How are the "People of the..." books?


Pathfinder Player Companion


As a whole I'm very selective about the Pathfinder Campaign Setting and Player Companion lines.

Although I own three Adventure Paths I mostly plan for homebrew so I almost never get Campaign Setting Books (The exceptions; Inner Sea World Guide, Gods of the Inner Sea, Inner Sea Combat, Inner Sea Magic, Technology Guide.) And I try to keep to the more setting neutral Player Companions.

So I mostly avoided books like People of the Sands/People of the Rivers (I'm getting People of the Stars because that looks more like a 'Blood of ...' book.) but I started seeing some options that aren't as setting specific as I thought so I was thinking about getting them.

So I guess my question is, how much of the 'People of the...' Player Companions is filled with setting specific fluff and how much is filled with setting neutral crunch?


I find the "People of" series to be a mirror version of the "Blood of" series with simply more flavor devoted to the specific loacation. Though that can easily be changed as necessary to match any locations in your Homebrew setting.


The only one I have (I had to cancel all my subs for awhile) is People of the North so it's the only one I can really comment on, but I really like it. As for what you said about setting neutral, People of the North has a LOT of stuff about Irrisen and such, sure... but really... all of it boils down to "People of a really cold place". For example, the "Erutaki" people? Real world equivalent, they are eskimos. Ulfen are pretty much your vikings from Scandinavia. Snowcaster elves? Arctic elves. Expanded rules for winter survival... A new archetype for a magus devoted to defending witches may or may not be useful in your campaign. So, really pretty much everything in the book can be used for any campaign, as long as you have themes that fit you can file off the serial numbers and the majority of the book I think would be very useful (even if the new magus archetype wasn't)

Shadow Lodge

People of the river: guide to the river kingdoms, own it and it includes wizard arcane discoveries, fluff, new archetypes, rage powers, etc.

people of the stars: guide to space, includes space themed spells, magic telescopes, guide to alien races (kasatha, triaxian, etc.) as well as space survival rules

people of the sands: desert guide, includes alchemist discoveries, fluff, desert survival rules, new human ethnicity etc. etc.

people of the north: viking fight archetype, magus archetype, new human ethnicity, fluff etc. etc.

The Exchange

IF you are comfortable changing geographical names there is a lot of stuff in the books that would suit your campaign. They all have archetypes, feats, traits, and equipment that meld nicely with the theme of the book. If you have a desert in your campaign, Of the Sands for example would have a wealth of info for you.

I personally would look at your geography, find an area that you think you need supporting materials for, and buy that single pdf and see how helpful it is before diving in.

I think at this point I have all of the Player Companion books, and with the exception of some of the race books for characters I haven't made yet, they have all been interesting enough to justify the purchase, and I think as a DM there should be good stuff for world creation in all of them.

If anything I think the Campaign Setting books would be less what you are looking for (as you have found already), they tend to really focus on cities, people, and monsters of a region, that would require more world building on your part than the Companion line.


I just steer clear of them, if you want to stage a session or campaign in a Cold environment outside golarion I reccomend you save those moneys you might spend on a "People of" book and buy a Northern themed novel (you can even browse it here in the online shop, that way Paizo wont loose any commerce from my comment :P).

It should give you all the inspiration you want for frost campaigns and a good read too.

P.S. I failed to ntoe you might not be heading for northern theme, but the advice still stands :P

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