After what seems like an eternity, my favorite spin of the Black Hack, Heroic Fantasy, returns with a 2nd edition. And it was worth the wait!

Heroic Fantasy 2nd Edition is everything you liked about the first edition only turned up to 11. A new class! More races! Armor degrades but also reduces damage. Help and Hinder dice (Adv/Disad) make for easy bonuses and penalties. Long & Short rests aid in recovering health and spells. Scalable spells by slot usage. Cantrips! A Dice Ladder to scale up damage as characters gain in levels.

The 2nd Edition is an evolution of the 1st. There are clearly some 5E D&D influences, though things like long/short rests could be easily toned down or even ignored if you wanted to play hardcore old-school. The core foundations of The Black Hack still shines through, though. Roll under your attributes on a d20 to succeed at whatever task you're attempting. Simple, no math, and fast.

The POD version is great: small format, easy to read, and reasonably priced. Everyone at the table can get a copy.

So grab your old (A)D&D or 5e modules and run them with a more streamlined, player-facing game that gets out of the way and let's you get more gaming done.

I'll just keep this simple: you want more options for your 13th age characters? Get this book. Great layout, nice art, excellent content.

Combine this with the author's previous book, Dark Pacts & Ancient Secrets, and you'll be hard-pressed to run out of character ideas and options for your 13th Age campaign.

Oh yeah, the hardcover version is quite cool, too.

This is a fantastic little toolkit for your White Box campaigns. The layout is clear with some nice black & white line-art character illustrations. The classes presented are well-balanced and round out the base lineup from White Box: FMAG. My only complaint is there is no Ranger, but that is easily dealt with. The Druid spells are concise, though GMs will have to make some rulings regarding whether or not a saving throw is allowed. (I'm looking at you, Sunburst). The expanded rules section contains all manner of optional rules, such as increased attribute modifiers, extra races, additional class abilities, and a very brief feat system. Some White Box GMs will probably have a massive coronary over some of this stuff, but it's entirely optional and frankly pretty well done. If you like Swords & Wizardry White Box, and especially Charlie Mason's White Box: Fantastic Medieval Adventure Game, this is a great resource.

Big Hexyland is a set of nine hex-shaped, vector image maps which can be arranged any way you like to form a fantasy campaign map. Since the maps are vector images, they scale very well. In fact, you could take these maps to a print shop and have them printed on a large format printer with no loss in quality. Each map has a companion "node map" identifying each regions important locations and travel times. There are plenty of plot hooks and adventure ideas on each map, giving idea-starved GMs a great tool for generating plot elements or story arcs. If I have one complaint, it's that I wish I could edit the text in the hex maps and the node maps to truly customize the world. But this is a minor quibble and in no way detracts from the product. In fact, I'll probably just use them as is. I hope to see more Big Hexyland maps from Blue Boxer Rebellion in the future.

As of right now, the Gamers Helping Haiti Bundle has raised over $100,000 to assist Doctors Without Borders' Haiti relief efforts. Read that again: $100,000.

For a measly $20 you get 180 PDFs from publishers large and small who are putting up their own hard work for free to help people they've probably never met in a land they've probably never been to.

The value of this bundle is amazing, as it contains many products that are already more than $20 on their own. Further, with 180 PDFs in the bundle, there's something for everyone.

If you have $20 to spare, log in and grab this bundle.

Excellent! The Ultimate Edition of BASH is superior to its predecessor in every way possible. The book has expanded from 32 to 137 pages, with more powers, a section on super-hero genres, and a killer layout. If you're new to BASH, it's an easy to learn system that plays very fast but still manages to have enough crunch to keep you interested. The basic mechanic is rolling 2d6 and multiplying the result by the appropriate stat (Brawn, Agility, or Mind) plus any applicable modifiers and beating a target number. Simple and easy.

Characters are built on points. These can range from 20 points for Mystery Men to 60+ points for Cosmic-level heroes. While there are plenty of options here, it won't take you hours to build a character and you could jot all relevant stats down on a 3x5 index card.

If you owned the previous edition of BASH, you should really get the Ultimate Edition. The layout is outstanding, the art is bright and colorful, and all the extra new stuff is worth the price of admission.

As far as super-hero games go, BASH Ultimate Edition is my go-to system. Fast, easy, and fun.

Another fine set of supers from Inspired Device! The good/bad versions are always a plus, giving you twice as many ideas for your games. The brief write-ups can spark your imagination, or you can just chuck them and work up your own. I love the art style and bright, fun colors. The only thing I could ask for is 10 more volumes of Mirror Universe! Well, that and an English translation of their Supers! line!

A fine set of minis for building an Elven army or skirmish force for tabletop wargaming. Consisting of three troop types (Spear, Bow, and Sword) in three poses each, these figures look great individually or massed up in ranks. The included movement trays are useful if you play Warhammer or similar games. If you're feeling ambitious, try scaling these guys down by 50% and you've got some really cool 15mm miniatures for mass combat games like A Fistfull of Miniatures. And, at $3.95 a set, you can't go wrong. Print out a whole army for a fraction of the cost of traditional minis, then assemble them in no time and you're ready to rock 'n roll. Additional movement trays and bases in a wide variety of sizes, shapes, and textures are available at the One Monk website for infinite customization. Simply great stuff!

A great set of easily-built fantasy characters perfect for RPGs and tabletop gaming in general. Visit the website for a ton of differently sized, shaped, and textured bases to customize the figures for your game. Black and white line-art versions are also supplied if you feel like coloring in your own figures. They just look awesome!

Another fine, classy product from Inspired Device. As with its four predecessors, Mirror Universe Volume 5 is wonderfully illustrated and contains brief, but useful biographies of the characters presented. If you like the animated style of super-heroes and you like cardstock miniatures, you really can't go wrong with this set. My favorite in this set? The good version of Nova +. Now if they'd only put out more volumes...

M&T is a great addition to C&C. It's well-illustrated, has small stat blocks (yeah!), a good selection of creatures and treasure, and has that great old-school feel that only C&C can provide. The only downside? The price! $19.95 for a PDF? The dead tree version costs the same!

I'll admit it, I love C&C. It's old-school-meets-new-school philosophy just rocks. Make no mistake about it, this game will take you back to a time when RPGs seemed (and were!) a lot simpler than some of the bloated behemoths we have today. C&C isn't for everybody - I'm sure there are some 3.0/3.5/4.0 addicts out there who would never dream of playing C&C, but I'm not one of them. C&C is simple, quick, and fun. It is, IMHO, a far better successor to AD&D than 3.0 was. And on sale for $10? How could you go wrong? So, buy this little gem, strap on your chain mail, sharpen your sword, and pound those miserable little kobolds into the ground!

Believe it or not, there IS a good game in here. You just have to wade through a layout that isn't as clear as it should be and some acronyms that might make the game seem more complicated than it really is. The Ability Tree system for defining a characters skills and traits is infinitely customizable and will generally allow you to design any character you want. The combat system is different from what most people are used to, but it's fairly easy to use. A "you design the spell" magic system is provided that does a pretty good job of simulating the arcane arts.

What you're basically getting with Eldritch Roleplaying is a toolkit. You'll need to put some work in to fully realize the game's potential, but I think much of the criticism leveled at ERP isn't 100% accurate, either. ERP doesn't reinvent the wheel, but it does give you a different wheel to play roll around. For a generic fantasy RPG, it's pretty good.

Good: Very flexible character creation system, interesting approach to combat with Defense Pools, good toolkit for GMs who want to create their own fantasy worlds

Bad: The layout and organization is sometimes quite confusing, the various acronyms take a while to learn, a full-color version would've been nice.

Wow! These trolls are awesome! Need a few good-old-fashioned beasties for your warband or to terrorize your RPG players with? Then these are for you! You get six trolls, both colored and black & white, plus fold-up bases. The only downside? They come with cave floor style bases... I wish they were "grass" style instead. Nevertheless, these trolls are a great value.

These models are a great and inexpensive substitute for plastic or metal minis, especially if you don't have the time to paint or the cash to throw down. For $3.95 you get ten Terran marines (nine plus a leader) in heavy armor with tri-guns and cool fold-up bases to mount them on. The art is good, the figures build easily, and you end up with a pretty nice looking squad. As an added extra, you can download several round and square fold-up bases in different terrain schemes from http://www.onemonk.com/. Don't like the color scheme? Uncolored versions of these troops are supplied in the download for you to trick out as you see fit. Pros: Nice art, easy to build, free bases. Cons: I want more already!