Guides
For both New and Veteran
If you're starting as a Player or GM chances are you'll need some guidelines, and if you've been one for a while, there's always room to improve.
Guides
Beginner's Guide to Role Playing
A pretty comprehensive guide for beginners that would like to delve into the world of RPGs. Definitely a great place to start, and with lots of information and a community that can help you out. Don't be scared by the size of the guide; no need to read it all, but just what interests you will do at first.
10 Tips on being better Players &
10 Tips on being better GMs
Quite some time ago, reddit user Twogunkid created two very simple and short sets of tips for both players and GMs so that everyone would have some more fun playing their roles. They're good guidelines to follow, but as always, you might need to adapt them slightly to your specific group.
Websites
Learn Tabletop RPGs
I think the title is self explanatory, but a word on the site won't hurt. It's made by Erik Schmidt solely to help people get into RPGs. It's pretty easy to navigate and a good read, and by the end of the journey you'll find over 30 games with shorts explanations so you can take your pick.
Strolen's Citadel
A pretty complete website for Game Master's with a collection of Traps, Puzzles, Dungeons, Items, Locations and lots of other helpful things to complete your adventure. If you're lost or need some help to add a section to your dungeon, this site might give you a hand.
EN World
If you're interested in Tabletop RPGs, you've surely heard about EN World at some point. It has a huge and very active community, with tons of news, reviews and many other resources updated quite often.
Lists & Resources
It's a trap!
More like a small collection of them. User Actually_Hate_Reddit compiled a few quite devilish in some cases, and even funny. Traps are a must in any dungeon, so don't let these go to waste.
Mike Schley
Maps, maps everywhere!. While none of them are free, they're pretty cheap and of extremely good quality. Mike has designed several maps for D&D, so you've probably seen them on their newest adventures or starter kit if you've played any of them. They can easily be adapted to use them in any virtual tabletop. Even if you're not planning to buy, you'll spend a good time looking at those great works of art.
Tables for Fables
If you've been here a while you'll notice that I like a little bit of randomness in every game. This site provides you with all the tables you need to roll on for Treasure, Combat, Ideas, Creatures and many other things. If you're looking to give your character some special trait, you'll enjoy your choices here.
Devin Night's Tokens
It is now with the boom of Virtual Tabletops that we need to change miniatures for digital tokens. If you're looking for a huge selection from Fantasy to Scifi and piles of hundreds of tokens, this is no doubt the place you need. Not only is there such a big collection, but the quality is fantastic as well. I constantly use the Fantasy Buff pack for my campaigns, and don't know what I'd do without it now. If you're looking for free tokens, we have a token pack over at the resources section courtesy of Devin, but you can find more at his site, so make sure to take a look!
Fantastic Maps
In his blog, Jon Roberts shares a many maps of real and fantasy worlds and has a good amount tutorials that explain how to make your own. The link will take you straight to the free maps section so you can sample the goods, and they're large enough to use on a Virtual Tabletop. He also provides a set of tiles to customize your dungeons.
Cartographer's Guild
An extensive and beautiful collection of maps, backed by a large community of cartographers. The title is linking to the gallery, but make sure to visit the forums as well, since many great pieces can be found there too along with lots of advice for those who want to learn the craft. -Suggested by Acriaos
Blogs
First of all, I'd like to introduce four great blogs that you've probably already seen on the main page: Bat in the Attic, Critical Hits, The GM Genie and Power Score. If you've seen any of the articles on our site and liked it, I urge you to visit their blogs and comment there to show your appreciation, and make sure to browse around. While we host their latest content, you can find the full set of posts on each of their sites.
Power Score
Power Score is a blog about being a Dungeon Master. The main focus is on reporting actual sessions and discussing all of the weird things that happen when running games at home or in a game store.
The GM Genie
GMGenie (aka Tobin Duby) loves roleplaying games. As teenagers, he and a friend created an amateur game system because they didn’t know roleplaying games were a real thing you can buy. The first “real” game he played was GURPS 3e. From there he went on to D&D and Savage Worlds, back to "house rules" systems until finally falling in love with Fate. He’s never liked the linearity of published adventures, and he’s wanted to write his own for a long time. For now, he writes a blog that seeks out ways to balance GM authority with player creativity, and provides GMs with tools to let their campaigns grow organically.
The Angry DM
With his very particular way of writing, The Angry DM gives a lot of good honest advice about the job. The articles are normally quite long, and unfortunately the blog hasn't been updated in a few months, but it's a great read and you can easily lose hours or days with your eyes stuck to the screen.
Gnome Stew
This one has been around for years; it's a multi-author blog so it has seen some changes a few times. There's tons of articles and advice on GMing in general with the occassional specifics, so be sure to check it out if you need something to spice things up.