Import/Export, WTH am I doing wrong?

[Seeker1728]

If i sound a bit testy, my apologies in advance as its likely due to heavy caffeine load mixed with repeated frustration at trying to make use of this feature. I love RW, but this feature which I had been looking forward to using has been extremely arcane for me to muddle my way through.

So here's the situation. I want to import the Mechanics Reference material of a realm I've sunk a couple hundred hours plus of work in, into another realm that I'm spinning up with the same rule system. But I guess I'm being a epic idiot here and am not understanding the instructions that the help window is giving me, and my search-fu within the board hasn't netted me anything in the way of answers I've been able to use. (again, probably caffeine load and frustration making me impatient and after a few dozen misses of looking into topics said heck with it, post a question).

I figure this is going to require some back and forth with Q/A as to what did I do/not do to sort it all out. With that said, I also figure I have to give a summary of what I did to help with figuring out what I need to do when.

This is what I've done so far.


I want to import just the mechanics. This is material developed for the Exalted3E ruleset so as far as I was able to determine from the instructions, I'm supposed to use the "Legacy" setup.

Went to the "Manage Exports" tab and chose "Custom or Partial Export". Read the Quickhelp stating I need to click "create" button to create a new export definition. Click, type in my title of "Ex System". Put in a brief note in the summary box and leave the rest blank.

Then i closed the export manager and manually assigned this new export tag, for some I had to go into the article and manually assign it, for other sections I was able to bulk add the new tag of "Ex Systems".

I also noticed that a fair number of my articles had left over tags that I had since opted to not use. Thinking it'd probably be in my best interest to just remove these no-use tags all together, i went into each article and manually cleared out those tags. in fact my entire Mechanics data got cleaned up to have just the tags I intended to use for exporting.

Double checked to make sure all the articles I wanted to export/import were tagged with the "Ex Systems". Then opened up the Export Manager again, "Ex Systems" is sitting there in the nifty little box on the left with the same title for the abbreviation box to the right.

Then in the field below that where it states I'm supposed to "Select a Story or mechanics source". Obviously I think to myself, I want the mechanics source. So click on the little ... to the right, window pops up giving my choice of the 3 main areas of RW (Mechanics, Story, World). Choose the "Mechanics" tab and here is where I start to get all clustercombulatedeffedup.

One.png Two.png

This is a example of one thing not being like the other. The first image is a little screen capture from the standard RW mechanics pane, the Skill/Ability shows several skills below the category and all these are completed articles. The 2nd image is what I get when i look at it with the export feature, notice it's blank. Paradoxically, below the Spell/Power category, the 3 articles there are empty and they do show up.

To add further confusion/irritation when I try to "select a story or mechanics source" I can choose the "Attributes" topic under "Sources->Mechanics Source->Attributes" and click "OK", but nothing else. Why? Because it tells me "This topic is unavailable for assignment because it is already assigned or the filter settings exclude it."

Ok, at this point I'm going to utterly embarrass myself and say a dumbfounded "HUH??? What the hell does that mean?"

I have no clue how I could've possibly already assigned it because i can't choose it in the first place. Excluded it with filter settings? HOW??? What filter settings? You mean the tag I used for exporting it in the first place? Ok ok, deep breath. Just choose the first one that it lets me since it does say it's a "starting point". So I choose "Attributes" and export.

Then i switch realms and try to import what I exported. I get the option to choose from preserving what I got and don't let anything overwrite, or favor the imported stuff with letting it overwrite. Well since this new realm is a blank slate for the moment, I figure I can overwrite everything favoring the import. Following window pops up saying

"The following errors were encountered during import: Existing game context already established" Ok...what does that mean? WHy is that a error? I let the realm load and absolutely nothing was imported. Everything is a blank.

Ok, I think, maybe I have to synch both realms to the server first? So I do that, and try again. Nope, same errors, same peculiar behavior that I have no clue what it's doing.

Then I loaded up the "Tips & Tricks" pdf, didn't find anything there, same went with the Reference Guide, or at least nothing in the table of contents said "This is how you import/export stuff", nor did a search through the docs for the term "export". Then hit the boards trying to do a search for anyone else posting about the import stuff. I found some topics, but TBH they were over my head and I've already spent several hours trying to sort this out on my own.

So finally I succumbed to posting all th is, even if it does make me look stupid, in the hopes of getting some clarity on what it is that I'm supposed to do to hopefully make use of this feature.