Consolidating realms topics

[ShadowChemosh]

Originally Posted by jflevesque

My issue is that like most DMs, you need to often improvise. When that happens, I sometimes get the opportunity during breaks or RP moments to enter the improvised information back into RW. If I can't import back to the Master Realm, then this becomes lost time and I'm better entering it in Notepad or somesuch and enter it in the Master Realm at some other time when I get the chance.

I honestly have not tried importing back into the Master realm. I don't know how RW will handle that. It maybe something to try out and why I was mentioning that Copy Realm does make an exact copy of realm. Meaning you could make a copy of your Campaign Realm and Master Realm. Import/Export around topics and see how RW reacts.

On the good side if the Copy Realms get all messed up you just delete them and you still have your original realm unharmed.

This is what I have been doing. But right now I started with "hard" rules like monsters/spells as they don't change much at all. I am doing this to get use to how RW reacts to all the import/export stuff. Then I figured I would work on a master Campaign Realm that has to deal with more "changes".

[davidp]

Originally Posted by Silveras

As I understand it, topic IDs are preserved in exports, so you could re-import into the original realm updated versions exported from other realms. Topics would not merge or update based on the name; you would just end up with two separate Topics with the same name. Copying, for example, creates a new realm with the same content, but they all have new IDs and would not merge if the content of one realm was exported and imported into the other.

Originally Posted by ShadowChemosh

I was not sure last time you said this what you meant. But this is not a true statement. Copying a realm preserves the database id's exactly like the original. Yes I have actually tested this exact situation out.

You are both correct in various ways.

A copy of the realm does indeed reset all of the id's used internally to brand new id's. HOWEVER, if the original realm had imported content, the imported content as another id to identify where it came from and THOSE id's will be preserved in the copy.

So what does this mean?

You start with Realm1. You have an original topic called Topic1. You import Topic2 from an export file. You copy Realm1 to Realm2. Realm2 now has Topic1 which is not at all the same as Topic1 from Realm1 and also Topic2 which has the same import marker as Topic2 from Realm1.

So if you get an update to Topic2 from where ever it came from and import into Realm2, it will update Topic2 in the realm. And if you import into Realm1, you'll have the same update.

If you export Topic1 from Realm1 and then import to Realm2, you would end up with a duplicate Topic1 in Realm2.

If you instead exported Topic1 from Realm2 and imported into Realm1, again, you would end up with a duplicate Topic1 in Realm1.

So it all depends on what you do as to what will happen.

[jflevesque]

@David
In that case, if we have topicA from Realm1 and topicB from Realm2 which we want to consolidate, should we export them from Realm1 and Realm2, import into Realm3, do changes or possibly merge topicA & topicB, create a new export from Realm3 and import back into Realm1 and Realm2. If topicB was deleted to keep only topicA, would that update topicA in Realm1 and add a new topicA in Realm2?

[davidp]

Originally Posted by jflevesque

@David
In that case, if we have topicA from Realm1 and topicB from Realm2 which we want to consolidate, should we export them from Realm1 and Realm2, import into Realm3, do changes or possibly merge topicA & topicB, create a new export from Realm3 and import back into Realm1 and Realm2. If topicB was deleted to keep only topicA, would that update topicA in Realm1 and add a new topicA in Realm2?

That sounds right. You can think of it like this: when a topic is exported for the first time from a realm, it has an ID associated with it. That ID carries over to other realms that it is imported into and will also carry along when exporting it again. As long as that ID matches, it will be seen as an update to the topic that matches within the realm.

[ShadowChemosh]

@davidp. Thanks for the information.

[Farling]

Originally Posted by jflevesque

@David
In that case, if we have topicA from Realm1 and topicB from Realm2 which we want to consolidate, should we export them from Realm1 and Realm2, import into Realm3, do changes or possibly merge topicA & topicB, create a new export from Realm3 and import back into Realm1 and Realm2. If topicB was deleted to keep only topicA, would that update topicA in Realm1 and add a new topicA in Realm2?

If you merge the two topics, will one of the "export-import" links will be broken? i.e. it will only remember the topic into which the merge was done (not the topic that was merged into that topic).

[Silveras]

You know, you can also move Snippets from one topic to another, and combine/ split them manually. So you could export and import without using a 3rd realm, and edit the one(s) in the first realm to contain content exported from the second.. then delete the duplicate Topic and have only the consolidated one left.

What approach works best depends, I think, on the situation you're in.