Arbanax

As for building a strong character, people are pretty friendly about helping with that, too. Ask around in the discussion thread and you'll get plenty of advice. There are also several opportunities for rebuilds, throughout the course of a character's career.

IMO it's still possible to build a perfectly viable character using just the PHB. Yes, you'll be missing out on a few things, but, hey, we all managed to have fun somehow when there was just the PHB.

We don't have a proper FAQ yet (though we should really get around to it...). The best place to ask questions is in the discussion thread. Don't be shy; I guarantee we've had people who were much bigger newbies than you.

Hey, Arbanax, I got your questions about L4W.

It's pretty easy to get into a game. You just have to make your character, get it approved, and hang around roleplaying in the tavern until an adventure starts up that's suitable for your character. Once you get into the tavern, you will eventually get into a game, though it may take weeks (or even months, in extreme cases, though I don't think that's happened recently.)

Making a character does involve editing the wiki. There is a learning curve to that, but we try to make it as easy as possible. There is a sample character template, which you can copy and just fill in the numbers. It will take care of most of the formatting for you (but sadly not all...). And, of course, people will help you if you ask. Because it's a wiki, we can edit your sheet for you if you're really stuck.

(continued later; apparently there's a 1000 character limit in these things)