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Pathfinder, 2nd Edition
Lost Omens World Guide
Claim Your Destiny
This indispensable 136-page guidebook to the world of Pathfinder presents everything you need to know for a lifetime of adventure in the uncertain Age of Lost Omens. The god of humanity is dead and prophecy is broken, leaving adventuring heroes like you to carve their own destinies out of an uncertain future!
This gazetteer features 10 diverse regions packed with thrilling and deadly possibilities and is accompanied by a giant two-sided poster map depicting the heart of the Pathfinder setting.
This indispensable 136-page guidebook to the world of Pathfinder presents everything you need to know for a lifetime of adventure in the uncertain Age of Lost Omens. The god of humanity is dead and prophecy is broken, leaving adventuring heroes like you to carve their own destinies out of an uncertain future!
This gazetteer features 10 diverse regions packed with thrilling and deadly possibilities and is accompanied by a giant two-sided poster map depicting the heart of the Pathfinder setting.
136 pages, Hardcover
First published August 28, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
August 15, 2020
This book provides a summary of Pathfinder's core campaign setting and... that's about it. It's not bad. It's significantly better than D&D's Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide but I feel like it could be more in depth and, well, useful.
April 22, 2026
Against my better judgment, I've been excitedly looking forward to the Lost Omens World Guide.
I should have known better.
Before delving into the issues here, let's focus on a few of the positives:
- The art is gorgeous and very high-quality (for the most part)
- The layout and appearance of the book is excellent, with helpful tabs and indexing
- The section on Absalom is especially well-written - flavorful, evocative, and inspiring
- For those who have been following the changes that have taken place to Golarion since the Inner Sea World Guide was released, it's nice to have everything condensed in one place
Ready? On to the myriad issues:
- There is a startlingly low amount of new information in this book for existing players of PF who are porting over to 2E. As a comparison, the section on Varisia in the ISWG from 1E was 4 pages. In LOWG? Try 1.5. If you've been following Pathfinder, you may not read a single thing in this book that you didn't already know. So you're basically paying for rehashed, consolidated material and some new art (Psst...which you can get online for free).
- The Paizo team decided to break the world down into "zones", where ostensibly things are similar and you can explore certain adventure themes. So Varisia is now part of a zone called "The Saga Lands" for some reason. The book focuses on each of these zones while paying short thrift to countries or city-states within them. The one exception is Absalom. Other "zones" include: Broken Lands, Eye of Dread, Golden Road, High Seas, Impossible Lands, Mwangi Expanse, Old Cheliax, and Shining Kingdoms.
- The book bills itself as a "World Guide" and is 135 pages long. Compare this to Pathfinder first edition's "Inner Sea World Guide", which focused on the Inner Sea, a portion of Golarion's "world" at 318 pages and you'll begin to see the lack of detail in this book. Bear in mind, D&D 5E's Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide is 159 pages. That's 24 more pages for a small area of the Forgotten Realms. Yikes. So, one wonders why Paizo chose such a small page count. Would Paizo fans have not purchased a 300 - 400 page World Guide? Of course they would have. They just purchased a 620 page doorstop of a Core Rulebook. A cynic might say that Paizo was looking out for their bottom line and wanted to hold a lot in reserve to sell again to their fanbase.
- Why is Tanya Depass involved with this book? You would be forgiven for not knowing who that is. As far as I can tell, her only qualification is that she's a self-proclaimed "diversity consultant" to the gaming industry. What exactly does that mean, you ask? Tanya is a Queer Woman of Color (TM), checking three virtue-signaling diversity boxes for Paizo, and she wants to see more people like herself in gaming. You might be asking whether this is self-serving or perhaps racist and sexist, as Tanya herself would likely conclude if a straight white male was fighting to see more like himself in gaming. Well, no, of course it isn't! Why? Shhh...don't think too hard... (-1 star)
- No map for Absalom? Very unfortunate considering the neighborhood by neighborhood breakdown for the city. It would be nice for readers to know where in the City a 'hood is located. Visuals people, visuals.
