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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tyler Do'Urden" data-source="post: 1798696" data-attributes="member: 4601">What's wrong with my handle? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Competition is essential to any game!  It's part of life!  The only reason people work together is because it benefits them to do so, after all.  Let's face it- D&D is, at it's heart, about killing monsters, gaining treasure and experience, and cool new powers.  It's a power trip.  Without that aspect, you might as well be doing improvisational theater.The DM *IS* the adversary.  As a player, you are supposed to overcome his challenges.  As the DM, you are supposed to put challenges in front of your players that they are capable of overcoming yet will be taxed in the process of doing so.  The challenge is to balance this- create a challenge that can defeat the characters in a fair fight if they perform subpar or don't use their tactical abilities to their fullest.  Sure, you can always mash the characters with an encounter far above their level- but that's self-defeating.  If the playing field isn't leveled between the DM and the players, there's no game.  The DM must create the challenges within these constraints, but within these constraints he is the enemy.Competition between PC's will happen.  Competition between friends, students, co-workers, etc. happens every day.  In a game oriented around the acquisition of wealth and power, what less can you expect?  One of my greatest joys as a DM is when I get players to grow suspicious of each other and plot against their fellow PC's... that always adds intrigue to a campaign (and, provided the players are friends outside of the game, can work quite well.  If they don't get along IRL, it's a recipe for disaster.)  You don't expect the party Paladin and the party Necromancer to always see eye to eye, do you?  Could a party of Knights all have their eye on winning the same lady's hand, capturing the same duchy, or acquiring the same Defending Longsword +5?  Of course!As for metagaming, that's just something one must live with.  It happens.  As a DM, that's another one of your challenges- stay two steps ahead of your player's knowledge...Powergaming IS Roleplaying.  The best roleplayers I've met have also been very good at Powergaming... though I do play with roleplayers who could care less about the power aspects (or so it seems, I just think such attitudes are "holier than thou" gamer hypocrisy), and with powergamers who can't roleplay at all (who annoy me just as much).</blockquote>

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