Episode 10 is an anomaly for our show. For this one episode, we turn over the mics to our wives. They give us a woman’s perspective on gaming and what it’s like to be a non-gamer married to a gaming dork.
If this is your first time with Fear the Boot, please be aware that this is not the normal format for our show. If you’re looking to see what this show is typically like, we recommend you go back and listen to episode 9 first.
Hosts: Dawn, Karla, Melina, Teresa
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As you may have noticed, our forums seem to come and go from one moment to the next. My webhost has told me there’s another database running on our server that has some runaway scripts. Supposedly, those scripts keep bringing the server down and they’re working to fix the problem. Hopefully this will pass soon.
Though this is ultimately beyond my direct control, I still apologize for the inconvenience or annoyance this is causing our listeners.
After a really messy conversion, the forums are now up and running on the new hardware. Unfortunately, we had some database problems after the conversion, so we had to roll back to an older copy. A bunch of posts and users got lost because of that rollback. I apologize for that, and even if this new hardware is no better than the old stuff, this migration was such a cluster that I have no interest in moving again.
If you lost your user account due to this rollback, I hope you’ll come back and join us a second time!
We’re in the middle of our site migration right now (see previous post). The good news is that our web content was migrated flawlessly. The bad news is that our database migration has hit a hitch. I’m working with tech support to get this straightened out. In the meantime, the forums and resources section will be temporarily offline. We should have this worked out by tomorrow morning!
The content of our website is divided between two hosting companies. The blog and media files are on Liberated Syndication, but the forums, resource page, and the domain itself are located with a standard webhost.
We’ve been having some problems with that second host. We’re on a shared server there, and it seems our current location is exceptionally lagged out. I’d wager we’re sharing the box with someone that generates enormous amounts of traffic during the day. To remedy this, the host has agreed to move our site, but any content located there may disappear for a few hours.
If you attempt to use our site and get errors, please just check back in a little bit. To reach our media files during that downtime, you may want to go directly to our Liberated Syndication site since the primary domain will be busted.
http://feartheboot.libsyn.com
I apologize for any inconvenience this causes. We’ll have it resolved soon! And when we do, our forum users should (hopefully) be enjoying much faster page loads.
We were down a host for this episode, and a bit more serious than normal, but we still covered a lot of good information.
The episode starts with a discussion of the overuse of setting in some campaigns, followed by our musings about D&D alignment, character behavior, and real-life violence around the gaming table. We struggle with the age-old question of “tail or wings” and then finally (having promised this for many episodes) bash out our opinion of the d20 system.
We conclude with an email from a listener and some advice for unusually large or small roleplaying groups — including the possible use of multiple GMs to co-manage a game.
Hosts: Chad, Dan, John
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We start this show by discussing various character- and player-related problems that can occur during a roleplaying game. Topics include Adam’s difficulty naming his characters, deciding between 1st and 3rd person RP, ridiculous inventories, and dealing with “setting lawyers”. The last half of the show is spent discussing the design and exceution of combat encounters, as well as handling the positive and negative consequences that follow.
* FYI, the “two sets of keys” comment was just a figure of speech. None of the hosts actually does anything like that.
Hosts: Adam, Chad, Dan, John
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Episode 7 begins with us trying to figure out how to pronounce Aram’s name. He regales us with his single, tragic experience with D&D, the details of which get us thinking about how roleplayers tend to insert RPG elements into other areas of their lives.
We take some time to thank the other podcasts that have been uniquely supportive of Fear the Boot. This includes HarpingMick of HarpingMonkey.com, JJ from Fist Full of Comics, and Chuck and Lonnie of Dragon’s Landing Inn.
Since we had the entries in hand, we select a winner for the “origin of Fear the Boot” contest and tell you the real story behind our name. Adam had a Rifts book handy, so we also pause to discuss the ups and downs of the Palladium games and generic rules systems in general.
Our advice portion focuses on dealing with players that break your plot, straying places you never expected them to go. We offer quite a few tips for getting them back on track and keeping them there without resorting to heavy-handed tactics.
Hosts: Adam, Aram, Chad, Dan
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After posting that episode, I had to pull it down and post it again. So if you got a sound file that’s incomplete or sounds funny, delete it and try downloading a second time.
Our second bonus episode covers the hardware (mics, mixer, etc) we use to make the podcast. I want to remind everyone the bonus episodes — unlike our regular shows — are completely unedited. There’s no intro music and our mistakes are all left in.
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