In order to do offloading, I copied my author instance of AEM6.1 to a new location to be the work instance. The author instance is set up to be a cluster, though it's a one-server cluster, so it's the cluster leader.
I changed the sling.id of the work instance so I could connect them up via the topology configuration. This worked perfectly but as a result, activating content stopped working. As soon as I removed the topology connection, activating content worked again. It seemed as though the author instance was confused and thought the work instance was supposed to do the activation, though I didn't configure that (I had only configured DAM process offloading).
I suspect the problem is that the cluster ID of both work instance and author instance is the same. (This is what the granite topology interface /libs/granite/topology/content/view.html shows, anyway). How do I change the cluster ID of the copied instance I want to use as the work instance?
Or, if that is not the problem, how do I keep content activation working while the work instance is connected via sling topology?