- Apparently, all countries are exemplars of racial and gender equity. Yes, even city-states that just banned slavery. Yes, even devil-bound nations: "We may be evil, but we aren't /monsters/!" (-1 star)
- All of this detracts from the verisimilitude of the world, making Golarion feel less like a real, living, breathing place and more like a fantasy simulacrum of utopia for the current American ultra-left, where everyone who is not pure evil gets along, with no animus or bias towards anyone as a result of their race or sexuality. Unfortunately, real people have biases, and differences of opinion, and interpretations of goodness, and yes, some are even racist or sexist. But not in Golarion! Oh no. If you cross that line in Golarion, you're a moustache-twirling villain who also happens to eat babies and gut puppies and cast away rainbows from the sky and steal iced-cream from children.
- It's one thing to hold extreme political views, on either side. It's quite another to infest a fantasy role-playing game with said leanings. For me, fantasy should be just that, a chance to exit the everyday, and explore a world different from our own, not one that seems like its run by Jezebel, the #METOO movement, or MSNBC.
- Now, all of this would be well and good if there were some in-world rationale for all of this perfect gender and racial parity and equity (though curiously, Paizo is still fine with wealth and class disparity). But there's not. As a matter of fact, in Pathfinder's early days, the world contained much more racial animus and tension, more traditional gender differences, and all manner of bias. Yet, all of that has mysteriously vanished over the last few years as the real world political winds have shifted. This leaves Golarion feeling less like a fully realized fantasy world and more like a shadowy reflection of real world American left-wing politics, fickle and changing as real world politics change. Suddenly, in the last few years, Golarion's races, some of whom have millenia of racial hatred between them, are all either besties or on the verge of reconciliation, and from all indications, Golarion is well on its way to having every major city and nation ruled by a woman. Not because anything shifted in-world - there weren't Golarion-wide "Me Too" or "Goblin Lives Matter" movements for example -, but because the foul winds of real world political-correctness have blown. Pathfinder developers live in fear that if they portray races of Golarion evincing racial hatred or animus that someone in the real world will take that as a cue that Paizo thinks it's ok for real-world racial hatred to exist. That's the warped mindset here.
- This strange mindset is also reflected in the fact that Paizo plans on having slavery completely expunged from the Inner Sea. Why? Due to the creative director's fear that not doing so would potentially cause someone in the real world to believe that Paizo approves of slavery. So, as a public service, Paizo really, REALLY wants you to know that slavery is bad and they don't approve of it, OK???
I should have known better.
Before delving into the issues here, let's focus on a few of the positives:
- The art is gorgeous and very high-quality (for the most part)
- The layout and appearance of the book is excellent, with helpful tabs and indexing
- The section on Absalom is especially well-written - flavorful, evocative, and inspiring
- For those who have been following the changes that have taken place to Golarion since the Inner Sea World Guide was released, it's nice to have everything condensed in one place
Ready? On to the myriad issues:
- There is a startlingly low amount of new information in this book for existing players of PF who are porting over to 2E. As a comparison, the section on Varisia in the ISWG from 1E was 4 pages. In LOWG? Try 1.5. If you've been following Pathfinder, you may not read a single thing in this book that you didn't already know. So you're basically paying for rehashed, consolidated material and some new art (Psst...which you can get online for free).
- The Paizo team decided to break the world down into "zones", where ostensibly things are similar and you can explore certain adventure themes. So Varisia is now part of a zone called "The Saga Lands" for some reason. The book focuses on each of these zones while paying short thrift to countries or city-states within them. The one exception is Absalom. Other "zones" include: Broken Lands, Eye of Dread, Golden Road, High Seas, Impossible Lands, Mwangi Expanse, Old Cheliax, and Shining Kingdoms.
- The book bills itself as a "World Guide" and is 135 pages long. Compare this to Pathfinder first edition's "Inner Sea World Guide", which focused on the Inner Sea, a portion of Golarion's "world" at 318 pages and you'll begin to see the lack of detail in this book. Bear in mind, D&D 5E's Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide is 159 pages. That's 24 more pages for a small area of the Forgotten Realms. Yikes. So, one wonders why Paizo chose such a small page count. Would Paizo fans have not purchased a 300 - 400 page World Guide? Of course they would have. They just purchased a 620 page doorstop of a Core Rulebook. A cynic might say that Paizo was looking out for their bottom line and wanted to hold a lot in reserve to sell again to their fanbase.
