My Players Reaction To Player Edition

[pickin_grinnin]

Originally Posted by Chemlak

I guess my question is what other software are you using that you want to manipulate your Realm data in that you want to be able to export to?

At the very least, I want to be able to dump to PDF, so that I can maintain paper backups.

I would very much like to be able to export to .csv files, at the very least, or have some sort of SQL access to my database so that I can pull data out myself.

I don't really have a need to do any data manipulation outside of Realm Works right now. I want those capabilities so that I can maintain running data backups and still access my content if and when Lone Wolf drops support for Realm Works and/or goes out of business (it happens eventually to almost all proprietary software). Since I still occasionally reuse content I created in the late 70s for D&D, I know that I will want to be able to continue to access content I create today.

I create a LOT of content, and have been doing so for more than 35 years. I have about 3/4 of it printed out and put in binders, and it takes up five bookshelves, each with five individual shelves. It takes a lot of work to get stuff into Realm Works, and I have a truly massive world I would like to put into it. Given that, I have to know for absolute sure that I can get that content back out if I need to.

I have a friend who just dropped Realm Works and has moved his stuff to Scrivener, so I may check that out and see what I think about it. I would much rather use a product designed specifically for rpg stuff, though.

As an IT guy / librarian I spend a lot of my professional time working with data. I have helped 15 libraries extract their data from proprietary systems when those systems were no longer supported (or when they found better products). In the past, when I solely did IT, I did the same thing for at least a hundred businesses of various sizes. It's always a nightmare when the proprietary products don't give you a specific way to get the data out, whether with SQL queries, .csv dumps, or something else.

Other people have different needs, but judging from the comments here and elsewhere on Internet, a pretty significant number of customers (and potential ones) see PDF export as essential, and don't like having to potentially wait another year to get it.