I’m going to be running the Beginner Box for the first time for a few friends. I’m thinking I want to flesh out Otari, but I don’t have Troubles In Otari, which I plan to buy and run later. Should I worry about creating conflicting elements of Otari, or is it as sparse on details in the other two APs as it is in the beginner box?
If you’re looking for free info, the Player’s Guide for Abomination Vaults has an Otari gazetteer. It is player-facing info, so it’s missing a little bit of detail, but it has a rundown on the whole town!
As others have mentioned, Abomination Vaults will give you more info thanks to the Gazeteer. There you’ll fine all of the locations, the NPC of interest, as well as the types of Earn Income the players can leverage and the associated skill.
I would highly also recommend this pay what you want resource found on Drive Thru RPG
The Abomination Vaults Expanded
It gives the NPCS and town a whole lot more detail. I used this along my own interpretations to give the town a lot more life than the beginner box, Troubles in Otari, and even Abomination Vaults gives these NPCs. v Definitely worth giving the creator compensation.
If you had to pick and choose, you should buy the first book of Abomination Vaults “Ruins of Gauntlight” I believe is the name; even if you ignore the adventure entirely. It gives you locations and all sorts of the NPCs in Otari.
Troubles In Otari doesn’t introduce a huge amount of extra information about Otari, but there is a bit. Abomination Vaults has a lot more info, and details on basically all of the important players in town.
Some of it can be found on PathfinderWiki.
The Player’s Guide for Abomination Vaults includes a ton of information about the major players in Otari: https://downloads.paizo.com/AbominationVaults_PlayersGuide.pdf
That said, don’t worry too much about contradicting the official lore. This is your game, and if something in the guide contradicts something you made up, just don’t present it to your players, they will never be the wiser.
Take a look at the Roseguard section in the pdf though. That should give you an understanding for why this town exists, and informs some of the politics that are currently going on.
If you are planning to run Troubles in Otari later, you should be aware that it consists of three short adventures dealing with the lumber industry, the delivery service, and an abandoned fishing shack just outside of town. If you want to ease your players into these quests, you may want to introduce them earlier.