- Why is Tanya Depass involved with this book? You would be forgiven for not knowing who that is. As far as I can tell, her only qualification is that she's a self-proclaimed "diversity consultant" to the gaming industry. What exactly does that mean, you ask? Tanya is a Queer Woman of Color (TM), checking three virtue-signaling diversity boxes for Paizo, and she wants to see more people like herself in gaming. You might be asking whether this is self-serving or perhaps racist and sexist, as Tanya herself would likely conclude if a straight white male was fighting to see more like himself in gaming. Well, no, of course it isn't! Why? Shhh...don't think too hard... (-1 star)
- No map for Absalom? Very unfortunate considering the neighborhood by neighborhood breakdown for the city. It would be nice for readers to know where in the City a 'hood is located. Visuals people, visuals.
- Apparently, all countries are exemplars of racial and gender equity. Yes, even city-states that just banned slavery. Yes, even devil-bound nations: "We may be evil, but we aren't /monsters/!" (-1 star)
- All of this detracts from the verisimilitude of the world, making Golarion feel less like a real, living, breathing place and more like a fantasy simulacrum of utopia for the current American ultra-left, where everyone who is not pure evil gets along, with no animus or bias towards anyone as a result of their race or sexuality. Unfortunately, real people have biases, and differences of opinion, and interpretations of goodness, and yes, some are even racist or sexist. But not in Golarion! Oh no. If you cross that line in Golarion, you're a moustache-twirling villain who also happens to eat babies and gut puppies and cast away rainbows from the sky and steal iced-cream from children.
- It's one thing to hold extreme political views, on either side. It's quite another to infest a fantasy role-playing game with said leanings. For me, fantasy should be just that, a chance to exit the everyday, and explore a world different from our own, not one that seems like its run by Jezebel, the #METOO movement, or MSNBC.
- Now, all of this would be well and good if there were some in-world rationale for all of this perfect gender and racial parity and equity (though curiously, Paizo is still fine with wealth and class disparity). But there's not. As a matter of fact, in Pathfinder's early days, the world contained much more racial animus and tension, more traditional gender differences, and all manner of bias. Yet, all of that has mysteriously vanished over the last few years as the real world political winds have shifted. This leaves Golarion feeling less like a fully realized fantasy world and more like a shadowy reflection of real world American left-wing politics, fickle and changing as real world politics change. Suddenly, in the last few years, Golarion's races, some of whom have millenia of racial hatred between them, are all either besties or on the verge of reconciliation, and from all indications, Golarion is well on its way to having every major city and nation ruled by a woman. Not because anything shifted in-world - there weren't Golarion-wide "Me Too" or "Goblin Lives Matter" movements for example -, but because the foul winds of real world political-correctness have blown. Pathfinder developers live in fear that if they portray races of Golarion evincing racial hatred or animus that someone in the real world will take that as a cue that Paizo thinks it's ok for real-world racial hatred to exist. That's the warped mindset here.
- This strange mindset is also reflected in the fact that Paizo plans on having slavery completely expunged from the Inner Sea. Why? Due to the creative director's fear that not doing so would potentially cause someone in the real world to believe that Paizo approves of slavery. So, as a public service, Paizo really, REALLY wants you to know that slavery is bad and they don't approve of it, OK???
July 17, 2021
Golarion is the *best* fantasy-kitchen-sink setting on the market. Better than the Forgotten Realms hands down. And it enters Pathfinder's 2nd Edition strong with the Lost Omens World Guide. This book is a primer on every major power player, nation, faction, hero, and villain of the two continents on either side of the Inner Sea. The plot has advanced from Pathfinder's 1st edition and all of the Adventure Paths from that edition are canon. Numerous entries in the book note a band of adventurers clubbing down a major threat. But don't think there's no adventure hooks. Every region is given conflicts internal and external that could easily become the fodder for homebrew adventures. These plot hooks include high fantasy fodder like a lich tyrant on the move again to political intrigue to less world-at-stake fantasy like recovering a flooded sector of a city overrun with water-bloated zombie school children.
Each country gets a page or so of write up giving its current circumstances and major figures. Side bars run on each page giving further notes on political structure and economics and in-depth biographies of those figures. It packs a lot of information in a concise package. With the recently released Mwangi Expanse book and the upcoming book all about Absalom it seems they do intend to go more in-depth in to these various local regions. So while this book is brief and mostly serves as a primer and ideas-mine for these regions there are forthcoming exhaustively detailed publications.
