James and Chuckie talk about one of the most underrated GM skills out there — making NPCs that your players actually give a damn about. Chuckie's got a gift for this stuff. The voices, the dialogue, running full conversations between characters — James has been wanting to pick his brain about it for a while, and this episode is the result.

✨Pro-Tips✨

1. Props, even imaginary ones, are Chuckie's go-to trick for snapping into a character fast. Give your NPC a tie, a pair of glasses, a way they fidget — and suddenly you've got someone to play. He tells the story of Cockroach, from his Vampire: The Masquerade campaign. Sophisticated guy. Always adjusting the tie.
2. You don't have to do the voices! Seriously. If you can't do accents, don't. Tell the table someone has a deep southern drawl and their brain fills it in for free. That's the Welcome to Night Vale trick — the audience's mind canon does the heavy lifting. The catchphrase is a prop too
3. Trust yourself. Start with motivation and let the character build in real time. If you commit to it and you're having fun with it, your players are going to want to come back.

Happy Canada Day buds, get out there and give'er!

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Chuckie is off causing rambunction in Ann Arbor, so host James Austin Currie is joined by returning favourite and expert GM, James Gordon Ross, neither of whom, despite having three names, are serial killers.

In this episode, the bois dive deep into the machinations of the Big Bad. Whether you're running a globe-spanning cosmic horror campaign or a politically charged city-wide game, handling your main villain effectively is what separates a good game from an unforgettable one.

✨Pro-Tips✨

1. Pacing and "Setting the Clock" Balancing urgency without driving your players into paralyzing paranoia is incredibly tough. Ross compares pacing to canoeing: it requires constant, subtle course corrections. If the players are dragging their feet, remind them of the time limit ; if they're rushing past great roleplaying opportunities, ease off the gas.
2. Building a Skin-Crawling Villain The best villains are a dark mirror of your player characters. By letting a campaign "cook" for the first 15 to 20 sessions with low-level monster hunts , a GM can observe what the players truly care about and tailor the ultimate villain to target those specific moral values and vulnerabilities.
3. The "Barely Succeeded" Illusion: Always make your players feel like they just scraped by. Spin the narrative so it feels like their clever tactics completely caught the villain off guard, even if you planned it that way.
4. Poking the Party: Use dream sequences, bizarre realizations of cosmic horror, or eerie, untraceable telegrams to subtly pull your players back onto the main plot without heavy-handed railroading.

One of Us...One of Us....

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Don’t take a quiet player personally. If they're showing up to your table, they want to be there. As a GM, your job isn't to force them into the spotlight, but to figure out why they’re quiet and give them the space to step up when they’re ready. James and Chuckie break down the different flavors of silent players you'll meet at the table:

• The Unsure Player: Common in convention one-shots. They love the idea of the game but are hit with immediate "deer in the headlights" syndrome when looking at a complex character sheet.
• The Tired Player: They might just be exhausted after a brutal work week. Give them some grace.
• The Overshadowed Player: The shy player who tries to speak, but gets drowned out by the louder, more dominant personalities at the table.

1. Instead of asking a quiet player what they want to do, ask them to help build the world. Next time they walk into a shop, ask the quiet player to give you one physical or social description of the NPC behind the counter. It builds instant ownership.
2. Give Them a Purpose: In a campaign setting, weave the player's backstory directly into the main plot. James recalls an ETU campaign where a quiet player completely transformed into a party leader after discovering his character’s family lineage of vampire hunters.
3. Roll First, Describe Second: When a quiet player hits a successful roll, step back and ask them, "In your head, tell us what just happened." It hands them the narrative reins and builds massive confidence.
4. Be the Table Moderator: If you see a player physically shrinking because a louder player cut them off, hold up a hand and say, "Hold on a second, let’s hear what Joe was going to say."
5. And way more yapping on this topic

Support the Show: Check out the Good GMs Patreon to help the guys buy a coffee (and maybe a new, less squeaky chair for Chuckie).

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Did you miss out on the cosmic horror and community vibes at Chaosium Con in Ann Arbor, Michigan? This week on Good GMs, James and Chuckie sit down to recap Chuckie’s weekend at this uniquely intimate tabletop gaming convention. Boasting a comfortable crowd of around 450 attendees, Chaosium Con is the ultimate space to skip the massive stadium crowds of Gen Con and actually rub shoulders with industry legends, swap horror stories with fellow Keepers, and level up your skills as a Game Master.

