Top 50 RPG websites
Posted by Yax on December 3, 2007
Welcome the first decennial Top 50 D&D/RPG websites awards! I thought about making it annual but it’s too much work!
The websites are graded on a Red Dragon scale - from 1 to 5 Red Dragons - no pun intended. 5 Dragons is the best possible score and I also arbitrarily give bonus points to some sites.
And here it is…
Completely Biased Top 5o
Johnn has been giving GMing tips since 1999. Not only are his tips great but he is a funny guy. Hopefully being on top of the list will make him feel good, because his favorite hockey team definitely won’t!
Completely Biased Ranking: 5 Red Dragons
Bonus Points: Being featured on Dungeon Mastering
Martin’s website is pure gold. For over 2 years he’s been dissecting every aspect of the GMing craft.
Completely Biased Ranking: 5 Red Dragons
Bonus Points: Winning NaNoWriMo! Congratulations!
Yeah baby! Who said I was impartial? I’m not a journalist! Subjectivity rules.
Completely biased ranking: 6 Red Dragons
Bonus points: Run by me.
Phil likes to talk and his articles reflect that - they are always long, and thankfully always very entertaining. He recently added contributors who are just as fun to read.
Completely biased ranking: 4.9 Red Dragons
Bonus Points: He’s from Montreal.
I had to include them in the list, right? After all they’re the ones publishing D&D, by far the most popular RPG and the object of my website. Enjoy D&D Insider while it’s free.
Completely biased ranking: 4.8 Red Dragons
Bonus points: Pwning the RPG industry since 1973
Dave and his crew rock! They write about all things gaming and I check out their website everyday.
Completely biased ranking: 4.8 Red Dragons
Bonus points: Proving that red dragons are the ultimate, most powerful monster
Vanir, Dante, and Stupid Ranger herself are always writing useful, entertaining articles. One of my daily reads.
Completely biased ranking: 4.7 Red Dragons
Bonus points: Vanir is hilarious. They made a celestial porpoise ad that makes me laugh every time I see it.
One of the largest forums on the intarweb and the unofficial provider of all D&D4E news.
Completely biased ranking: 4.6 Red Dragons
Run by someone who actually worked in the RPG industry! It’s worth a look.
Completely biased ranking: 4.5 Red Dragons
Their random generators get me clickin’! And I don’t think I need to mention the all-encompassing knowledge of the omniscient lavatory!
Completely biased ranking: 4.5 Red Dragons
Bonus points: Giving up on their social lives and making unforgettable name generators.
Hilarious webcomic by Shamus Young - but you already knew that.
Completely biased ranking: 4.5 Red Dragons
Bonus points: Saying out loud what we all thought when we saw the LotR movies: Legolas is hot!
A double dose of Mr. Young! He and his partner Shawn Gaston run this fun website and write the Chainmail Bikini webcomic. It’s priceless.
Completely biased ranking: 4.5 Red Dragons
Bonus points: Inventing the coolest item. Headband: no mechanical bonus but +10 to awesome!
Create your own campaign website! In their own words: “Every campaign gets a shared blog/wiki to showcase their story, as well as integrated tools to help track NPCs, locations, treasure, and all the other minutae that makes up an RPG.”
Completely biased ranking: 4.5 Red Dragons
The Evil DM entertains us with RPG, gaming and pulp goodies. He also tells us about his life in the shadow of She Who Must Be Obeyed - which has to be the best girlfriend/wife nickname ever.
Completely Biased Ranking: 4.5 Red Dragons
Bonus points: Helped me out when I started my site.
#15 - Jonathan Drain’s d20 source
Mr. Drain is always hepful and insightful. For example, instead of going out on a limb and writing top reasons to love or hate 4e - like I did - he wrote the thoughtful “4e news recap“.
Completely biased ranking: 4.4 Red Dragons
Bonus points: Zombie lover.
Since I started using my laptop for DMing I have bookmarked the d20 srd. It’s an essential tool.
You’ve got to admire someone who promotes RPGs and educates the public and media about their benefits to society. Good job!
Completely Biased Ranking: 4.4 Red Dragons
Bonus points: Creating a useful and valuable tool not only for gamers but for society.
Forums, reviews, and columns - there’s something for everyone.
Completely Biased Ranking: 4.3 Red Dragons
Bonus points: Bought the domain name rpg.net before everyone else.
#19 - Wolfgang Baur / Monkey King
Mr. Baur entertains us with his daily thoughts.
Completely Biased Ranking: 4.3 Red Dragons
Formerly of Dragon magazine and Dungeon magazine fame, Paizo seems to have become more prominent since the last issues were printed! I heard good things about Pathfinder and I’ve enjoyed RPG Superstar so far.
Completely Biased Ranking: 4.2 Red Dragons
#21 - Jamis Buck’s Dungeon Generator
Tried and true. I still use it when I need a dungeon on the fly. Pesky players - always unpredictable!
Completely Biased Ranking: 4.2 Red Dragons
Here’s a blog that started recently and has been posting great content for weeks.
Completely Biased Ranking: 4.2 Red Dragons
One of the major RPG forums out there.
