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Even after months I still feel a bit overwhelmed after reading it. If I could give this product more than five stars, I would; it's a textbook example of how to write a RPG guide to lost and ruined cities. Great maps by Rob Lazzaretti, well-written songs and poems and vignettes that work brilliantly as hand-outs, evocative language, inspiring adventure hooks and NPCs, very nice monsters, awesome flavour... and practically nothing to criticize. Nothing. Every city feels and looks very different from each other, and even though it's only 10 pages per city, you'll get more than enough juicy lore and game information to run a campaign in any (or all) of them! In fact, Lost Cities provides you with guidelines on how to use each city as an adventure site for all levels (low, medium, hight) of play. It’s just amazing how much useful information they’ve crammed into 60+ pages.

Perhaps it tells something if I say that this book made me feel almost as excited as watching the best torturers in Order of the Rack practise their craft on Taldorian dandies! ;)

I recommend this book for any GM, and I wish I had had something like this when I was a fledgling Dungeon Master so many years ago. In fact, as far as I'm concerned, this is a MUST-HAVE book, and not just for Pathfinder GMs; since there are not a lot of game mechanics in it, Lost Cities can actually be used as a sourcebook for any RPG!

Adventures written for 1st level characters can be tricky, especially dungeon crawls in a "contained" environment (such as the Godsmouth Ossuary). However, in my opinion the author pulls it off very nicely; it's a challenging adventure for 1st level characters, but rewards and monsters are well-balanced. And even though the PCs cannot “retreat” back to the surface, the author has taken it into consideration.

The author uses a lot of cool monsters and all of them have their motivations and place in the module; I especially love that he utilizes so many variants from 'Classic Horrors Revisited' (although he originally designed them, so it's no wonder ;)). Also, this adventure contains lots of juicy details (some of it relating to Thassilonian history and the Runelords), well-written and evocative descriptions and pretty innovative hazards/traps (some of which even aren't "real" traps). What’s even more important is that none of the encounters, traps or puzzles in the module are “showstoppers” – they shouldn’t grind your game to a halt. Experienced players may find a bit more treasure, but apart from that, even first-time players should be able to enjoy the adventure and have no problems with completing it.

The backstory may not be anything new, but it’s written so well that it should satisfy the needs of both seasoned and beginner GMs alike. The antagonists in this adventure are golden; without spoiling too much I’ll simply say that rarely have I seen such tragic and complex NPCs in published modules. My favorite is probably a run-of-the-mill guardian monster from the Bestiary, who’s "eager to taste the thrill of combat once again" after "millennia of boredom". Great stuff!

The only negative thing for me in this module was the map of the dungeon; it's quite boring for a dungeon, and it's way too symmetrical for my taste. But this is a minor issue for me; I often redraw or modify maps in published adventures anyway.

I can heartily recommend this module to all Pathfinder GMs, beginners and veterans alike. It’s probably my favorite low-level PF RPG module so far, and what's even better is that it’s written for Kaer Maga. Buy the excellent ‘City of Strangers’ along with this adventure, and you have the all the material you need to start a killer campaign!