Good GMs Podcast

James sits down with Cam Rogers , novelist and fomer rlead writer for Warframe , one of the biggest game universes ever built, and the guy who's going to be running Mothership on the Good GMs Twitch channel. No Chuckie this week. Just James and someone who has been building worlds for a living for over a decade. What We Get Into: - Character is plot. Not the farm boy, not the chosen one...the farm...

James and Chuckie are joined by Kelly Clark, creator and game master of Dork Tales, to dive deep into the world of Actual Play GMing. From the thrill of live audiences to the technical realities of recording, Kelly shares the secrets of turning a home game into an entertaining show. Check out Kelly and the Dork Tales crew at https://www.youtube.com/dorktales  and https://www.twitch.tv/dorktal...

James has been watching movies. Specifically he's been thinking about what Kurosawa, Spielberg, Hitchcock, Sergio Leone, and Guy Ritchie figured out about storytelling — and whether any of it works at a TTRPG table. Spoiler: all of it does. What We Get Into: - Chekhov's Gun: put the rifle in act one, fire it by act three — and why not doing it is secretly training your players to stop paying atten...

What happens when a longtime player steps behind the GM screen for the first time? In Episode 19 of Good GMs, our producer Rainey Robertson sits down with James and Chuck to break down her first time ever GM'ing: a four-session Vampire: The Masquerade (5th Edition) murder mystery set in a blue-collar Michigan town that she wrote herself. Think "Roseanne" meets "What We Do In The Shadows".  Ra...

James and Chuckie are back with a theory episode on something every GM eventually has to deal with — problem players. The ones you can actually help. The ones who maybe don't even know they're doing it. What We Get Into: The Spotlight Hog: probably the most common, and as two enthusiastic GMs James and Chuckie admit they can both fall into this one. How to recognize it, how to redirect it off came...

James and Chuckie welcome Jon Hook - award-winning writer, legendary keeper of cosmic horror, co-host of Modern Mythos with Seth Skorkowsky, and one of the original voices behind the Miskatonic University Podcast. He's written for Call of Cthulhu, Goodman Games, Golden Goblin Press, Dungeon Crawl Classics, and more. If anyone knows how to run horror, it's this guy. What We Get Into: - Good horror...

James and Chuckie go back to basics this week with one of the most useful and most underused tools in any GM's kit — Theater of the Mind. No maps. No minis. Just words, and the picture they paint. James is prepping for his Monster Hunters Club livestream and wants to lean into Theatre of the Mind so audiences aren't watching him count squares. Chuckie points out he's probably already doing it with...

James and Chuckie sit down with Mike Mason , Creative Director for Call of Cthulhu at Chaosium , co-author of the ENnie Award-winning 7th Edition Keeper Rulebook , Pulp Cthulhu , the Starter Set, Warhammer 40k: Dark Heresy, and over 40 other titles! If you've ever lost sanity at a table, this is the man who took it from you! What We Get Into: The biggest crime in every roleplaying game What makes...

Stop your next TTRPG campaign from dying on scheduling or mismatched expectations by mastering the ultimate Session Zero. Learn how to use safety tools like the X-Card and set a social contract that keeps your players coming back every week. Subscribe for more expert GM advice and let us know your must-have Session Zero rules in the comments! What We Get Into:  One simple rule for session can...

James and Chuckie are back to basics this week - no guests, just the two of them digging into one of the most useful GM tools you've probably never heard by name: Knife Theory. Originally posted to Reddit in 2017 by a guy named Jim Baby, Knife Theory is a way to get players to write backstories that you can actually use. The idea is simple: when players include certain elements in their character...

The Fallout 2D20 actual play continues. James Gordon Ross is back as Overseer James, James is running Westmoreland the Mr. Handy, Chuckie Tee is Petey Redwing fresh out of Vault 101, and this time they've got backup — E.E. Morris of Radio Salad Studios joins as Shiloh, caravan guard, nine strength, spiked baseball bat, newly un-broken arm. Last time: bombs through windows, a stolen canteen, a ghou...

No more theory — this one is actual play so you can see exactly how 2D20 works at the table in real time. James Gordon Ross is back, this time as Overseer James, running James and Chuckie through a live Fallout 2D20 demo. Tune in for the conclusion next week, and check out the video version on our Patreon for free. Chuckie's playing Petey Redwing , vault dweller, level two, first day above ground....

James Gordon Ross returns to teach James and Chuckie the 2D20 system ( Modiphius ), using his 120-session Fallout campaign as the working example. A real toolbox episode for anyone curious about momentum-based dice systems. ✨Pro-Tips✨ How momentum works: extra successes roll into a shared pool the whole party can spend from, so one hot roller can carry the table Threat: the GM's mirror currency,...

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✨ Props, even imaginary ones, are Chuckie...

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, handlin...

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 lo...

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 indu...

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. ✨Pro-Tips✨ Chuckie highlights a recen...

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 e...

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. ✨Pro-Tips✨ The $10 Dungeon Master : James Gordon Ross shares a...

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. In This Episo...

Get Good! Welcome to the first episode of Good GMs, a podcast for game masters and tabletop gaming storylikers. We’re James and Chuck, lifelong Game Masters who can’t stop thinking about role-playing games. We’ve spent years running sessions, building worlds, and discovering stories we never planned. Sometimes things work perfectly, and sometimes we screw up spectacularly, but we always learn, lau...