Is Distant Shores Worthwhile?

[Palanan]

The Distant Shores Gazetteer has had some decent reviews, mainly from people who seem to be using Golarion as their default campaign world.

Nothing wrong with that—but is Distant Shores as useful for a GM with a homebrew world? I understand it profiles six cities in six different regions, and that it’s mainly intended as a glimpse of further horizons in Golarion; but is there enough setting-neutral material to make it worthwhile?

[BWR]

I thought it was ok. Exactly how much work is needed to adapt it to your game depends on how different it is from Golarion.

[Palanan]

I suppose I was hoping for a touch more detail. :smallsmile:

Does it have the typical smattering of spells, archetypes, magic items, etc., perhaps specific to the various regions involved? Or is it strictly all setting flavor?

[BWR]

The normal city stats aside, there are a few new gods, feats, races, spells, but nothing that struck me as terribly impressive - the rest of the book is mostly just description of the cities, their districts and basic culture. A bunch of history for the cities which you can ignore or rewrite to little effect for the present day city.

To put it like this: I mostly run Mystara and I feel I could easily use this stuff mostly unaltered for expanding the setting in the same way it was meant to expand Golarion. It isn't amazing but it isn't boring. Since Golarion is basically Mystara 3.0, it is probably easier to adapt this book to that than to, say, FR or GH.