New products and slow updates

Before I jump into long-winded excuses, let me discuss the newest arrivals, so those who aren't interested can skip the bottom half of this post.

Friday I got two slips in my mailbox telling me I had to go to the post office to pick up products. Due to the holiday weekend, however, I couldn't actually pick them up until Tuesday. Those were from Margret Weis (Castlemourn and Price of Courage) and Arbor Productions (Autumn Arbor and the Hunter and Prey PDFs). On my way home I checked my mail, and had two more. Those were a very cool combat pad from Open Mind, and a CD full of maps from Fabled Environments.

There are a lot of great things about living in the country. The terrible postal service isn't one of them.

Anywho, now onto my lame explanation for the slow updates.

As the deadline for submissions draws near (just two more days) I feel compelled to crack down and get to work on judging. Not just reading, mind you, but actual judging. What's the difference? Details mostly. As you may have noticed from the few little mini-reviews that I've done, I read the books like I do most games I intend for personal use. I read through them, cover to cover, seeing what I like, but not really studying them in-depth. Where possible, I go through and playtest the systems I'm unfamiliar with to get a better grasp for the rules, but for the most part, I'm just reading.

Now that I've read the majority of books I'm going back through and studying the details, taking notes, looking at the art and production values, that sort of thing. Basically I'm narrowing the field. There are a lot of excellent games out there, and I've read some of the coolest, most innovative, and interesting games over the last couple months, but I only get to pick five in each category, and that's tough. Especially for the broadest categories, like Product of the Year. How do you pick a top five out of everything that has been entered? Heck, how do you compare something like the Galleon I got (which just floored me with utter coolness) with a book like Hollow Earth (which completely drew me in from the first few pages)?

To be honest, it's a little bit overwhelming, and the whole time the deadline looms, and more products pour in at the last moment.

So, that's why. I honestly don't know what more to say. All of my free time has been spent reading or studying entries, and what time I do tear myself away from them, I tend to use to decompress and don't feel like delving back in.

Don't get me wrong. I love it. It has been a fantastic opportunity, and has really reignited the love for gaming that I didn't even know had dimmed, but it's just a lot to do right now.

I will try to be better, and I'm sorry to those people who actually take the time to check here just to go away empty handed for a week at a time. I promised to update this thing more regularly, and if anything my updates have slowed. I'll try not to let that happen again. Right now everything is getting pushed to the back-burner, and I let this blog get swept away right along with everything else.