The "official" cleric spells are also pretty bad, with so many restrictions that they're essentially useless (they were somewhat improved by the time Unearthed Arcana rolled around, but never became good). And while making a set of chits, each containing the key information for a single spell, is a good idea, the "Spellminder" tokens are too tiny. The information they contain is just too abbreviated to be of much use. The new monsters also aren't very good; they feel like weird collections of powers and features without any thematic center.

However, the article on Medusa and her spawn is more interesting, because it weaves in Greek myth with game stats (my favorite is the Blatant Beast). And while the Greek heroes by Roger Moore are dull because he made no attempt to adapt the mythological figures to a game, the Sybil of Cumae by Katherine Kerr is excellent. She made changes to the legendary figure, and added some guidelines for using her as an NPC, which turn the priestess of Apollo into a compelling figure that can easily be added to any D&D world.

"The dwarven point of view" essentially takes the race as described in the PH, DMG, and MM, collects all that material in one place, makes some straightforward inferences, and adds a touch more Tolkien. Which is useful, if not terribly exciting or original. The new magic items accompanying the article are completely forgettable, though I did like the new gods. The Sage Advice on dwarves continues the column's usual pattern of interpreting rules in the most punitive possible way, and in addition makes up completely new rules that add another layer of limitations (in this case, stating that dwarves can't use any sword longer than a short sword).

The fiction by the author of the blue box Basic Set (J. Eric Holmes) isn't brilliant but it is entertaining. The story about a band of pragmatic sword & sorcery-style adventurers would make a good D&D session, and the illustrations are also a lot of fun.

Barrow's article on archery compiles some interesting research on accuracy in historical competitions, though the game suggestions are pretty much unusable. The other two articles on archery have no redeeming features, though Nalle's primer on the evolution of the medieval sword and forging techniques is pretty good. The information's not immediately applicable to a game, but basic history is always useful.

The remaining articles are cover a wide range of topics: Tweaking Knights of Camelot to allow knavish knights seems like a good twist. However, the alien generation system for Traveller seems very rudimentary and poorly thought out; and the reviews of RPGs are more descriptive than analytical (I'd like to know what the author thought of the content of Griffin Mountain, not just whether it's complete or big), while the opposite can be said for the book reviews (strong opinions, but I'm not sure what most of the books are about). Two comics conclude the issue: "What's New" is fun, and "Wormy" is... well, Wormy.