So I've been working on my one and only realm ever since I bought RW back in march 2014. From what I gather here, my realm now apparently is a legacy realm.
I know there have been a lot of updates since then, many of them welcome, even more irrelevant to me. Now I wonder - do I gain anything from converting my realm to a pathfinder one? And if so - how would I go about it?
NOTE! This is a general answer regarding whether to convert any realm to a particular game system structure. The OP's question was specifically for Pathfinder, but the answer is basically the same for anyone considering conversion to any game system they play.
There is no absolute requirement to convert a realm. There are various reasons why you might find conversion beneficial, and others why you might find it detrimental. Here are some of the factors to weigh...
* If you LIKE the official structure, then you're definitely going to find life easiest by adopting it. We've taken the time to setup the official structure to pretty closely match what the publisher does for that game system (some substantive changes are still pending for D&D5E to more closely match what Wizards does).
* If you plan to bring content from PDFs into Realm Works yourself for personal use, you'll typically find that the official structure streamlines this process substantially. The material from the PDF will map directly to the structure provided, with a high level of correlation.
* All published material from us, and all officially shared material that's delivered through the Content Market, will subscribe to the official structure for any given game system. If your realm is converted to the same structure, everything will import smoothly and be ready to go. This, obviously, presumes that you'll find material offered through the Content Market to be desirable for your purposes.
* We expect the majority of users to convert their realms, and it's pretty safe to assume that all new realms created by users from this point forward will choose the game system matching what they play. If you intend to share material with other users in any way - outside of the official channels here - then you'll find it much smoother to adopt the official structures.
* If you plan to share material between your own realms, adopting an official structure will possibly simplify things in some respects. You'll want to make sure that your structure is consistent between realms. So you'll need to coordinate the propagation of structure changes you make from one realm to another. This will require you to delve into the import/export Advanced Options to a limited extent to perform, although it certainly won't be hard. If you adopt an official structure and apply your own customizations to that structure, you'll still need to do this, so this is admittedly a pretty weak reason unless you simply adopt the official structure with no personalized changes.
* If you DISLIKE the official structure, then you're certainly going to prefer sticking with whatever structure you've developed for yourself already. The whole goal of Realm Works is to let you adapt the product to best suit how YOU operate, and there is no reason why you should abandon that. Even if you dislike the official structure, you may find it useful to convert and blend your own changes in with the official structure, especially if you want to leverage published/shared content that adheres to the official structure. Doing so will simplify the process of weaving content with the official structure into your own material. You can simply hide large portions of the official structure that you don't like so that your creations don't bother with that structure. Doing this will allow published/shared material to be imported smoothly with the proper structure, while all of your material adheres to your personalized structure.
* Our belief is that most users who have customized their structure thus far have done so in two primary ways. First, they have adapted the structure to be closer to the game system they are playing. Second, they've tailored the structure to better suit their personal style of managing their campaign. Anyone who has focused on the former is typically going to be best served by conversion, since their personal refinements will still be preserved after conversion. If you have focused on the latter, then you may still be best served by conversion, as outlined in the previous bullet.
* The only time that you should absolutely NOT consider conversion is when your personal tailoring of the structure substantively conflicts with the official structure. For many users, if they dislike the official structure, they can readily disable the aspects of the official structure they don't want (by hiding it via the Manage Categories and Manage Tags interfaces). This leaves in place a structure that is personalized and still makes it easy to import content that uses the official structure. The real question here is whether you CAN readily disable the aspects of the official structure that you dislike while preserving your pesonalizations. That depends entirely on the nature of your personalizations and how they interplay with the official structure, so it's something that should be experimented with to properly assess for each user. Experimenting like this should be done in a safe place, such as a copied realm.
That's everything I can think of right now. I'm sure that's WAY more than anyone was expecting, but there are obviously lots of factors involved - and this is all stuff we've spent LOTS of time weighing and striving to resolve for users.
Having everyone convert to the official structure AND smoothly integrate their own personalizations is our ultimate goal, since that maximizes everyone's ability to share content and the potential success of the Content Market. It's our hope that we've made it possible to achieve this goal to the greatest extent possible, so that the vast majority of users ultimately convert. Fingers crossed that actually happens.
