2 stars, so I'll start with the cons:

I was running a campaign of Amazons and was hoping the players would be able to use these at their heroes. Nope.

Almost all of them are wearing g-strings. Prophetess, Enchantress, Temple Guard, Bladedancer, Warlord, Archer, Guard.

A few have expressions that are either surprise or terror.

I think all are blonde except the archer.

The skin color is dark but it just doesn't look realistic or illustration quality. To be fair, it's shown on the cover photo in the preview, but I felt it looked worse somehow on the rest of the figures, even though maybe it's the same.

As with all Arion paper minis, minis from the PDF will be about 28mm tall. If your players bring plastic minis they will be about 34-38mm tall, so these will appear comically small. You cannot zoom the PDF when printing because that will result in the minis at the edge of the page being cropped, and the art looking jaggy. However, this set includes the same minis in a PowerPoint file, and you can select and copy and paste and scale minis from there, basically one at a time. It's workable.

PROS If you're running Amazons as bikini-mail crop-top NPCs, these will do the trick, including a few without weapons or armor at all.

There are four Amazons riding dinosaurs or something, one with a look of terror and one with a confident look that indicates your players are in for trouble.

These come formatted as flats or tri-folds, so you can use the form you'd like.

Arion has a huge catalog so even if an individual set isn't terrific, the catalog still gives you a consistent art style across the collection.

There are three books that are essential to becoming the GM you want to become, and this is the most important one. 100 pages and so damn clear and concise that you'll weep with joy. If you know all of this, it's concise and well-organized enough to be a refresher on any point you want to strengthen without wasting your time. And when you're learning new tricks (and damn, I learned a lot) the material has guides and examples to get you on your way.

Buy this first. Read it. (Don't just put in on the pile.) Seriously, if you're going to run a pre-generated adventure, this is probably your highest value prep time. Read the first 30 pages of this before you read the adventure you bought and you'll get more out of the adventure. Skim it again after a month so you can put into practice a little more.

Not affiliated with anyone, just a GM that likes happy and terrified players.

The setting felt like The Expanse or perhaps Battlestar Galactica: Human-centric, realistic tech.

I really liked three elements of the test drive:

• Characters have "Ok Google", "Alexa" digital assistants that help with everything, including combat. "Joe, open the door" and "Mr. Turtle, show me security cams as we go, I want to avoid ambushes" are all fun. Each assistant has its own skills and personality to role-play.
• Ship-to-ship combat had meaningful roles for pilot, gunner(s), and ship ops.
• A nice hook into a larger mystery and the campaign

I read the Test Drive once and then played it. I've bought the entire campaign in PDF form... Via the Bundle of Holding I got it all for about $20.

The Test Drive is 7 pages of history and background, 11 pages of rules, 9 pages of adventure, and some pages of pre-gen characters and maps. It's Deluxe Edition and there is a conversion document available, so this didn't slow us down at all. I felt like in the test drive there was too much settting info, not enough adventure info. There were a lot of new rules to cover (zero gee combat, assistants, ship-to-ship, psionics) that had good examples but could have used more, or there could have been notes for the NPCs that detailed the tactics they would use. On a second or third play this would have been fine, but for my first play I wanted more guidance. In the heat of trying to keep combat moving, I forgot to apply a number of rules, and having them in the examples might have helped.

It comes with two star maps and no guidance on why they are different or how to apply them in the test drive.

The two tactical maps come with instructions for using Adobe's poster mode to print them... That's fine, but they could have simply been included at full-size in the PDF and saved me some extra steps.

It didn't include any paper minis. It would have been nice to have them for the terrorists, miners, and pre-gen PCs.

There's almost no opportunity to role-play in the test drive -- it's a series of combats. That was okay because combat with zero-gee rules and assistants is a unique element, as is ship-to-ship combat, so it was worth exploring. But more RP would have been nice... maybe something to deal with personalities and psionics, for example.

I flat out don't understand Toughness: 7/9 (+2/+4). That's on me, but it was distracting.

I highly recommend this if you're interested in the setting (and want to hook your players) and want to play a one-shot game. I'm looking forward to starting a campaign.

For a fresh mix of pirate and fantasy, I don't think you can do better than 50 Fathoms. New races, no elf clones. Small one-off quests, elements that link adventures together, conflict between major factions, and a world-at-risk plot point? They're all in here, and this has enabled me to run three different groups of players in the same world, with three different starting points, and each group is free to pursue their own goals.

This is for Deluxe Edition, not Adventurer's Edition (SWADE), but conversion on-the-fly hasn't been a problem.

