What do you think?
Rate this book
Absalom: City of Lost Omens
For nearly 5000 years, the great city of Absalom has stood at the center of the Inner Sea’s culture, commerce, and prophecy. Now, with the death of the city’s founder-god Aroden, the disappearance of the city’s lord mayor, and newly launched attacks from some of its greatest foes, Absalom stands at the gateway to a new and uncertain destiny! This lore-packed 296-page hardcover guide to the locations, denizens, and adventures of Pathfinder’s most famous city is the largest Pathfinder city sourcebook to date, presenting a fascinating locale suitable for years of adventure! A huge 8-panel poster map of the city sets the scene in unprecedented detail, allowing your heroes to walk upon streets paved with centuries of history, following the steps of generations of questing heroes to chart a new path for the City at the Center of the World!
296 pages, Hardcover
Published January 18, 2022
3 people are currently reading
19 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 10, 2025
When this book was announced about two and half years ago, I was thrilled. In fact, my first thought was that finally we’ll get a city book that will do justice to the City at the Center of the World! I didn’t mind that eventually Absalom was postponed indefinitely, because in my mind this was The Flagship Project for the second edition and the Lost Omens product line, captained by one of the best designers in the world. Let him take his time and work his magic, and the end result will make Waterdeep, Freeport, and Ptolus pale in comparison!
The book begins with a nice history section, and then describes all the major players, guilds, houses and factions in the city, including the participants in the War of Strings. I also like the parts about architecture and culture, and the glimpses at what a typical day and a year will be like for average residents of Absalom. All of this is great material for GMs, although honestly, I thought something similar to the ”Entwined Destinies” section at the end of Lost Omens : Legends would have been super helpful, perhaps even mandatory part for a book about Absalom. And in my humble opinion, that is where the good stuff more or less ends, on page 77, unless you count those chapter-opening art pieces of each district, which are great.
Why am I so disappointed? Well, I had expected something like Worldwound, City of Strangers or Rule of Fear, with loads of inspiring locations, story hooks and NPCs. In secret I had even hoped this book would be just like the superior, yet still flawed, Sandpoint : Light of the Lost Coast, which includes quests and adventure seeds for every location and NPC mentioned in the book. Well, I should have realized that it’s probably not going to happen in a book that describes over 250 locations and 400 NPCs.
And that is kind of my point; this book was (obviously) a very ambitious and time-consuming project. It is also a prime example why sometimes less is more, and why deadlines are deadlines. The number of NPCs and locations in this book is just overwhelming, and sadly, I think most of them are not very inspiring and some may even be completely irrelevant in many campaigns. In my opinion the writing feels very ”forced”, in the ”Let’s just get this done!” sort of way, and thus many locations feel like boring landmarks, and almost all of the NPCs lack interesting goals or ways to hook them up with PCs. If this book had fewer locations and NPCs, I think it would probably have resulted in better descriptions and more space for adventuring-related stuff.
And that brings me to another major failure in this book: the lack of any real adventuring content. There are many sidebars containing brief story quests and encounters, but IMO most of these are tired old clichés or outright jokes. A rampant owlbear wearing a pink collar, and chased by its gnome owner? A group of unregistered acrobats being chased by city guards for an ”illegal performance”? Or young nobles stealing heads of statues as trophies? Are you serious, Paizo? And even the better ones aren’t really very imaginative, either. There are living mushroom threatening a fungi farmer, and a kobold tribe harassing sewer workers, and that’s pretty much it.
Where are the Key-lock Killers, Choppers and other local boogeymen and legends of Absalom? Where are the local haunted alleys plagued by shadows, ghosts or ”mystery slayers” such as Walcofinde or Living Graffiti? Where are overall the mysteries, enigmas and secrets of this metropolis for the PCs to discover? Oh yeah, there’s the Grislyfair, and the spooky orphanage with its drowned children, but both are described so inadequately that they’re practically unusable without a ton of prep work.
The expression: ’I want to bite, but where’s the meat?’ comes to mind.
I even felt a bit cheated to see those ”ready-built Undercity locale” maps, all of which were first published in Last Watch. I already paid for those maps once, you know, and I have a hard time believing there are no unpublished dungeon maps lying around in the Paizo office. That is just lazy, Paizo, lame even.
To be frank, there are a couple of decent campaign seeds mentioned in the book, but both are no more than just short ideas revolving around a single NPC, who suffer from the same lack of details and methods for their plans than the rest of the NPCs do. There are also a couple of dungeons mentioned which piqued my interest, but one of them is more or less inaccessible. And what of Starstone? I was really hopeful to get additional information on the Test and the Cathedral, but instead there’s a nasty surprise in the book for GMs and players who might have dreams of deityhood as the endgame of their campaign. And I think there’s also other crucial stuff missing, such as a proper description and map of Shadow Absalom, or descriptions (and maybe even some maps) of new siege castles.
The book describes a very Utopian city, where residents brush shoulders with marble-hewn and gem-studded gargoyles, and tourists ride prehistoric giant birds or elephants to sunset. Where monster-born crime lords dream of being able to visit restaurants and the opera as themselves, and moustache-twirling villains snarl helplessly at PCs engaging in witty philosophical debates and games of chance on flying carpets with visiting efreeti noble ambassadors. And whatnot. I guess the goal was to invoke a sense of wonder in players, but the end result reminds me kind of a Disney-style version of Absalom, where nothing REALLY bad ever happens. There’s even a list of NPC ”Kite Enthusiasts” and another of ”Children”, but not one for high priests or wizards. And that sentence alone describes to me what is kind of wrong about this book, at least from this veteran GM’s perspective.
