I enjoyed Monte Cook's new Dungeoncraft article (The People Around the Table). The part on "The Perfect Player" particularly stuck out in my mind, and I immediately started to compare my players to this iconic player, and I also compared my own tendencies as a player to the article.
Then I started to wonder about The Perfect Dungeon Master. Of course, Monte might address this in an upcoming article, but here's some thoughts.
The perfect DM...
...is ready to begin the game on time.
...looks up the rules in question from the previous game.
...brushes up on rules for the next game.
...allows the players to develop their characters as they see fit.
...introduces opportunities for the players' characters to shine.
...exploits the weaknesses of the players' characters (in which they might also shine... but keeps them on their toes!!)
and
...subscribes to Dungeon! (Shameless attempt to appease the powers that be.)
The perfect DM should also:
...work only one full time job.
...use 4 to 6 hours every week to ready the monthly game.
...play Living Greyhawk.
...and have really fancy session records to hand out.
We can only pray that Dungeon puts something for a "Proof of Adventure Completion" in their writer's guidelines. Its nice to get a pretty paper declaring the adventure was completed and listing any special items in the sheet for future reference, purchase, creation.
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The perfect DM should also be one who knows that his players should shine, but also make sure that he tries to play the villains well enough that they also shine and they are basically characters who are trying to survive as well.
I find it much more interesting and challenging when my character has to go up against one of the DM's characters and I know that NPC or villain is trying to win the battle as much as I am.
Me and mine run an event at Gencon every year (starting last year and continuing for several years to come we hope) called Iron Dungeonmaster. Think Iron Chef but for DMs. We give em an hour to create a brilliant adventure using three mystery ingrediants. It was a total blast at the last con, so we are expanding it for the next one. Any of you out there think you have what it takes? Show up and do it! :)