Sharing realms for shared development

[shamavir]

Hi folks -

I'd like to share one of my Realms with a second GM to enable shared development of modules, setting, NPCs, etc.. We'd both need full edit access, so this isn't the same as one GM / one player. We'd want common shared updating, of course.

We'd both have separate RW licenses, and each also have our own private Realms linked to our own accounts.

Might this be put on the list? A workaround at present could be to export locally and use Github Gists to pass the current file around, but that's obviously not a happymaking solution.

Thanks -

[Silveras]

At present this is not possible.

There is no "export".. what the backup utility does is make is a backup of your entire database (all Realms). When you restore, it is still marked as owned by your account on the server (I think).

The closest functionality I know of are the marketplace and repository, which have not been implemented yet. With them you will be able to "publish" your work to each other. Even then, if I understand correctly, you will each be trading NEW realms to each other, not updating the same one.

In short.. it did not appear from previous comments that the development team had planned on co-GMs directly. As of now, there isn't any good method to do so (that I know of).

[pyremius]

I think we brought the concept up during the Kickstarter as shared worlds are reasonably common, but I'm pretty sure that was rather low on the priority list. Co-GM access opens up a whole new set of Rights issues: is granularity set at the Topic- or Snippet- level; if there are more then two GMs, can n-1 be granted Rights to individual Topics; Is Inheritability mandatory, unavailable, or optional; can the host GM have their Rights reduced for specific Topics (they play when one or more of the other GMs is running the game); do we get edit tracking so it's possible to see who removed/changed key data; etc. Beyond that there's the legal issues to worry about, such as proving each GM owns the relevant material they're accessing (even though we run our games on different continents (sourcebooks) would we be required to own all the books the other person uses because their content is present?)

I'm sure they'll work out something eventually, but at the moment there are more pressing issues for the majority of users: Player View, Content Market, Calendars, and data export come to mind as applying to both Co_GM environments and single-GM environments.

[shamavir]

Hrm. Good point Silveras; that 'export' won't work at all. Thanks for both your replies. For what it's worth, calendars are a priority for me too (the others less so, though export might serve the present issue in a clunkier way).

I see that trying to create a highly granular set of access controls and checkouts for shared realms could be a huge job, and probably not a huge priority. But, again for what it's worth, I would be more than happy with the simplest version imaginable, with no granularity at all (i.e., only one can access the realm at a time), all-or-none access (you're either a GM/co-owner of the realm, or not), no edit tracking, hence no need to govern rights at any more granular level. Seems like the lockout system wouldn't be much more complex than that for the two sites allowed under the present license.

Not sure what the concern is about the 'legal issues'. I write all the stuff I put into RW, and haven't had to prove my ownership of any books to anybody. I suppose I could copy copyrighted information into RW, but that wouldn't be made worse by sharing a Realm, and isn't more of a liability than, say, Dropbox or Evernote endure for providing cloud space. Am I missing something?

Anyway, thanks for the clarifications, and +1 for the ability to share realms at some point in the future, even in the simplest form.

cheers

[TheSleeper]

Here’s how you do this:

Save a file to your computer and share that file so that person can access the same file they copy it and then they save it to their folder and they have the same file. If you set it up so that the person can change the file then they can save the copy or as an alternate you can upload it to a FTP site or to Google.docs or something like that and give him permission to DL and change it.

You need to take care that you don’t both open up the doc and mod it then the first persons changes will be over written so save copies JIC.