Completely Biased Ranking: 4.1 Red Dragons
Classic webcomic.
Completely Biased Ranking: 4.1 Red Dragons
Bonus points: Making something valuable out of matchstick men. I can’t tell you how impressed I am.
#25 - I waste the Buddha with my Crossbow
This has to be one of the weirdest, most appealing names ever. And the blog is great too. I love Dr. Rotwang!
Completely Biased Ranking: 4.1 Red Dragons
Bonus points: Using pink in his website design and making it look cool.
The basement is where the D&D action’s at. They have a lot of good D&D articles.
Completely Biased Ranking: 4.0 Red Dragons
Bonus points: Telling me about the ROFLMAO World of Warcraft video.
Every time I check out Hack / I find something great that I have tell people about. Today was no exception. Editions: The Numbering is an article on, er, edition numbers. Definitely check it out.
Completely Biased Ranking: 4.0 Red Dragons
Great community website. Barrok sent me traffic when I first started Dungeon Mastering. Thanks!
Completely Biased Ranking: 4.0 Red Dragons
Bonus points: Helped me out when I started my site.
Another great community website. Gryphon runs the show over there and he left a ton of comments on my site when I launched it. Thanks!
Completely Biased Ranking: 4.0 Red Dragons
Bonus points: Helped me out when I started my site.
It’s a “blog about games and stuff”. Stuff being one of my hobbies I enjoy Jeff’s work immensely.
Completely Biased Ranking: 4.0 Red Dragons
Bonus points: Creating a threefold model for RPGs.
Dozens of professionally written RPG articles.
Completely Biased Ranking: 4.0 Red Dragons
Dozens of great D&D articles.
Completely Biased Ranking: 4.0 Red Dragons
#33 - Random Gnome’s Random Lair
The gnome rocks. He mostly writes about video games but sometimes graces us with an RPG article.
Completely Biased Ranking: 3.9 Red Dragons
Bonus points: Gnome are funny.
Not updated often but the archives are full of goodies.
Completely Biased Ranking: 3.9 Red Dragons
Bonus points: He’s very creative with dice.
Generators gallore!
Completely Biased Ranking: 3.9 Red Dragons
Bonus points: Helped me build the Weird Tool Files.
They play D&D in some of the comic strips and that allows me to include them in my rankings. I love this webcomic.
Completely Biased Ranking: 3.9 Red Dragons
Bonus points: Their D&D party has 2 girls in it!
The Manual has a great time-killing daily feature called “This day in geek history” which brings us all closer to our geek roots.
Completely Biased Ranking: 3.8 Red Dragons
Bonus points: Coming up with the Ultimate D&D Gaming Flowchart!
Cool blog and good articles on D&D.
Completely Biased Ranking: 3.8 Red Dragons
#39 - Game designer in the wilderness
Clinton R. Nixon’s weblog about role-playing games.
Completely Biased Ranking: 3.8 Red Dragons
Bonus points: Writing the geekiest D&D article ever - it combines RPG geekiness and computer programming nerdiness. I loved it (I’m a programmer).
A Community forum foundedby Monte Cook (see #9).
Completely Biased Ranking: 3.8 Red Dragons
A great community website.
Completely Biased Ranking: 3.7 Red Dragons
The pundit writes about RPGs, Sci-Fi, among other things.
Completely Biased Ranking: 3.3 Red Dragons
A blog for game designers.
Completely Biased Ranking: 3.2 Red Dragons
The focus of my website is D&D but I love White Wolf games - my best DMing effort was a Mage: The Ascension game. So I made some room in the top 50 for White Wolf.
Completely Biased Ranking: 3.1 Red Dragons
Lots of entertaining, useful, and thourough articles.
Completely Biased Ranking: 3.1 Red Dragons
Bonus points: Latin sounds cool.
RPG theory and game design.
Completely Biased Ranking: 3.1 Red Dragons
Bonus points: Latin sounds cool.
The best RPG podcast with glowing teddy bears.
Completely Biased Ranking: 3.1 Red Dragons
The adventuring authors seem to be at every single convention!
Completely Biased Ranking: 3.1 Red Dragons
Bonus points: Being featured on Dungeon Mastering
Lots of RPG resources.
Completely Biased Ranking: 3.1 Red Dragons
I had about 20 sites left on my list and I didn’t really know any of them. CAB wins the draw.
Completely Biased Ranking: 3.0
Bonus points: He’s from Winnipeg.
Their slogan is “No prep time. No problem.”
Completely Biased Ranking: 4.1 Red Dragons
There’s a gamer near you who’s also looking for a strategy or roleplaying game. Great site!
Completely Biased Ranking: 4.0 Red Dragons
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Heck yeah!
Thanks man!
(The check is in the mail!)
Nice list. =)
I’m not sure why I got a bonus for being from Winnipeg, but thanks for the link.
I should probably get another RPG post up one of these days. :P
You’re last post said you were in Winnipeg. I’m not sure if you’re from there. But just being there is worthy of a bonus - I have no clue why but it feels right.
I am from there. And it’s a great city, if freezing cold. I just wasn’t sure why you figured it was bonus-worthy.
