Import & Exporting Questions

[joepacelli]

So I'm trying to understand to importing and exporting features of Realm Works and want to get an understanding of how to use them correctly.

So I decided to create 2 test Realms
Bestiary
Bestiary 2

Then under the Mechanics Reference I created an article under the Danger Category called Bestiary in the Bestiary Realm, and Bestiary 2 in the Bestiary 2 Realm.
I created 3 more articles under Bestiary
A, B and C Creatures
I then added one creature under each of these articles.
I also added a Feat, Athletics

I did the same thing in the Bestiary 2 Realm.

I then tried to Export Structure only from each Realm
I created a third Realm and called it Campaign
I imported both of these Structures.
Nothing imported.

So I went back to these Realms and did Export Entire Realm.
I went back to the Campaign Realm and imported these exports.
Success, under the Dangers I had 2 articles
Bestiary
Bestiary 2
But under my Abilities I had 2 entries for Athletics

So I created another Realm, Campaign 2
I imported Bestiary
I then imported Bestiary 2 and show advanced options, overwrite the conflicting parts of my current content with the content being imported.
I figured this would leave me with only one Athletics Feat being imported
But I was wrong, under my Abilities I had 2 entries for Athletics.

So I deleted the Realm and tried again
I imported Bestiary
I then imported Bestiary 2 and show advanced options,
and choose both options to overwrite
Content & Structure.
Again, under my Abilities I had 2 entries for Athletics.

What am I doing wrong?
What would be nice to do is create separate Realms for each Bestiary and then I can import the appropriate Bestiary exports into my Realms I build as necessary.

Because I'm trying to think how is LWD and Paizo going to manage this data in the Content Market.
Is it one big Bestiary your purchase which includes all the Bestiary's? Or are they individual Bestiary's?
Because aren't you also supposed to own the pdf version of the data you purchase? If this is the case, this would force everyone to own all the pdf's for the Bestiary's.

And if they are individual data files, and I want to import 3 of them.
How does the duplicate Feat data import? Will it do the same thing and give you 3 copies of a Feat used on all the source books.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks
Joe

[Farling]

Topics from different originating realms are never considered the same thing. It does NOT look at the title of the topic, it looks at the original realm that it came from (it has an internal id which is unique for each topic across all realms).

You could store all the Bestiary topics in a single realm, and then create a custom export for each separate Bestiary book from that single realm. This would then work properly if you created "bestiary 1" and "bestiary 2" exports from the same realm - on import it would overwrite entries which you've defined to appear in both exports.

A "structure only export" contains only the category and tag definitions, which is the structure of the realm. It does not contain any topics or articles, since they are the information in the realm not the structure.

[kbs666]

Yeah you ran into some nomenclature issues and some confusion about what should and should not merge.

Structure isn't the structure you build out of topics and articles. Structure, in imports and exports, is stuff like custom categories and tag domains which can be used to create your own game system.

Topics with the same name from different sources will never merge. There are good reasons for this. You can do it by hand if it is desirable after an import if you wish it is unlikely that there will be that many duplicates.

I cannot urge you strongly enough do not spend your time entering a bunch of game stuff. RW does not really do much for you with that stuff. Get your setting entered. get your adventure entered. Enter only the creatures your party is going to encounter, if you must enter any at all. I'm starting to wish that RW did not include the mechanics side at all. I fear to many novice users go down a rabbit hole of trying to enter tons of data on that side, get bogged down and then give up on RW entirely.

[Mystic Lemur]

I second the above. Instead of trying to get everything perfect the first go round, put in just what you need for the next session. Then the one after that. Eventually, as you get more comfortable with the interface and learn better ways of doing things, you'll find yourself branching out.

[joepacelli]

So an update on my importing and exporting.
Because yesterday I kept thinking how is LWD and Paizo going to handle this importing with the Content Market.
If I purchase Bestiary and Bestiary 2 and within each of these was a creature with the Feat Power Attack
You would not want duplicate Feats of Power Attack after importing both contents.

So I took it a step further.
I created a Realm with only 2 Feats under the Abilities within Mechanic References.
I then exported this to Feats
I went to my 2 Realms Bestiary and Bestiary 2 and removed any Feats within these Realms and imported this file into them.
I then exported both these Realms out into their respect export file.

I then created a Realm called campaign and imported Bestiary and Bestiary 2.
Everything worked great.
No duplicate Feats.
So you need to create these mechanic references separately for things like Skills, Feat, Spells.
Then if you do your creatures as individual Realms, import these into that Realm.
So if you did end up manually entering Bestiary 1 through 6, you could store them into separate realms and then import them into your main campaign realm and everything will work fine and you'll have your basic mechanics for the game.

Now while I used Pathfinder and we are sure Paizo will most likely create this stuff for the Content Market, this will work for other game systems like Shadowrun 5th Edition, Coriolis, or 7th Sea, or whatever system you play

[Bidmaron]

Thanks for posting the results of your research but it raised a further question. In your example, what about references between Bestiaries? I imagine common monsters like orcs or goblins are referenced between them. How do you prevent duplicates then?

[joepacelli]

Most beasts between the books are unique. They are just another type of Orc or Goblin.

For example, if you have Bestiary and Bestiary 2, and then purchase Monster Codex. While the Monster Codex is only about a dozen different creature types they don't list the base creature. You need to go to the appropriate book for it.

So I don't see any duplicate issue this way.

And if I was entering this information I would do like I said and create the following Realms
Feats
Spells
Skills
etc..

[Bidmaron]

No, what i am talking about is a reference. For example in bestiary two under a cyclopean razorback (e.g.) it might say "the monster has 2-4 orca as servants" and you would want the orca to auto-link to the other volume when you import. How would you achieve that without rescanning for links?

[Silveras]

Topics have an internal ID that is hidden, and not something a user can set (and it would be unwise to edit them in the export files). This is what allows you to have two (or more) topics with the same name in the same category -- Realm Works warns you that you're doing it, but lets you do it if you want to.

For that same reason, on import, Realm Works cannot assume that the same name for a topic in the same category is enough to merge them.

However, because that internal ID is unique, if an import contains the same topic ID as an existing topic, THAT is recognized as an update, and the new content is merged with the existing topic.

What that means is, you could populate a "Bestiary 1" Realm, export the contents, import into a "Game 1" Realm, then update the "Bestiary 1" some more, re-export, and re-import, to have your updates in "Bestiary 1" applied to the ones in "Game 1".

You could also update "Game 1" and export those entries, then import them into "Bestiary 1" to have the same updates appear there.

That is not the best practice, though, because if you do that a few times, it becomes easy to forget which one is the most updated. You should probably set a rule for yourself to always update one and apply to the other, rather than going back and forth with updates in both directions.

[Silveras]

There are options in the export and import to attempt to keep references that already exist (such as, for example, the Ghoul entry in the Bestiary also has a description of Ghoul Fever ... if Ghoul Fever is entered as a separate Affliction topic, then the Ghoul entry can have a link to it, and if both are exported and imported together, that link should remain.

That's also why it was important to get the "Scan all [Topics or Articles] in Navigation Pane for New Links" functionality in place. Because importing an Adventure could contain hundreds of links to Mechanics or other story elements.