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How to put everything into Realm Works 5e format

B

bishop618

Active member
Hi I am way over my head in all of this. I have Realm Works, Hero Labs, and other programs. I also have at least 150+ electronic files of different types, mainly pdf, and almost all the physical books of 5e apart from Curse of Strahd, Rage of Dragons and Rise of Tiamat. Seeing as I have spent all this money on D&D, I want to "get my money's worth" and be able to use all of the content I have. To me, the obvious first step is to make sure all of my content is in one area, which is where Realm Works would come in. As a side note, for better or worse, I need to make sure everything is organized to near perfection. I am the type that will spend 2+ hours fixing the formating of a paragraph because it doesn't look right. To make that a spinning circle of doom, I also have some attention, so sitting still and manually typing things in is a headache inducing chore.
For background info, I am new to D&D, and I am trying to get my friends together to play, we are all in different parts of the state/country, so online playing via Realm Works and related VTT is the way we have thought it up. Being the one with the content and the desire to gather the group, I've been the one assigned to prep everything. Foolish or not, I'd like to get a majority of information into Realm Works before sessions begin.
Apart from the upcoming content market, is there a way to load some sort of file (pdf, word, etc) into Realm Works, have it scan the file, and convert it automatically into the sections and tags?
What I am asking is if there is any other way to insert content apart from manually typing the information word by word.
As usual, if your reply will contain any sort of version of "suck it up" or "don't be lazy", don't waste your energy responding. I am asking for help, not looking for insults.
Thank you
 
You will be able to buy the content eventually.

Because of copyright, we are each reinventing the wheel. Welcome to the Inventor's League. You are not alone. Check out Daplunk's videos for some initial guidance. Read the threads that talk about organization pitfalls. Purchase a good keyboard and mouse.
 
Not really. If you have PDF's then you can copy and paste from the PDF's into RW and it goes pretty fast, I've done fairly large books in a few days (just the copying, getting the text formatted took a while longer).

You could, if your PDF's are consistently formatted write some sort of script to convert them into the sort of XML that RW could import but that strikes me as a fairly large undertaking.
 
I'm hoping that at least the SRD (which isn't everything) will be available with the content market.

If it isn't, I'm willing to help with my share of the typing/cutting and pasting of online SRD info. Is anyone organizing that? Or is the SRD info already expected to be available?

Since there were changes to the RW 5e game system, am I correct that this was to satisfy WotC, meaning that it will be possible to purchase licensed 5e info similar to what is available via Fantasy Grounds (which is waay too expensive but still beats typing)?

I know that RW has a large Pathfinder audience, but 5e has a possibility for growth.
 
150 files sounds very excessive, kind of like you are super excited and have gathered every piece of information you think you could possibly ever need and you have come to a crashing halt due to the need to manage all that information. Exactly how I started...

Given you have stated you are new to this can you answer a question so we can assist with providing recommendations on the direction you should go.

What are you planning on doing when your party first sit down to play (pre-made module, home-brew)?
Click to expand...

Answer that and lets see where the conversation goes.

And one snippet of advice... It's impossible to complete your Realm. I's impossible to prep everything. You will always want to do something and enter in a bit more information.

With that in mind there is a short-cut you need to know:

Ctrl + Shift + `
Click to expand...

This will strip out all of the empty snippets and categories from an article. This will make you feel alot better about not completing certain information.
 
Answer to Question

You mean after we spend 5 hours making characters after wasting time for 3 hours? :)

My campaign idea is actually to have us (the players) be more like high ranking members of a mercenary company that can guide and direct the mercenaries under their command (characters) as well as the company itself. It's not traditional d&d but because of different locations, lack of time due to school/work/life, and to be honest I'm not exactly sure how into d&d my friends are or will be, I was trying to make something that could account for all that. In theory, we could send texts or emails for simple orders for the company (Train Recruits, Research, Improve Relations with Employees) (Think "Age of Empires" or "Empire Earth", these would be accomplished by timers, die rolls, and/or extra factors). Since I'm not sure how big of "RP'ing" will be, each player could potentially have multiple characters (mercenaries) to use for missions. The idea is that over school breaks, or our schedules lining up, we could get together for more standard style D&D, choosing one mercenary out of our individual groups as our characters.
As time and sessions passed, we would be able to select one of our mercenaries as our main character to use in a main story-line quest. One of my friends has expressed interest in creating a main quest story as well, so I was planning on working on that with him. In the meantime, we would be using these "contracts" as semi one-shots as a way to let anyone be the DM for that mission.

Overall I've been having doubts about whether or not my friends will actually want to really get into it. We have met up and talked about it, but we have had a history of just talking. We've tried playing, and usually make it to Session 2, with the first being character creation, and the second some actual adventure, before the rest of our lives catch up and we get busy. We eventually get back together to play after a few month hiatus, and decide that since most of us have forgotten our characters or mission, to just start over. We've repeated that cycle multiple times, and I'm hoping this breaks it.
 
Wowzer... sounds like you are trying to create something unique.

Honestly sounds like you are planning on putting in ALOT of effort for something you are not sure you are going to need yet.

As most people who have seen my videos can attest. I have put ALOT of effort into manual data entry and trust me when I say it's not something you can achieve over-night. I spend hours upon hours entering data.

Personally I would start smaller. A few one-shot adventures perhaps. Let people learn to enjoy the game before you introduce them to something more complex.

However... it sounds like you would benefit from a different system.

Have you checked out Frostgrave? It's a game that see's you controlling a warband as you fight against monsters and other warbands (your friends) to snatch the treasure up. It's progressive so your warband get's stronger as you play.

What you could do it then use a mercenary from your warband or even the wizard that controls your warband in a d&d game on the holidays.

Just throwing ideas out there.
 
@bishop618:

Your ideas are very ambitious. It can be done and can be very satisfying. I did it once (slightly different). I didn't concentrate on any particular RPG system, but made up my own cost and ressource system and had players issue orders through their captains and stewards and a few other managing-types characters (that I controlled).

If you are all new to all this roleplaying stuff and you have trouble finding a steady bi-weekly (or something like that) session to play, I would suggest starting off with something simpler.

A character per player, low level, simple surroundings (just a town, no need to get involved in the politics of the kingdoms and empires just yet), simple task (like, a who-done-it sort of scenario (a friend of one or more of the party approaches, her son has been accused of stealing/murdering/what-ever someone/thing and is now rotting away in the prison/awaiting execution soon, she wants you to find out who really did it and so maybe save her son).

Though it sounds simple, it can be a great way to get everyone really into the system and how to play. Let it run for 2 or 3 sessions and tie it up then. This way the players accomplish something. Then discuss how it work and want you want to do from there.

This scenario can relatively quickly be put into RealmWorks, maps can be made for the VTT of yoru choice and you are ready to roll.

You will learn RW and you can build upon your little corner of the world as you decide to continue your campaign. If you decide that is not the way to go nothing much is lost and you hopefully had some fun sessions.
 
@daplunk: I will definitely look into Frostgrave, thank you for that. Right now, I'm focusing on 5e because of all the files I've bought and/or found.
@Vargr: That is my plan once the foundations are laid in place, starting off with small adventures described as contracts.

Also, I just wanted to say that my campaign idea is not set in stone. What I mean is that its not "figure out how to use this with realm works or bust". Also, this may help, or may not, but I do want to eventually become an author. Like others, I started to get into d&d through/because of writing. I know the two can be related and completely different depending on the circumstance. So the way I've been subconsciously approaching all this is from a "writer's mind". If that helps narrow down stuff let me know, thanks.
 
D&D is so worth it, I only discovered it about 2 years ago and it's safe to say my life has changed for the better because of it.

Alot of people, myself included, strongly suggest the Starter Set adventure. It's a great adventure that's well written. There's lots of material around the internet to help run it better and honestly it's begging to be put into Realm Works.

The adventure is called the "Lost Mine of Phandelver".
 
As said earlier you can copy paste to make things quicker, but its still lots of work.
Make sure you use the short-cuts... They will make your life much easier, this is my very short cheat list:
CTRL+Q - Quick create
CTRL+ALT+V - paste without formating
CTRL+ALT+R - Clear text formating from Snipet
CTRL+ENTR - cut into snippet
CTRL+M - Merge snippet

CTRL+N - New Snipet
CTRL+T - New TEXT snippet
CTRL+G - Convert to/From GM
CTRL+R - Reveal/Hide Snippet

Talking of which is there a list of ALL short-cuts?
 
Avi said:
Thank's but not a fan of the medium :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Yeah I don't like the front door of Facebook. But if you can get into a few of the private groups I find it to be a great resource. I reckon I spend 95% of my FB time in private groups discussing hobby stuff. No adds in there either.

Dm Scottys Crafts and Games is amazing for anyone who likes to create physical props for their games.
 
DM Scotty is awesome, I second the recommendation.

As for FaceBook, I killed my account a couple years ago. I ended up recreating it for those rare times that I have to have one to contact someone, but I don't have anything in there.

I also refuse to use it because there is no anonymity. I used to have some sympathy with the idea that forcing people to use their actual names was a good way to keep things civil, but I like to keep my work persona separate from my family and friends persona, separate from my gaming persona.

Facebook has ways to set your privacy, but it is a pain to configure, it keeps changing, and you are giving up a lot of rights to your content and your identity by putting it into Facebook. I may lose out of some great discussion and resources by mostly ignoring Facebook, but it is a trade-off that is well worth it.
 
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