Each region comes with special character background particular to that region. Also included are spells and feats and dedications (Pathfinder 2nd Edition's substitute for multi-classing). It really fleshes out a character if you're playing on Golarion and not a homebrewed setting. And while a lot of these are grouped together at the end of the chapter, a lot are also dropped in where appropriate and while this might make finding them difficult and/or annoying, Pathfinder is also 100% no-joke open source with all the stuff available and searchable on the Archives of Nethys SRD.
But, mostly I want to rave about how brilliant Paizo is at layout. They are uncontested masters of putting a book together. Lengthy descriptions and political intrigue can be really dry. So, Paizo has given each page maximum visual interest if your brain finds itself too far out in to the weeds with the main text. Every page, and I do mean EVERY page, has art on it. A character study, a mood setting vista, an illustration of an important cultural piece. Something. Most pages have side bars on a narrow subject if you need to focus down on something over the tsunami of information in the main text. Citations to other parts of the book, or indeed other books entirely, are given with exact page numbers. God, Paizo is good at this. The book is densely informative but it isn't too much of a chore to read as when your eyes want to wander there's something wanting to catch them with open arms and give them a break. It's a masterpiece of book design and while the rumors of Wizards of the Coast buying out Paizo are patently false, I almost wish they were true so that D&D books would get better craftsmanship and editing.
Each country gets a page or so of write up giving its current circumstances and major figures. Side bars run on each page giving further notes on political structure and economics and in-depth biographies of those figures. It packs a lot of information in a concise package. With the recently released Mwangi Expanse book and the upcoming book all about Absalom it seems they do intend to go more in-depth in to these various local regions. So while this book is brief and mostly serves as a primer and ideas-mine for these regions there are forthcoming exhaustively detailed publications.
Each region comes with special character background particular to that region. Also included are spells and feats and dedications (Pathfinder 2nd Edition's substitute for multi-classing). It really fleshes out a character if you're playing on Golarion and not a homebrewed setting. And while a lot of these are grouped together at the end of the chapter, a lot are also dropped in where appropriate and while this might make finding them difficult and/or annoying, Pathfinder is also 100% no-joke open source with all the stuff available and searchable on the Archives of Nethys SRD.
But, mostly I want to rave about how brilliant Paizo is at layout. They are uncontested masters of putting a book together. Lengthy descriptions and political intrigue can be really dry. So, Paizo has given each page maximum visual interest if your brain finds itself too far out in to the weeds with the main text. Every page, and I do mean EVERY page, has art on it. A character study, a mood setting vista, an illustration of an important cultural piece. Something. Most pages have side bars on a narrow subject if you need to focus down on something over the tsunami of information in the main text. Citations to other parts of the book, or indeed other books entirely, are given with exact page numbers. God, Paizo is good at this. The book is densely informative but it isn't too much of a chore to read as when your eyes want to wander there's something wanting to catch them with open arms and give them a break. It's a masterpiece of book design and while the rumors of Wizards of the Coast buying out Paizo are patently false, I almost wish they were true so that D&D books would get better craftsmanship and editing.
May 4, 2025
A nice, brief overview of Golarion and Garund straight to the point but at the same time not shying away from providing a plethora of adventure hooks and ideas.
A great source for inspiration, and I wish I had the same type of book for Tian-Xia/Kelesh/Vudra in terms of length (the Tian-Xia World Guide being more on the exhaustive side of things).
A great source for inspiration, and I wish I had the same type of book for Tian-Xia/Kelesh/Vudra in terms of length (the Tian-Xia World Guide being more on the exhaustive side of things).
November 1, 2019
I love this world! It has something for literally everyone. Wanna go fight Drow in the Darklands? Wanna go to space? Wanna meet an AI God or go swashbuckling in the inner sea like the pirate you are? Golarion has all the opportunities you will ever need
June 14, 2020
I'm new to Pathfinder with the second edition, so I found this to be a good amount of information to fill me in on the history of Golarion and provide plenty of adventure hooks specific to the different regions.
January 15, 2023
Great introduction to the Inner Sea of the Golarion setting. If you are a fan of the Golarion setting/lore, interested in playing in the Golarion setting, or looking for ideas in your own campaign setting - this is a fun and fast read.
March 18, 2023
Golarion is an amazing setting and I can't wait to spend more time there.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews