Fear the Boot

WARNING: This episode of Fear the Boot deals with handling sensitive subjects in your role-playing game.  While it maintains the usual rating of a Fear the Boot episode, it includes candid discussions of social issues such as race, religion, politics, and violence.  If you are bothered by such discussions or playing this show in the presence of anyone this content would be inappropriate for, pleas...

The resource document for this show will be posted either Wednesday or Thursday.  Until then, enjoy the recording! * Stories from gaming stores, good and bad. * Is it easier to be negative than positive? * Designing micro setting for a role-playing game. * Skies of Glass Q&A Hosts: Adam, Chad, Dan, John

* A reminder that some domains stuff our emails into your spam folder. * Giving back to the boot. * Based on a voice mail from a listener, we ponder whether our game plots change to reflect our current position in life. * Building martial accuracy in your RPG. * Designing marco setting for a role-playing game. * Skies of Glass Q&A Hosts: Adam, Chad, Dan, John

To save myself the weekly struggle of presenting our show notes in prose form, I’m going to start using a more traditional, bulleted format.  This episode continues our series on RPG design. * A big thanks to our listeners for their support during the episode 30 problems. * Guilty gaming habits. * The best character Chad has ever made. * A misunderstanding about Skies of Glass, regarding its balan...

To follow-up on our open letter in the previous episode, we’re happy to announce the show is back on track and doing well!  However, based on the suggestion of several listeners, FTB will now be released on Wednesdays instead of Mondays. Continuing our game design series, we spend most of this episode talking about the role player-characters will assume in your game.  We also talk about Christmas...

One of our forum users, Crafterofcode, sent us a box of Australian candies.  We spend this bonus episode sampling the candy and discussing international food. We also bring Tex back via Skype, since he spent several years living in Europe.  This was a great opportunity for us to test recording with Skype, which is something we may use for interviews in the future. Before the bonus episode itself,...

Our Xbox Live contest continues for another week.  Don’t forget to enter again, using the “ Contest Entry Form ” link at the top of our site.  Also, we forgot to mention it during the episode, but we’ve made a slight change to the rules.  We realize Christmas time is drawing near, so if you don’t have a Gamer Tag, but you intend to give this game as a gift to someone that will actually use it, you...

Since Tex was in town, we decided to do a bonus episode on video games.  In this show, we talk about storytelling and artificial intelligence. If this is your first time here, we suggest checking out a regular episode first!  Bonus episodes are neither on the same subject as our regular shows nor edited the same way.

Congratulations to Keith Curtis, winner of our Baron von Bad Ass art contest!  Thanks again to all of you that entered.  We were really impressed by the quality of the entries. During this show, we kick off our Xbox Live contest.  The prizes and rules are explained in the episode.  You can find the entry form here . This podcast marks the beginning of our game design series.  We offer tips on conc...

We recorded this episode immediately after watching the two Dungeons & Dragons movies.  We spend the first half of the episode reviewing those two films before we broaden the topic to talk about RPG movies in general.  We toss out some games we’d like to see made into movies and theorize about why there haven’t been more. We were joined this episode by Tony from Fanboy Smackdown.  If you’re intere...

We start this episode with a bad player habit that we missed in our previous two shows.  After that, we take on a series of topics related to character creation: unlisted perks and penalties, restricting races and classes, obscure supplements that can wreck games, and player illustrations. Also, don’t forget the Baron von Badass art contest that’s still running!  You can find details in our forums...

This is normally a pretty light-hearted show, however, not everything in life is a joke. Heart disease is the number one killer in the developed world, and we at FTB want to do our part to help.  We would like to release the following PSA that has a simple — yet important — test you can use to determine your risk of heart disease.

This bonus episode is a round-up of unrelated stories from the hosts.  As with all bonus episodes, this is both unedited and off topic.  If this is your first time here, we suggest checking out a regular episode first!

Before digging into the episode, we mention two art-related things.  First, there’s an art contest for drawing Baron von Badass.  If you want to enter, you can find the relevant information here: http://feartheboot.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1004 .  Second, I mention that I’m looking for artists for character portrait commissions.  It’s something I’m doing over the longterm due to cost, but if you’...

As a follow-up to our previous episode on GM mistakes, we spend this episode talking about bad player habits.  We had too many points to cover, so this is part 1 of 2. Hosts: Chad, Dan, Dawn

We kick off the episode with a story about our trip to a hibachi restaurant.  When it’s time to discuss roleplaying games, we begin with a look at what sort of person wants to be a GM.  We then work through a list of common GMing mistakes and how to avoid them. Hosts: Adam, Chad, Dan, Dawn

We recorded this episode live in the gaming area of the Archon sci-fi, fantasy, and gaming convention.  If this is your first time listening, this episode is not recorded or presented in the way we normally do a show.  You may want to check out a normal recording (like episode 21) first. We devoted this episode to talking about the con and offering some advice on how to run or play in a successful...

We’d like to remind everyone FTB will be at Archon this Thursday – Sunday, so if you’re going to be near the St. Louis area, please stop by and say, “hi!”  In addition to our panels and guest interviews, our FTB ladies will be running a HAFU event to protest the Zombie Squad’s treatment of the undead. Episode 21 starts off with the winner of our “Regular Joe” character contest.  We’d like to congr...

You should quickly realize this episode isn’t quite right.  This is part of a promotion that’s being done between a dozen gaming podcasts.  One week in September, each show will be run by the hosts of a different show.  The strangers you’re hearing on Fear the Boot are Mick and Rae from  Misfit Brew .  In this show, Mick and Rae talk about RPGs, focusing on Rae’s impressions of the hobby as a non-...

Before every show, we go through a dysfunctional routine which we describe at the start of this episode.  We also talk about the market penetration of podcasts in the gaming community and one of the few fixtures of gaming life we haven’t yet discussed: junk food! Our main topic is evil characters and evil parties, though we didn’t realize just how big the subject was until we started talking about...

Just as I promised on the forums, here’s a bonus episode to go hand-in-hand with episode 18! We intended to make this bonus episode about our take on where Battletech went wrong.  However, we ended up on so many tangents that the show is really more about where creative endeavors in general go wrong. As you probably know by now, these bonus episodes are neither edited nor quality controlled.  So i...

In this show we cover some fond memories of FASA product catalogs, name the winner of our “freak show” character contest, offer our thoughts on card games, kick around some settings we wish had their own roleplaying games, and offer our thoughts on the use of electronic devices to aid your games. Hosts: Chad, Dan, Dawn

I want to remind everyone of the contest we’re running right now.  You can find details in this episode, the show notes for episode 16, or our forums. Continuing a topic we started in bonus episode 7, we spend some time talking about spaceship combat in roleplaying games.  Then we offer some insight and advice about running your game in an established setting with a single, pervasive storyline. Ho...

We’re probably just as opinionated about video games as we are roleplaying games, but the former just isn’t what this podcast is about.  However, for this bonus episode, we decided to talk only about video games. You guys know the drill.  These bonus episodes are not edited or formatted, so the quality of our normal shows isn’t really there.  We just make these things for fun.

We start this episode with several announcements.  I’ll post those here along with relevant links. First, we’ll be at Archon from October 5th – 8th. * http://archonstl.org/30/index2.html Second, our World of Warcraft guild is really taking off.  If you play WoW, we hope you’ll stop by and join us. * http://www.feartheboot.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=18 Third, we’re starting a contest with prizes spo...