Some of you may have noticed that my reviews have gotten few and far between of late. A few of you might even have wondered why. This is for those faithful few who actually found anything I had to say of relative interest or value.

When I was getting products coming in for review almost every month, I got a lot of flack from my gaming buddies. "I wish I could get free stuff," was a commonly heard phrase. In response, I would hand them a product and say, "Let's see what you can do." All of them returned the product after a week. None of them produced a review.

The most common excuse was a lack of time (although a few admitted that they just wanted free product). Time is a precious commodity, all the more so when you work a full-time job and try to have a life in addition to writing reviews. Writing a review requires, on average, about twenty hours. That gives me time to read through the work, jot a few notes, write a first draft, read the work again, make more notes, and write the final copy.

If you've never written a review, you really have no idea what goes into it. You can't just copy and paste large chunks of the text into your review, you have to give an opinion of it. And it isn't sufficient to say that something is "bad" or "good," readers want to know why. What makes it bad or good? Once in a while, you are tasked to review a product in which you have no interest, but guess what? You still have to read it and produce a review. Sometimes you find that you enjoy it and want to learn more (as was the case with Spycraft for me), but other times, it can be a real chore forcing yourself to read and write a review on a topic that just doesn't hold your interest.

If reviewing were all that I did, that wouldn't be a problem. Sadly, I have an addiction to food, so I have to do something that makes the kind of reward I can spend, rather than use to enhance my game. I love getting "free" RPG products, but it doesn't put food on the table, and the pictures may look great, but they taste terrible. In addition to a 40-hour per week job where *gasp* I am expected to be productive, I try to balance a social life and a marriage, as well as try to fit in sleep and some personal time for me.

About two years ago, Green Ronin stopped sending out review material to d20 Magazine Rack. This was a sad day for me, because quite honestly, Green Ronin puts out some of the best 3rd-party materials on the market. I used to love receiving things from them and always anxiously awaited the next package because I knew that their works would not only be fun to read and well-written, but also because most everything they sent I have integrated into my campaign in one fashion or another. I don't know why they stopped sending review materials, but I can speculate it is because of printing and shipping costs and the relatively low impact that reviews have on the RPG market. About a year ago, Osseum, another major supplier of review products, went under. This further cut into our review material, leaving just Wizards of the Coast and a few 3rd-party publishers who were nice enough to send us an occasional product.

Even so, I tried to keep pace, producing at least one review a week (though that schedule sometimes faltered). But I noticed something else that I found disheartening. No one was bothering to leave comments. It's been said before, but the point is worth driving home: Comments are the lifeblood of a reviewer. Unless you tell us what you like or don't like about our reviews, we don't know that anyone is even reading them, much less finding them useful. With the slacking off of review products coming in, a perceived lack of interest on the part of the public, and the sudden realization of how much free time I had when I wasn't scrambling to meet a deadline, I began flagging in my devotion.

Near the end of last year, there was some discussion about closing the doors of d20 Magazine Rack. I was one of the ones who lobbied to keep this site going because I thought that someone, somewhere, might find it helpful. Recently, I have begun a new mini-series that follows the progression of a character from 1st to 20th level. This was one of several ideas that I have to generate some interest and bring us back into the limelight. And, we continue to do reviews, though I have slowed considerably.

But we exist for you, the end user. If you aren't interested in what we have to offer, then there really is no reason for us to go on. So, if you like what you see, please take a moment to let us know. If you don't like it, let us know that as well. Or, you can let your silence speak for you and we'll just fade into obscurity.