• Convention Etiquette & Bad GMs: The critical importance of showing up early and knowing your rules. When a neighboring GM flaked out on their players, our friend "Big Stompy Robot" from the Savage Sessions RPG Podcast stepped up to absorb the players and save their hard-earned vacation time.
• Propping Up Your Con Game: Why presentation is everything. Chuckie talks about laminating massive custom maps, while James details packing an entire Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles session inside pizza boxes (complete with colored eye masks and custom dice trays) to turn a regular game into an unforgettable show.
• The Campfire Tales Leak: A look at Chaosium's upcoming Call of Cthulhu book Campfire Tales (focusing on scouting themes) and how modern safety mechanics stop horror GMs from becoming actual "monsters" when running high-terror games involving younger characters.
• A Brush with Chaosium Royalty: Chuckie shares a hilarious story about running The Haunting, navigating a wagon full of oversized props, and unknowingly talking shop with Chaosium's Vice President and Creative Director, Jeff Richard, and his multi-table-running wife!

Resources in This Episode:

• Pick up community-made sourcebooks or publish your own gaming content over on DriveThruRPG.
• Listen to Bridgett Jeffries over at the Miskatonic University Podcast.
• Watch incredible, system-agnostic GM advice from Seth Skorkowsky on YouTube.
• Check out Chuckie's Live Play show, featuring E.E. Morris, our producer, Rainey, and our buddy Big Stompy Robot at the Savage Sessions RPG Podcast
• Organize your TTRPG worlds, NPCs, and hyperlinked lore sheets with Kanka Campaign Manager.
• Download the free Call of Cthulhu starter scenarios mentioned in the show: The Haunting Quickstart and What's in the Cellar?

Join us!

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Welcome back to the Good GMs Podcast! Today, James Currie and Chuckie Tee are talking about the art of "Frankenstein-ing" your tabletop games. We’re looking at those specific rules or mechanics from one system that are just too good not to steal and port over to another. After all, it's your homebrew—might as well make it the game you actually want to play.

What We’ve Been Playing Lately:

1. Chuckie highlights a recent Vampire session run by our mysterious and crime-positive producer, Rainey Robertson, who handled her first time in the Storyteller's seat with a story she wrote herself.
2. Discworld (Modiphius): James shares his experience with this wacky, pun-filled system where stats are descriptions and character traits like "always knows where 'lost' is" lead to some very creative loophole-finding.
3. Honey Heist: A look at Grant Howitt’s notorious one-sheet RPG where you play bears in hats trying to pull off a heist while balancing "Bear" and "Criminal" stats.
4. Vegas and Vampires: Chuckie catches us up on his modern-day Call of Cthulhu run in Lost in the Lights.
5. The Art of the Steal: We dive into the specific mechanics we love to "cannibalize":
6. Luck as a Benny: How to adapt the Call of Cthulhu Luck mechanic into other systems to decide things outside of character skills—like whether a cab will actually show up at 3:00 AM in a bad part of town.
7. The Pushed Roll: Borrowing from Cthulhu to give players a second chance after a failure—with the caveat that the GM tells you exactly how bad things will get if you fail the second time.
8. Failing Forward: Using "adversity tokens" from Kids on Bikes or experience systems from Powered by the Apocalypse to ensure that failing a roll still drives the story forward.
9. Support Mechanics: Making sure every player has a way to "shine" even if they aren't the primary character in a scene—whether it's holding a candle for the lockpicker or providing a social distraction.
10. Clocks and Progress Bars: Taking a cue from Blades in the Dark and The Quiet Year to give players a visual countdown for everything from reading a massive tome to the growing power of a Big Bad in the East.
11. Gritty Horror Tweaks: James shares a survival horror hack for Savage Worlds where the entire table shares one finite bowl of "Bennies," creating desperate tension as the resources disappear.

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Welcome to a very special episode of the Good GMs Podcast! Today, we PIVOT TO VIDEO~ And are joined by the legendary founders of 12 to Midnight, Ed Wetterman and Preston DuBose, to talk all things Savage Worlds: East Texas University (ETU).

