Fear The Boot

Fear the Boot is a roundtable discussion podcast concerning tabletop roleplaying games and a little bit more.

= History =In February 2006, Daniel Repperger was asked to help a friend's father create a podcast for his human resources business. While Dan had no practical experience in podcasting, he had been approached because of his experience with internet technology. After working on the podcast for a short while, he took a liking to the hobby and elected to start his own show.

The original cast was assembled in April 2006 and included himself, Kevin Dickens, Tim Toolen, and Chad Wattler. Other individuals were invited to join the show but declined for various reasons. The name, Fear the Boot, was derived from a long-running, inside joke surrounding Chad's boots, as well as the pointed delivery that would be employed during the show. The first episode was released on May 15th, 2006.

After only a few episodes, Tim and Kevin resigned because of personal obligations that made it difficult for them to keep up with the show's demands. They were replaced by Adam Pinilla and John Grana who had been on Fear the Boot previously as stand-ins. Both Lucias "Luke" Meyer and Michael "Tex" Repperger had long runs as hosts. Matt Cushman also hosted a number of episodes before leaving the show. High school friend of the hosts, Mike Kalinowski, had a short run as well.

Throughout the show's run a number of friends and family have made appearances on the show, including Aram "Axe" Hamper, Phil Hicks, Karla Lester-Repperger, Keith Curtis, Teresa Toolen, Dawn Wattler, Tony Mast, Joe Selby, and Paul Lyons. The longest of these appearances was by Dawn, Chad's wife, who took John Grana's hosting slot during the fall 2006 school semester which John spent in Rome, Italy.

October 5th - 8th, 2006, several Fear the Boot hosts were at Archon where they provided general press coverage and conducted five panels on podcasting.

The current line up of main hosts is Daniel Repperger, Chad Wattler, and Chris Hussey.

= Episodes =Episodes are released once a week and cover a number of topics, usually decided beforehand. The show itself is a roundtable discussion where one host presents a topic and the other hosts discuss it. Average length of an episode is approximately an hour, although earlier episodes are shorter.

The hosts roughly divide the sub-topics of these shows into two categories: advice and banter. The advice portions offer analysis of the roleplaying games hobby and tips for improving game sessions. The banter portions are bits of humor or anecdote that may only be loosely related to the primary subject matter, added to give flavor to the show and build affinity with the listeners.

Each show's content is largely driven by outlines scrawled on a 6'x4' dry erase board. This board is referred to as the "big board" during the show, an allusion to the movie, Dr. Strangelove. Errors on this board have become points of humor on the show. Examples include a poorly written phrase, "wives of dorks", being rendered as "wives of donuts" for many episodes thereafter.

= Bonus episodes =Fear the Boot occasionally has bonus episodes, which are generally unrelated to the main episodes. These shows have their profanities removed but are otherwise unedited. They consist of raw conversations between the hosts on topics of personal interest, including travel, dining, video games, and playful retorts to comments made during the regular episodes.

= Interview episodes =Fear the Boot has interviewed several people with varying ties to tabletop roleplaying, ranging from Ryan Dancey, an ex employee of Wizards of the Coast and, to Shamus Young, author of DM of the Rings among other works [ [http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1128 Twenty Sided » Blog Archive » Hear me on Fear the Boot ] ] , to Mike West, the lead script developer for Fable 2 [ [http://www.loinhead.net/2007/03/03/mike-west-about-a-bunch-of-stuff/ Mike West about a bunch of stuff - Loinhead ] ] .

= Additional notes =
*Dan presented the 2007 Gold ENnie award for "Best Podcast" to the "Have Games, Will Travel" podcast.

*In 2008 Dan and John accepted an award from I-con.

*On March 28th Fear the Boot hosted a role playing game convention in St. Louis called Fear the Con.

References

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[http://feartheboot.libsyn.com/ "Fear the Boot homepage"]