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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SteelDraco" data-source="post: 3366825" data-attributes="member: 359">I don't think it's the same thing. Primarily, the difference is in the cooperative vs competitive nature of the two games - there's just a fundamental difference in the way they're approached. Of note - I stopped playing Magic years ago, around the Urza's block. Some of what I have to say might be biased by that; I quit playing because Magic at that time felt like two people trying their hardest to play Solitaire.If you're building a competitive deck, you're going to either planning for all kinds of contingencies, or (more likely) building so much on one plan that you hope to get it off and finish the game with a minimum of interference from the other player. If you're heading to tourneys, you'll keep an eye on the metagame, figure out what your competition is likely to be playing, and figure out a way to stop them. Keeping on the cutting edge requires quite a bit of research on the competition and play trends. If you don't prepare, and know what to expect, you're going to get squashed most of the time. With D&D, the whole experience is different. For one thing, you're part of a team, not just a single player. It's all right if you don't cover all your bases by yourself - you've got friends who can do that for you, as long as everybody has a job to do. You figure that out as you're making characters, and that starts to set up the dynamic of the group.Competition is much less important in D&D, too. In most games (and all the ones I'd want to play in, honestly), it's not about the DM vs the Players. That's a short, uninteresting fight, if that's what the DM decides to do. It's about the DM setting up challenges, and then everybody having fun taking them apart together. Most of the time, the metagame prep you'd do for a big tourney in Magic - figuring out what decks you're going to compete with, that kind of thing - is done in a discussion with the DM about what kind of game it's going to be. You might find out it's an undead-heavy game, and so somebody should play an undead killer.As far as a multitude of options, sure. There are an infinite number of decks, all with varying levels of power, just as there are an infinite number of character combinations. Playing a Magic deck with some style and a theme was always more fun for me than playing one just designed to grind my opponents into the ground, but I've always suspected that was my non-competitve, RP-ing nature coming out.</blockquote>

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