Alrik & Viper are certainly right regarding First Person View stories - it is always role playing. Third Person is far less personal, so requires less character depth.
Winterfox spells out the traps in the First/Third person blend very well - which is what makes the perspective so hard to do properly. Anyone can write the style poorly - very few can write it well, which is why I did not attempt it myself <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
I definitely agree with Rhianna & Lucretia about the use of descriptive passages, but Winterfox has a point too - an overdone description that takes pages out of the story in a long lecture adds nothing to the story and often detracts from it badly. The best approach, IMO, is to introduce new things as the characters come across them, or use a flashback story to fill in details.
As with most things in writing, there are ways to work around a problem if we only know what they are <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
Edit: Faralas - that's what I do too <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
