create an entire inn with staff easily on the fly, I didn't use it during the game. Once that happened, I found myself using RW less and less. I didn't like that because I would at least enter NPCs and put in their connections and then would see a lot really cool options I might not have.

I don't know that WA is the answer either. I just thought I would try it and see.

At the moment, I'm using a college ruled composition notebook. As the campaigns I'm running are happening about the same time and indirectly connected, one campaign is the front of the notebook and one started from the back.

Thanks!

edg

[Acenoid]

Iam still actively using it.

Iam stioll hoping for the impossible - that they lit the torch again and provide some updates.

It's so great that this tool works offline - I don't want to have all my date in some webspace