If I'm getting The Strange Core Rulebook, do I need the Player's Guide?

Question

I'm talking about these: The Strange Core Book, and The Strange Player's Guide.

If I'm getting the Core Book, do I need the Player's Guide?

Answer 1

No.

The Player's Guide is an abridged version of the core book that presents only the player-facing material. It's the same stuff, presented differently.

Answer 2

The one thing The Strange Player's Guide has that isn't in the corebook are 6 pre-generated characters, including a pre-chosen version of those characters if they translate to Ardeyn.

Answer 3

Kind of.

There is no information in the Player's Guide that is not in the Corebook. Its use is as additional copy of that part of the material.

If you want to run the game (as opposed to being a player), it can make sense to have a copy of the Player's Guide around. You can leave it on the players' side of the table for their use -- they can quickly check how their ability works or what equipment the want, and won't find any GM information in there.

When generating characters with a whole group, you want as many copies of the Player's Guide around as you can get, plus Character Options. It just speeds up things considerably since everybody wants to read at least some of the Focus descriptions.

Note that in The Strange, this applies to choosing a Focus for a new recursion as well, so have these copies at hand whenever you plan sending them someplace new. If that is not how you want to play it, check out the optional rule on p360 of the corebook.