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Realm works used to have integration where you could have a hero lab portfolio, either the bestiary stuff or one that you had made, and click a button to add those NPCs (usually monsters to kill, but potentially hostile humans). That functionality seems to have disappeared since they offered the 64-bit version of RW.
I personally wouldn't recommend the Bestiary books, since they don't integrate (as in the RW versions). Having all the monsters within Hero Lab is very nice. Just because the active RW won't integrate with the running Hero Lab portfolio doesn't mean you cannot use both tools quite well with gaming. Or either, on it's own for that matter.
I would create the portfolio (with monsters or human/dwarf/etc bad guys) and save that. RW can have that portfolio added, if you'd like the ability to view it from within RW. You can save however you like; if it's from an adventure I save with a prefix of the page number and then the name of what is in the encounter.
I have the player characters all in one portfolio. From that, I import (from the adversary portfolio) into the player portfolio. That's all Hero Lab, no RW integration any more on that end. If there's loot, I can transfer between characters on the portfolio via "give to character".
While RW may not be actively developed at this point, there is a decent chance it may be in the future. The owner of Wolflair is fond of it, and that shows. It's just not fiscally viable at the moment, with limited resources for coding. They're concentrating on Hero Lab online (some game systems are on Hero Lab Online and some are on Hero Lab Classic [the pure desktop app]). There is a decent chance RW will get future development, but that's not a certainty.
Just on what Realm Works does, I wouldn't hesitate to purchase it again. Create anything you like, whether it is a city/region or an NPC or a monster or a house rule you'd like to reference. I like to set auto linking (Manage Names... Control Shift A (I think) with capitalization important to case sensitive linking... then make my desired links double caps like this "Double Caps").
Thereafter, when you're in another article doing something, if you were to type Double Caps, it would automatically link to the first, while double caps would not, which is very handy. You can view links, both outgoing from a topic and incoming (even if the current article doesn't link outwards to something).
It's very flexible.
I have my Path of War in Realm Works. In that system, there are multiple disciplines, each of which can only be used with certain types of weapons (3-4 weapon groups, typically), and there are twenty or so disciplines. I made an article with each discipline and which weapons they can be used with. And another, where all the disciplines are on one page, each with their weapon groups. Then if I'm interested in one, for example Riven Hourglass, I can click it and see which weapon groups work with that. Then I can click one of the those and see which other disciplines can be used by that weapon. With a little clicking (or the back button), I can find a weapon that works for a few disciplines for a character.
The current campaign I'm running has a lot of information. I'm just adding things as I encounter them, and the whole thing snowballs. There are hundreds of NPCs and a lot of organizations within the city. Districts, which have nick names and such. I can check (mark as shareable by checking a green dot) what the players have enountered and track things nicely that way. Otherwise, there would be too much to track.
TLDR - The tool is extremely useful, even if it were to never have additional updates.
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