Importing Books and Content Conversion

At Shard we understand that there is a lot of great D&D content that has been created that wasn’t designed for Shard. We want to make it easy for creators and users to get that content into Shard. Shard includes tools to import documents and then convert that content into modeled entries, like monsters, spells, items, races and even classes.

Import

Shard imports files in the .docx format, the default format produced by Microsoft Word, Google Docs and many other word processing applications. Many people use this as the starting format for making their creations. In cases where the format is not docx, applications like Microsoft Word have a variety of tools for importing other formats.

Click IMPORT BOOK to import a book in the new book dialog

Setup your document to import correctly:

• Use header styling to get sections to map correctly.

  • H1 - Chapters

  • H2 - Sections

  • H3-H7 - Subsections

• Character styling supports: bold, underline, italics and strikethrough.

• Paragraph alignment supports: left, center, and right.

• Bulleted lists supports standard bullets.

• Tables

• Quoted inset text. Create a quoted inset text by setting a border around text or with text that is inset on the left and the right.

Here is an example .docx file that shows basic formatting. Download the file and then import it into Shard.

Content Conversion

Content conversion allows you to take text from a book and convert it into a modeled entry. While this doesn’t know how to model the features in Shard, it can pick up much of the structure and greatly reduces the amount of work to create entries.

Conversion takes sections of a document, converts them into modeled entries and then replaces the text in the document with the modeled entry reference. You can convert a single entry or a list of entries, and in either case you can review the process to make sure that the conversion is correct and if not revert to the original.

• Select section menu

• Click Convert

• Pick desired entry type

After the conversion the converted content will display and provide a set of options.

Note: use other to pick from custom types.

• KEEP AND UPDATE BOOK: This will convert the content and update the book to reference the converted content.

• KEEP AND DON’T UPDATE BOOK: This will create the new entry but will leave the text in the document instead of replacing it with a reference.

• DISCARD CONVERTED CONTENT: This will leave the book in its original state and not create any new entries. Use this if the conversion doesn’t look correct and you want to go update the text to make the conversion work correctly.

If Shard finds a duplicate of the entry then it will use the existing entry rather than the entry created from the text. These will have a green border

For sections that have subsections you can also convert all of the children using the “Convert Children” command. This can be useful when you have a section with a large number of entries.

List Conversion

There are two special list cases for conversion to handle environments and spell lists. These lists convert a bit differently. Instead of creating new entries they instead add attributes to the base entries (spells or monsters) and create an anchor link to the entry.

WARNING: Be careful using this with entries that are not your own since it will modify those entries. You generally won’t be allowed to republish these entries and because they are modified you will no longer see any updates made by the owners.

In many cases monsters do not specify the environments that they are found. Instead many books have a section that lists the monsters and their environments. To convert these create a section for each environment with the text having a line for each monster. The conversion will match the text with the monster names and create a link.

In many cases spells don’t define their class spell lists. Instead there is a section that lists the spells for each class. To convert these create a section for each class with the text having a line for each spell. The conversion will match the text with the spell names and create a link.

Note: if the entry doesn’t match then the text will not be edited to create a link.

Conversion Example

To help you with your own conversion this conversion example .docx, includes some instructions and examples of different entry types. After you download the file you can read it word or upload it to view with Google docs. You can edit it or import it as a book to try out conversions.