No reason is a good reason by my standards, though. It’s the same reason I statted up the Fire Clam, after all.
Oh, I just love me some GMFC
World of Synnibarr d20, cooler than Barney in a crotchless tutu
!
Suh-weet! Thanks for the links.
decennial? don’t over-commit yourself there just for me….
Nice work on the list - I’ll rate it 4.8 Black Dragons :-)
I am booking marking this page.
I can’t believe you rated my site in Black Dragons and not Red Dragons! It’s like comparing gold pieces to platinum pieces!
4.8 Black Dragons are not even worth 1 Red Dragon.
I’m hurting inside.
Great list. Some of the sites you list are new to me, and I’ll check them out. Great work!
[...] was very generous, placing RolePlayGateway in the Top 50 RPG websites. Yax runs a great dungeon mastering blog, with a ton of great tips, resources, and links - we [...]
“4.8 Black Dragons are not even worth 1 Red Dragon.”
Man, I never knew the metric system was so complicated…
At least the conversion between Silver Dragons and Gold Dragons is easy.
Fifteenth, above the D20 SRD. Quite an honour!
An excellent list of links, by the way. I hadn’t heard of many of these before today. Five out of five zombies (with turn resistance).
Ahh…. you’re so absolutely kind… Thank you.
Oh, and, psst, that’s a fantastic selection!
Awww…you missed me! :P
I really approve of your Top 1 by the way. Johnny is DA man!
oops… Johnn! Sooory…
Dude you need the Comment edit plugin…. mail me or Graham for details…
You might want to check out http://www.dmtools.org/ as well. Great resource.
I like Black Dragons - against Red Dragons PCs will buy all the fire resistance available on Yrth. Against Blacks they buy Acid Resistance, but they forget about being drowned by the dragon - well at least, I’ve seen done by one very evil DM - and I plan to use it soon.
I would add the Twilight Times newsletter articles page as well.
http://errantdreams.com/static/rpg
[...] I discovered that fellow D&D blog Dungeon Mastering has published its list of Top 50 RPG Websites. It’s a fantastic list of Dungeons & Dragons resources and interesting blogs like this [...]
Thanks for the kudos! :)
And it is a great list… there are a few sites that I haven’t explored yet, so this gives me some opportunities for expanding my reading!
[...] Mastering has posted a great resource, the Top 50 RPG websites. Something to [...]
[...] you see Dungeonmastering’s Top 50 RPG sites yet? It’s a good roundup of many of the great RPG-related sites out there. Of course the [...]
Decent list.
feartheboot.com is actually primarily home to the RPG podcast Fear the Boot, and Chainmail Bikini is a webcomic hosted by the FtB guys.
A guy by the name of Dan runs the site. Shoot him an e-mail at dan@feartheboot.com.
Thanks!
[...] pm (roleplaying) (Abulafia, links, NearbyGamers, roleplaying) Yax of Dungeonmastering provided a list of rpg links (including me; thanks!). Here are two good ones he missed and which are not in my [...]
WOOT! Thanks, Yax, for adding us to the list. Now to set my sites on #1!!! BWAHAHAHAHa!
I think I’ll have to update the list! A few great suggestions were made!
Wow! I didn’t think you even knew we existed… I still consider Obsidian Portal sort of an unknown step-child in the whole online RPG community. Nice to find out that we’re a little more popular than I thought!
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…I just discovered this by accident when checking our stats page. COOL! Thanks! :D
Cool list. I read a lot of these sites, but there are some I don’t recognize that I’ll have to check out…
Lilith is never missed since she’s a good glompher.
Good list and I’m just stumbled upon you through a random google search. I’ll be checking out these sites to see what they have.
Thanks,
Fray
Keep posting suggestions if you think I missed some more sites. Maybe this is going to turn into a top 100!
[...] Thought I’d post a link to this amazing list of resources over at Dungeon Mastering… The top 50 (or 52, but who’s counting) RPG websites. [...]
Thanks for this list. I had never heard of a few of these sites and really think I will love them. Good stuff.
I totally loved your list! Thank you so much for sharing it with us! (I’ll never have free time again!)
I thought maybe in return I could share my favorite D&D webcomic with you: Heroes of Lesser Earth
Thanks again!
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[...] over at Dungeon Mastering recently put together his list of the top 50 (now 52) RPG websites out there. Coming out of nowhere, Obsidian Portal shows up at #13. Of course, he readily admits [...]
the WotC sites suck, so does DDO, by the way.
one site by Kolja Raven Liquette, writer of The Exemplars of Evil, the Complete Warrior, Weapons of Legacy, Five Nations, Races of the Dragon, ect…
well worth a look. it’s called the waking lands
http://www.wakinglands.com/htm_files/the_main_page.htm
[...] was kind enough to include Gnome’s Lair in Dungeon Mastering’s Top 50 RPG websites and, being the sensitive little gnome I am, I sort of felt the obligation to blog about something [...]
[...] with the author of Blood of Gorgon, Jonathan Logue. ( I have to include Kobold Quarterly in my top 50 websites. I give them 4.7 out of 5 red [...]
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Does rpgnow.com not fit into the top 50?