How similar is Vengeance of the Golden Skull to Heretics of

[flatscan]

First, if you play a PC in my game please don't read this thread. I'm sure spoilers will be laid out and that would just ruin some of the fun of playing this adventure.

With that done, on to my question. How similar, story wise, is Vengeance of the Golden Skull compared to Heretics of Tarantia? The PCs in my game are about to start their pirate careers and I planned on running VotGS but I remembered someone saying a loooooong time ago that the plot was very similar to Heretics of Tarantia. I haven't done a thorough read through of VotGS yet as first I have to set the scene with them being on a boat and pirating but my initial skim of it seemed like the villains goal was different than Constanus' goal in Heretics of Tarantia. What's the overlap in plot and/or what scenes are similar?

 

[Strom]

Very similar - except in Heretics you are working for the man and in Vengeance you can either work for the man or go it alone. I loved the small adventures in Vengeance more than the ones in Heretics - but the finale is much better in Heretics than how it turned out in Vengeance. Both are very similar but I would think pirates would really love Messantia and all the awesome flavor text involved with Vengeance. The districts are awesome. The Messantia box set is one of the jewels of the Conan RPG line, IMO.