This has been around a while so searching the web has turned up more detailed guides to the ships and other resources. The pirate theme has made it easy to find other things:

• Ship maps by Gabriel Pickard
• Pirate cards for an action deck by Just Insert Imagination
• 50 Fathoms paper minis by PEG... the art isn't great, but they are exactly tuned to the setting
• Lists of Pirate names and backgrounds for instant NPCs by Fishwife Games
• Pirate music and art is everywhere

Cons There's not a lot of art for PCs to use of the unique races in 50 Fathoms.

Ship-to-ship combat could probably be more interesting.

Go to the PEG site to download a high-resolution version of the main map; the maps in the book are too blurry to read the labels very well.

I found I needed to prep a bit for most adventures to create threads that tie things together, give the NPCs a little more life and continuity, and bring life to the different regions of the world. There are distinct personalities to each region, but it's not necessarily detailed out in the adventures in each. No problem, this is still a 5-star product.

I love the concept here: It's simple and inexpensive and a fun place to introduce role-playing games to kids. I gave it four stars because if you've got kids who want adventures, then just buy this and get started. It's the best start I know of for this group. It's better than a game with plastic minis, in my view, because you can affordably face so many different creatures.

But it could have been better. I'd love to see it get a minor update.

There are no rules in the system to make a fast-talker, a thief, or a beast master. It would have added some variety to have skills to disarm traps, pick locks on treasure chests, talk a monster into trading his treasure for some of your lunch. (Maybe there are expansions for this; I haven't read them all yet.)

It's great that the warrior can be a girl or a boy. It's flat-out disappointing that the brute, rogue, healer and knight don't have male or female options. Can you guess whether the healer is a boy or a girl? Yeah, it's a girl. And the knight's a boy.

The character and monster stat cards are on a parchment colored background but the illustrations are in black and white. And they're PDFs, not JPGs.

If the intent is for the players (kids) to color their own heros, it's more difficult because the cards are PDFs and have to be converted to JPG before you can open them in a paint program. And it's more expensive to print the cards because of the parchment background. It could have all been grayscale (color it yourself) or color (print and go). This is the worst of both.

And why not color the monster cards and monster paper minis? There are pirates, snakes, large snakes, rats, snakes, spiders, more than a half-dozen of each, all 1" tall. It would have been great to have these in color.

Even the maps are in grayscale.

When you set up for a session the game looks very gray.

This is a minor annoyance, really, but the monster cards don't have cut-out borders on the page, so it's left to you to make them the same size. I wish the paper minis had cut lines instead of borders, or perhaps thicker borders, so that cutting them out didn't leave fragments of the lines and make my cutting work look sloppy.

I also wish the paper minis didn't go quite so close to the edge of the paper. This makes it really difficult to print them larger. For example, if your kids have plastic minis from the game store for their heroes, and you print the skeletons at normal scale, the skeletons will look absolutely puny. It would have been nice to print them about 20% larger. You can't do that because art is too close to the edge and the edges (legs and feet) get cropped. Being able to print larger would have helped show off the detail in the art, too.

I genuinely like this better than expensive competitors like Mice and Mystics (and even HeroQuest). Paper minis enables Hero Kids to have a larger variety of creatures to encounter, and creatures of many different sizes. The stories in this are better (the prose is more concise), and the rules are cleaner. This means you get to play faster without spending much time in the rulebook. It's a game I like to bring to the table with kids. I just wish it were more attractive.

This is my first SWAG purchase and wow, it's really useful and concise. Only a buck, but we'll use this a lot. It adds just enough structure to make travel feel like there's some craft to it and more than just an encounter table. Thanks!

It's nice to have minis that exactly match the things you'll encounter in 50 Fathoms. There are about 14 characters, 20 warriors of various types, and some giant spiders and creatures unique to 50 Fathoms. Many have a dozen copies on a page, so you can print up a fight pretty easily.

The enclosing boxes for humanoids are 31mm tall. The tall Atani and the short (5 foot) Grael are the same height.

31mm looks a little small against Reaper and Pathfinder minis, and you can scale these up about 10% before the edges get cropped. I wish the layout had supported 20% zoom without cropping. These also look small against ArcKnight's excellent 2D plastic pirate minis.

The art could be more defined, but it's certainly adequate to the task and this set is worth purchasing if you play with minis.

These are four interesting characters and some stacked goblins.

I've been disappointed by a lot of paper minis because they are too small when you put them on the table next to plastic 3D minis. Some players want to bring their own, so I tend to prefer paper for the NPCs.

From bottom of foot to top of head, the blue knight is 34mm tall, white wizard is 32mm, green wizard is 33mm, and the bruiser with the axe is a towering 40mm tall. The bases will add 4mm, maybe 5.

Reaper and Heroforge minis are around 38mm on a base, so these stack up.

You can judge for yourself with the preview but I think they're beautiful and detailed and in good poses. The colors are great. I wish the name of the figure on the base were easier to read.

