I am looking into buying Pathfinder Chronicles: Heart of the Jungle. I am expecting to play in the Serpent's Skull AP soon. I hope to glean some good character concept ideas, in addition to just wanting to learn about the region. Will I have to be worried about spoilers? I am also DMing Rise of the Runelords and Council of Thieves for my friends, and I have yet to find any content outside of the AP books themselves that I would be concerned about my players getting their hands on, so I figured it should be safe. Just looking for confirmation.
P.S. - I know about the Sargava Player's Companion, and I will be getting that as well. Just hoping to be able to safely consume as much delicious Golarion content as possible, without potentially ruining my experience as a player.
Thanks!
P.P.S. - I am playing a native of the Mwangi jungles, so not sure if that makes a difference or not.
|
You should be able to read through Heart of the Jungle without any major spoilers - the one exception is the sidebar on page 57 that directly references a major location in the AP - avoid that!
In truth, a good portion of Heart of the Jungle describes locations that the AP doesn't touch on at all, or only obliquely references.
That being said, a GM could take things from Heart of the Jungle and add them to his own Serpent's Skull campaign, so it might be a good idea to check with your GM first. If he gives you the go-ahead, then go ahead! :)
I was kind of bummed that one of my player's checked out the book without my content, because he wanted to prepare for the various diseases, hazards and monsters I was planning on using from that book. But besides from the crunchy bits most of the material in the book should be okay for a player as long as you can justify your characters knowledge of it by spending ranks in knowledge, local, geography and history.
Personally, I not let the players see it carte blanche, but divvy out information as it makes sense for the characters involved.
|
Some of the bits on diseases and other common threats and features of the jungles would be good for PC's to know about, at least those meant to be knowledgable about the Mwangi Expanse.
But that whole chunk of the book covering a number of the mysteries of the Expanse? I'd advise against it.
I'd see about just reading the section relevant to common Mwangi knowledge, fielding it with the GM first.
Some of the bits on diseases and other common threats and features of the jungles would be good for PC's to know about, at least those meant to be knowledgable about the Mwangi Expanse.
But that whole chunk of the book covering a number of the mysteries of the Expanse? I'd advise against it.
I'd see about just reading the section relevant to common Mwangi knowledge, fielding it with the GM first.
The player that read the book was definitively not schooled in Mwangi lore and he specifically read the book to know about the mechanical aspects of the diseases and monsters he might encounter. The two players in my group that have characters that are knowledgeable about the expanse I give out information depending upon how well they roll their knowledge skills. I've had a lot of meta-gaming going on in my Campaigns as one of my players is also a DM and many of my players have read most of the books. I think the companion books are more suited for players than the Chronicles series.
I didn't have access to the still yet-to-come Serpent's Skull AP material when I wrote my portion of the Mwangi book, and as such there's nothing intentionally overlapping therein.
What I wrote about the serpentfolk city was buffed in the editing process I think, but I'd have to go back and compare the draft to the final print version.