[@Lord Wraith] Yoooooo thanks for giving me a nod for the character creation contests. But Frizan is the real bees knees. I am glad the section is going to get more love though. 

On the topic of GMing, I will second that Dervish's guide is amazing. I read it and I was like "wait, this is more or less how I do things!" I don't really have anything else to add, other than it's a lot of work but very rewarding if you can pull it off. You can't get everything from guides, don't be afraid to try something even if you don't 100% know what you're doing. 

As for creating characters, I feel like I've had that discussion in the RP discussion part of the forum a few times now. There's quite a bit of good information there that just gets buried.