*Youtube listeners have heard this episode, and can skip ahead to the eleven minute mark to hear an EXCITING ANNOUCEMENT! Good GM's will be hosting our first ever actual play on Patreon, FOR FREE, of Fresh Blood - join now and get notified when it drops! The show is available to all member tiers of the Patreon, but you must join as a member to see it! It's live as of 5/24/2026, go check it out!

Whether you’re a long-time fan of the Pinebox, Texas setting or a new GM looking for the perfect "gateway drug" into modern horror, this episode is packed with insights. We dive deep into the upcoming ETU: Fresh Blood Kickstarter, exploring how this new edition for Savage Worlds Adventure Edition (SWADE) revamps the college horror experience with graduate school options, refined ritual magic, and brand-new plot point campaigns.

In this episode, we discuss:

• The Origins of 12 to Midnight: Revisit the 2003 release of Last Rites of the Black Guard and how it all began.
• Fresh Blood Details: Why this is a "new game" with all-new plot points, Savage Tales, and monsters.
• Rituals & High Strangeness: How the magic system has been refined and why technology and magic definitely don't mix.
• GM Wisdom: Ed and Preston share their top tips for building a shared, communal storytelling world and keeping the "hook" alive between adventures.
• Chickens in the Mist: The notorious TPK adventure returns as a graphic novel.

Support the Show & Our Guests!

🎓 Back the Kickstarter! Don't miss out on East Texas University: Fresh Blood! Enroll at your own risk and grab those early bird rewards. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/545820095/east-texas-university-fresh-blood-savage-worlds

🌐 Visit 12 to Midnight: Explore the cosmology of Pinebox, check out the latest blog posts, and find classic adventures like The Beast Within and the Last Rites of the Black Guard. https://12toMidnight.com

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Welcome to another episode of the Good GMs Podcast! Your hosts, James Currie and Chuckie Tee, are joined by a legendary figure from their gaming past: screenwriter and long-time DM, James Gordon Ross. We’re putting aside the usual notes to talk about the evolution of the hobby and a revolutionary new system currently in the works.

• The $10 Dungeon Master: James Gordon Ross shares a formative memory from 1992 involving a university student who actually charged for sessions. It wasn't a con though! It was a masterclass in atmosphere, featuring four Discmans for theme music and a completely diceless session of Mage that melted his 14-year-old, combat-heavy brain.
• The "Seven Session" Problem: We discuss the reality of modern gaming, where the average group only meets seven times. James Gordon Ross explains why he’s designing a system specifically to support those massive, 120-session campaigns where characters actually have time for arcs, growth, and redemption.
• Bleed Through: A New System:
  • The Locution Engine: Instead of standard stats, players form "sentences" to take actions, choosing from three adverbs (Physically, Mentally, Socially), three verbs (Overpower, Manipulate, Endure), and three nouns.
  • Dice and Fracture: A roll-low system using a dice pool where ones are great, but rolling a four gives the GM "fracture" points to use against you later.
  • Genre Mashups: The system is designed for "Bleed Through," where characters from different genres—like a cowboy whose gun doesn't kill people versus one whose gun does—can exist in the same party, each governed by the "media rules" of their own home world.

  What do you think of a system where you build sentences instead of adding modifiers? Could your group survive 120 sessions?

• James Gordon Ross: Check out his films Poor Agnes and Happy Fucking Sunshine.
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Welcome to the second episode of the Good GMs Podcast! Today, Chuck and James are diving into the messy, sometimes stressful, but always essential world of game prepping. Whether you’re a "read every page" kind of GM or more of a "wing it and hope for the best" type, we’re talking about what works, what doesn't, and how to survive when your players decide to set your notes on fire.

• Recent Games: James is running Masks of Nyarlathotep and Kids on Bikes in Pine Hollow, while Chuck plays modern Call of Cthulhu in Las Vegas.
• Prepping vs. Playing: We compare campaign and one-shot prep, emphasizing the need to know your material.
• The Railroading Trap: James shares how a Rippers session thrived after he ditched his notes for a player-led hook.
• Improv Balance: Discussing when to provide structure and when to follow the players.

✨Pro-Tips✨

1. Index Cards: Use Rob’s method for quick NPC and location tracking.
2. Player Delegation: Let players help with minor world-building details.
3. Visuals: Comparing physical props to digital tools like Roll20 or Kanka.

Thanks for listening, and remember—you're all good GMs!

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