I wanted to avoid getting all poetic and lyrical, but since you’ve asked the question: Perfection is when everything in the background, the encounters, the rules, the descriptive language, the style, and the tone of the campaign all contribute towards emphasising the uniqueness of the campaign, the things that make Johnn’s campaign different from Mike’s campaign and different to Robert’s campaign and so on, to such an extent that suspension of disbelief is so easily achieved that your players can almost smell the trees and taste the water, can – at will – totally immerse themselves in this particular game and its environment because everything in and connected to the campaign and the ways they interact with it propel them there.

It’s that immersion that is not present in any one of those elements, that is the difference between what is achieved in perfection and the sum of the individual constituant parts.

The rest of the series is how I go about trying to achieve it – my personal ‘state of the art’ techniques, if you will. These are definitely advanced techniques, difficult to master, and harder to implement consistantly, even for an experienced game master – but even taking one step closer to perfection means a better campaign, or at least that’s the theory.

I’d have to say my favourite all-time TV shows are The Wire, Firefly, The Nature of Things, Dr. Who. I’m probably missing a few.

I’m digging into the other parts of the series next, and maybe you explain this there, but I’d like to know more about the part of perfection that is greater than the sum of the parts. What is this aspect of the game for you? What lies there?

I watch a lot of sports. So my TV consumption is about 10 hours/week. I do email, outlining, chores and other things while watching. Other than sports, I can’t think of any TV I watch consistently.

@Robert – I like RPG because of the combo of design, writing, reading, game rules, freedom/sandbox and friends. Why I like GMing is another story for another time.

I think the internet ironically has made parts of TV better. With smaller audience levels across all networks and time slots, I think programming had to improve to keep audiences tuned in. I think lower audience size expectations leads to more risk taking or more strategy toward appealing to passionate fans. I’m not sure of the economics of TV, and how this has impacted budgets, though.

I think studios are kicking themselves about the efforts toward HDTV instead of inventing and controlling hulu or YouTube. And I still don’t have a smart TV yet.

Off to read part two of the series now.

Sorry, I’m an editor by profession. I just can’t help it! :)

On topic: I was never a fan of the West Wing, but knew people who were. It seemed like a great show, but one I wasn’t willing to get into at the time. From what I saw, I look forward to some lessons learned!

As to the impact of Computer Games on modern RPG players, that’s something that’s somewhere on my list of unwritten blog ideas – but I really want to persuade a friend of mine to guest author or co-author the article because he has some strong and articulate opinions on the subject.

Anyhow, I didn’t mean my first post to sound like I was saying you brought up an obvious point, I was just mentioning that the reason I like RPG’s better than TV is because of the reason you brought up, that TV shows are often dumbed down to appeal to the largest group of people possible, and those that are not usually don’t last very long.

I also remember when I used to watch 4+ hours a night of TV. Nowadays I only watch TV for about 3-4 hours a week tops. I still play a lot of video games, but I have noticed that I find myself buying up old games and remakes of old games much more than the new stuff, and not just because of bland storylines and the fact that the gameplay has been cloned 50x already but because the older games were actually still challenging. If there is one huge complaint I have about video games these days it is that it takes absolutely no effort to get through them anymore. The entire game is almost like an extended tutorial, you don’t lose unless you go out of your way to do it. I shudder to think of what impact this will have on the next generation of tabletop RPG players :D

As for TV, I still watch – but very selectively. Twenty years ago, I watched about 5 hours a night. Ten years ago, I was averaging about 3 hours a night. These days, I would average no more than 2 hours a night. There are still things that are entertaining enough to watch – but they are the exceptions.

As for RPGs… I don’t play very much, which I am trying to change, but when I do… I have a good time, better then playing PC or Video games… to be honest, I don’t care for much TV anymore, but I do always buy my D&D 4e book each month that they publish and graze over the content for the month… think up stuff that will fit into a ‘homebrew of the core-setting’ for any future players that wish to be a part of that future story, yet to be told… RPGs that we have a passion for mostly affects the people who like stories of some sort. Even if it is one that they narrate in their brain after the session… notably mechanic-optimizers basking in the glory of what their numbers-character did that session… it is all valid. I like RPGs, even if I don’t play them much, just for the sheer content they provide.

I am looking forward to the rest of these articles. Keep em coming please!

Obviously, this post was just preamble; but what was supposed to be a single article has grown far beyond any expectation that I had for it. The first meaty bit simply wouldn’t fit as part of this post, so there’s a lot more to come in the way of practical advice – and this entire multipart article is just the first in a series of articles.