I’ll give this book 1 star out of 5, because I see it as a big pile of wasted potential. I think this could have been a LOT better. It's apparently meant to be a family-friendly book without too many darker elements and primarily targeted at (younger) newbie players. Tip for would-be purchasers of anything Paizo at this point - first check out a library copy of each Lost Omens book and then decide whether it is worth your money or not.
"The city is yours"? It's not mine, sorry to say.
The book begins with a nice history section, and then describes all the major players, guilds, houses and factions in the city, including the participants in the War of Strings. I also like the parts about architecture and culture, and the glimpses at what a typical day and a year will be like for average residents of Absalom. All of this is great material for GMs, although honestly, I thought something similar to the ”Entwined Destinies” section at the end of Lost Omens : Legends would have been super helpful, perhaps even mandatory part for a book about Absalom. And in my humble opinion, that is where the good stuff more or less ends, on page 77, unless you count those chapter-opening art pieces of each district, which are great.
Why am I so disappointed? Well, I had expected something like Worldwound, City of Strangers or Rule of Fear, with loads of inspiring locations, story hooks and NPCs. In secret I had even hoped this book would be just like the superior, yet still flawed, Sandpoint : Light of the Lost Coast, which includes quests and adventure seeds for every location and NPC mentioned in the book. Well, I should have realized that it’s probably not going to happen in a book that describes over 250 locations and 400 NPCs.
And that is kind of my point; this book was (obviously) a very ambitious and time-consuming project. It is also a prime example why sometimes less is more, and why deadlines are deadlines. The number of NPCs and locations in this book is just overwhelming, and sadly, I think most of them are not very inspiring and some may even be completely irrelevant in many campaigns. In my opinion the writing feels very ”forced”, in the ”Let’s just get this done!” sort of way, and thus many locations feel like boring landmarks, and almost all of the NPCs lack interesting goals or ways to hook them up with PCs. If this book had fewer locations and NPCs, I think it would probably have resulted in better descriptions and more space for adventuring-related stuff.
And that brings me to another major failure in this book: the lack of any real adventuring content. There are many sidebars containing brief story quests and encounters, but IMO most of these are tired old clichés or outright jokes. A rampant owlbear wearing a pink collar, and chased by its gnome owner? A group of unregistered acrobats being chased by city guards for an ”illegal performance”? Or young nobles stealing heads of statues as trophies? Are you serious, Paizo? And even the better ones aren’t really very imaginative, either. There are living mushroom threatening a fungi farmer, and a kobold tribe harassing sewer workers, and that’s pretty much it.
Where are the Key-lock Killers, Choppers and other local boogeymen and legends of Absalom? Where are the local haunted alleys plagued by shadows, ghosts or ”mystery slayers” such as Walcofinde or Living Graffiti? Where are overall the mysteries, enigmas and secrets of this metropolis for the PCs to discover? Oh yeah, there’s the Grislyfair, and the spooky orphanage with its drowned children, but both are described so inadequately that they’re practically unusable without a ton of prep work.
The expression: ’I want to bite, but where’s the meat?’ comes to mind.
I even felt a bit cheated to see those ”ready-built Undercity locale” maps, all of which were first published in Last Watch. I already paid for those maps once, you know, and I have a hard time believing there are no unpublished dungeon maps lying around in the Paizo office. That is just lazy, Paizo, lame even.
To be frank, there are a couple of decent campaign seeds mentioned in the book, but both are no more than just short ideas revolving around a single NPC, who suffer from the same lack of details and methods for their plans than the rest of the NPCs do. There are also a couple of dungeons mentioned which piqued my interest, but one of them is more or less inaccessible. And what of Starstone? I was really hopeful to get additional information on the Test and the Cathedral, but instead there’s a nasty surprise in the book for GMs and players who might have dreams of deityhood as the endgame of their campaign. And I think there’s also other crucial stuff missing, such as a proper description and map of Shadow Absalom, or descriptions (and maybe even some maps) of new siege castles.
The book describes a very Utopian city, where residents brush shoulders with marble-hewn and gem-studded gargoyles, and tourists ride prehistoric giant birds or elephants to sunset. Where monster-born crime lords dream of being able to visit restaurants and the opera as themselves, and moustache-twirling villains snarl helplessly at PCs engaging in witty philosophical debates and games of chance on flying carpets with visiting efreeti noble ambassadors. And whatnot. I guess the goal was to invoke a sense of wonder in players, but the end result reminds me kind of a Disney-style version of Absalom, where nothing REALLY bad ever happens. There’s even a list of NPC ”Kite Enthusiasts” and another of ”Children”, but not one for high priests or wizards. And that sentence alone describes to me what is kind of wrong about this book, at least from this veteran GM’s perspective.
I’ll give this book 1 star out of 5, because I see it as a big pile of wasted potential. I think this could have been a LOT better. It's apparently meant to be a family-friendly book without too many darker elements and primarily targeted at (younger) newbie players. Tip for would-be purchasers of anything Paizo at this point - first check out a library copy of each Lost Omens book and then decide whether it is worth your money or not.
"The city is yours"? It's not mine, sorry to say.
September 2, 2022
Ton's of great content here, especially for the Agents of Edgewatch adventure path.
January 14, 2025
I adore this book, Absalom is so close to my heart and I treasure it deeply, seriously an amazing piece of world building and it's incredible, I am in love
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews