So… let’s get the elephant out of the room right away so we can have space to talk about the rest of the issue. There’s an article here on “gypsies” which is in really bad taste, regressive, racist and so on. It gives “gypsy” characters advantages as thieves and fortune tellers and is all kinds of wrong, playing solely on racist stereotypes and slander… the early 80s were a different time.

Moving on, there are also some pretty good things in this issue for AD&D fans, although the issue is mainly focused on sci-fi games as you can tell by the cover there is plenty of interest here. Gygax brings us an article on cantrips, although you won’t find any of the ones which are famous today here. Robert Kuntz gives us a good article fleshing out Greyhawk with The Great Kingdom and the Knights of Doom.

There is also a whole section on Halfling, much as last issue had one on dwarves. Mainly taken from Lord of the Rings Hobbit mythology rather than anything specific to D&D universes (which at this time were only Greyhawk and Mystara), it’s still an interesting general view of Hobbi….sorry Halflings. Rounding out the D&D content we also get an article on poisons and another pretty long one on what to take into account when you want to make monsters.