Printing and assembling these is slightly different than others, but it's all good. I think I would prefer the fold at the bottom to protect against peeling in multiple removals from the base, but I like this method of making cool bases. Instructions about scoring for a good fold are helpful.

Personally, I'm not going to carefully cut out a paper mini along the contours of the figure. I wish these had some kind of standard outline of black around them so I could cut out a rectangle and just clip the corners or something. If you cut out the contour I'm sure they'll look better.

The art book on how these were made was fun and interesting. Best of all, there's stand-alone full size art of each mini. Players could paste that into their character sheet.

I'm really finding value in all of the Story Design guides. They're the difference between starting a campaign plan with an outline and good questions, or just a blank piece of paper. I've read three so far and each is absolutely worth the time and money: 10 or so pages, $2 or less dollars. For each of three acts, this identifies the start, the main character and motivation options, and what happens in the act and what state ends the act. This rhythm has really boosted the wow factor of even short gaming sessions.

Seduction was an eye-opener for me. It could be love, but it's anything the PC wants but shouldn't have. Making that a tangible element in a game could really up the roleplaying around the table, making a much more emotional connection than I've generally had. I haven't tried this one yet, but I'm excited to try it. The writing in this book is as excellent and concise as the others in the set.

This is a concise guide (10 or 12 pages) to a 3-act rescue story: Challenges for each act, the types of characters, a guide to the antagonist. While reading it I kept brainstorming twists and events that would make the 2nd act drive the players to their knees in despair, and from there see a chance---just a sliver---that can help them achieve the rescue. This guide won't waste your time or your money.

Starting to plan an adventure from this is the difference between starting with an outline of good questions or starting with a blank page.

I was a little disappointed to see a handful of editing mistakes, and in something of this quality they stand out more than they might in other books. But the tiny errors aren't enough to take off even a half-star in my rating.

Wow. You can tell a writer wrote this. It's concise, it's insightful, it's exactly the knowledge I needed to make my next campaign hit the marks. Pick one of these Story Designs to match the next campaign you plan to write, and perhaps the next one you plan to run, and you'll know just what to emphasize to make it hit home for your players.

It lays out the prep work, and then the key points to hit in each act of a three-act story (which can be as many sessions as you'd like). This was about 10 pages of actual content.

This will mostly be useful to someone who is writing a campaign or adventure, but it can also be useful if you're a GM about to run a pre-generated quest. By reviewing the material with the key points of the three-acts in mind, you'll know what to emphasize and have a better idea of how to play your scenes. Maybe you'll find something missing in the pregen that you can fill in to make it really leap off the page, blade flashing.

Highly recommended.

There is some sound advice in here but it's diluted with filler material and what-works-for-you and generalities to the point that I felt it wasn't of value. It's a shame because I'm sure the author knows A LOT MORE than me about being a GM and preparing for sessions. I'd love to learn from him.

For example: There's a whole section on pens and paper vs. electronics but not a mention of any online tools like Obsidian or even Google Docs. Dropbox gets a passing mention but there are paragraphs about pens and pencils.

Selecting your tools has questions like: Are your tools reliable and available when you need them? Do the devices you use have long-lasting batteries? Do your tools work well in those locations?

Some of the best advice is to build templates and put fields on the templates for the things you are weak at, so you're reminded to do them. (Do you forget weather in your scenes? Add a weather field. Forget signature combat moves or tactics for your NPCs? Add a field.) It's good advice. I feel like I read 130 pages for that, and didn't get to see any true sample templates.

This book needed an editor. A ruthless, heartless editor.

There's a really long review here by Jordan R. and he's word-for-word correct.

This ship is beautiful, with shadows and textures that are rich and inviting. I printed it at several scales: About 3" long for ship-to-ship fighting, then full-size for role-playing, and one deck at double-size (5 sheets of paper long, two wide) where I figured the bulk of the melee would take place.

I took off one-star in my rating because I think it's missing a deck. The top layer has stairs going up to the back half of the top layer drawing. I think that means the back half of the top deck isn't shown. Or maybe it just needs some labels. I couldn't figure it out.

My players burned the HMS Surprise to the waterline without setting foot on it, so I renamed it the HMS Garland and used the deck plans on a later ship that they boarded about three sessions later.

The list of professions alone makes this worth it. Recommend this purchase.

The personality table has entries that are similar: Languid, detached, gives up easily, nonchalant... I would have preferred to see fewer entries and more aspects of their personality covered. How do they feel about their job? Their family? The authorities? Still, this is a useful table as a start.

I liked this a lot. Some snippets are mundane and hilarious, a few might lead to a deeper conversation and adventure. I love the mundane ones the most because make the world feel real. I think it could be improved by having separate charts for adventure hooks and non-hooks. Entirely worth the price... I'd buy more of this if I could.