The
River Kingdoms are actually a grouping of numerous small kingdoms.
Combined with Numeria, they make for a large amount of material for
this one small book to cover. Not surprisingly, it can't cover them
all and there are several River Kingdoms that get no more than a
sentence or two of mention. As a Player Companion
book, it also devotes a large
amount of space to game options, like new traits and archetypes,
further limiting just how much it can cover about these locations. In
my review of the recent Numeria, Land of Fallen Stars, I stated
that that book does a great job at describing what it is like to
adventure in Numeria, but gives little information about what it's
like to live there. Somewhat unfortunately, this book doesn't really
fill in that gap. Players without much pre-existing knowledge of the
lands covered in People of the River
will come away from the book with only a smattering more knowledge
than they started with. However, they will come away with several new
options to consider for their characters, and for many players, that
may well be more than enough.
People
of the River opens with a brief
introduction about river life in general and then a look at the
Sellen in particular. A sidebar on these two introductory pages
provides a single sentence of description for each of the River
Kingdoms not covered in the upcoming pages of the book. Following
this introduction is a two-page section on Numeria. After that come
sections on eight of the River Kingdoms, each getting a single page.
The countries covered are Daggermark, Echo Wood, Gralton, Lambreth,
Mivon, Pitax, Sevenarches, and Tymon. Each of these various sections
contains a description of the country, one or two new regional
traits, as well as a selection of other new options that
vary with each country. While
the country descriptions are very brief (generally only two or three
paragraphs total), they do a fairly decent job of summing these lands
up, so at the very least, players can learn what each country is most
well known for, if nothing else.
Of
the new game options, the one that stands out most for me is The
Bear's Jig, a new bardic
masterpiece found in the section on Pitax. It works like a temporary
awaken spell, giving
an animal human-like intelligence as long as the bard maintains the
performance. This masterpiece does a good job of providing flavour
that fits with the location along with its mechanics. In general, the
various new options attempt to provide this kind of flavour, although
some do it better than others. The
veneficus witch archetype in Daggermark fits seamlessly into its
location and helps to give a better understanding of Daggermark. The
order of vengeance from the Gralton section, however, like so many
new cavalier orders, is just a collection of abilities with little
grounding in the setting. There
is also at least one example of a rather useless ability. The section
on Echo Wood contains three new wizard arcane discoveries. One of
these is time stutter,
which works like the spell time stop,
except that it only provides one round of apparent time—which
doesn't really give you much more time than you would have had if you
had simply not used the time stutter ability
in the first place. The ability doesn't actually indicate the kind of
action it takes to use it, which generally means it's a standard
action. The best you can really do is get an extra move action with
this ability by using the ability, getting your round of apparent
time, and then using your remaining move action in real time (or
doing the real time move first and then using the ability).
Considering you need to be at
least 10th level to learn the ability, you really don't gain much
from it.
The
centre two pages of People of the River
comprise a player map of the entire Sellen River area. As well as
showing Numeria and the River Kingdoms, it also includes places like
Brevoy and Mendev in the north, Taldor
in the south, and all the places in between. I always really like
these player maps when they appear in the Player Companion
books. They provide a great visual representation of the kinds of
maps the PCs might actually use in the game world. They're also
generally quite gorgeous to behold. This one here is similarly
beautiful, but lacks one thing others like the map of Varisia in
Varisia, Birthplace of Legends
or the map of Osirion in People of the Sands have had. Those
maps showed roadways and travel routes, complete with labels of the
distance from one location to the next. This was incredibly useful
information to have as roads rarely run in a straight line, making it
time-consuming to calculate accurate distances using the scales
provided. Unfortunately, the map of the Sellen does not include any
roadways or distances. It cuts out one of the major uses of these
maps, and that's a bit of a shame.
The
second half of the book starts by taking a look at the people of the
regions, spending two pages each on Numerians and then River Folk.
Both sections contain some new race traits. The section on Numeria
also contains a new sorcerer bloodline: the nanite bloodline. The
River Folk section contains a new rogue archetype: the river rat.
The
book then spends two pages on “River Faiths”. This is one of the
more useful sections of the book as the people of the River Kingdoms
follow a couple of gods not commonly followed elsewhere in the world
(Gyronna and Hanspur). As well as information about the faiths of
these two gods, the section provides brief information about the
worship of the more common gods. Strangely, however, the section
lacks information on the domains and favoured weapons of Gyronna and
Hanspur. True, this information can be found in other Golarion
sources, but generally these
books
only assume access to the rulebooks, not campaign setting material.
While I can see not wanting to needlessly repeat information in
multiple books, in this case a bit of repetition is kind of
necessary, and a list of domains and favoured weapon really wouldn't
take up much space at all. Players of clerics of either of these two
gods must now seek out the book(s) containing this information rather
than be able to make their character with this book alone.
The
next section of the book moves away from Numeria- and River
Kingdoms-specific information to a more general look at “River
Survival”. This section contains simple, but useful rules for
catching a creature floating downstream and for swinging on vines (or
ropes or similar things). There are also a couple of new feats, as
well as a ranger archetype, the galvanic saboteur, which is focused
on destroying robots. The next two sections (each two pages long)
contain new spells and magic items from Numeria and the River
Kingdoms. The final section of the book is a brief player's guide for
the upcoming Iron Gods
adventure path, which is set in Numeria. It contains campaign traits
for the adventure path.
The
book manages to squeeze out just a little bit more, too. The inside
front cover looks at general river dangers, from diseases to fauna to
whitewater rapids. The inside back cover provides brief information
on three other major rivers of Golarion: the Sphinx in Osirion, the
Vanji in the Mwangi, and the Yondabakari in Varisia.
On
the whole, People of the River
does a pretty good job of covering a large amount of material, but it
is constrained somewhat by that large volume. While it's true that
one can turn to more detailed sources (Numeria, Land of
Fallen Stars and Guide to the River Kingdoms)
for more information, I think I would have much preferred to see this
book divided up into two books, one for Numeria and one for the River
Kingdoms. They could then each be player-focused companions to the
Campaign Setting books
mentioned above. It would also allow for more in-depth coverage
of the countries and the peoples who live there. But overall, People
of the River is not a bad book
and there's quite a bit in it to interest players creating new
characters.
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