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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mustrum_Ridcully" data-source="post: 4348614" data-attributes="member: 710">Cooperation is _always_ better in role-playing games, unless you have very specific meta-game mechanics that reward you for being the lone-wolf (like maybe getting defense bonus if not near allies, or extra damage if you are the only attacking someone - and even then, a group can sometimes use this to an advantage. The computer game Silent Storm had such abilities for a few classes).D&D had this since its beginning, and while some people seem to claim that 3E did not focus much on teamwork, I disagree. Our group always played very cooperate. We min-maxed our characters, sure, but we also ensured that our abilities complemented each other and that we created sensible group tactics. A common high level 3.0 tactic in our Forgotten Realms campaign was the Cleric casting Antimagic against spellcasting monsters and us using Admantite weapons to still have good to-hits and break through DR. Optimized party buffing was standard tactic in all our games.What 3E had less (but did not entirely lack either) where lots of ways to make movement on the battle-field count. (The focus in 3E was more to get Rogues in flanking position and ranged attackers staying outside of melee. After that, it's full attacks all the time) 4E has more of the team-work stuff, and what's clearly better it is easy to see which role you are going to play with your character. Whether you always go for balanced parties is still up to the players, though, and even then you can work out new tactics and strategies to overcome your weaknesses and perfect your strengths.I haven't played Vampire, but the observation that it might focus less on team-work on a conceptual basis seems to fit form what I heard, at least about the original editions - apparently, the best way to differentiate characters was them being in different clans, and unfortunately, these clans were all enemies, making a "party" of members of different clans unlikely. I don't think this is an overall good design, but maybe that's just true for me and my group. We like individually different characters that work together. I think cooperative gameplay and team-focused benefits the game experience as a whole. Since every member of the team is important and has a chance to contribute to most common situations, you avoid spot-light hogging. Everyone is kept busy. Furthermore, working together also benefits out-of-game coherence between player, since no one has to envy the other player of his cooler character or the extra spotlight spend on him, and instead you see how another character helped you out of trouble or how you both worked together against a common foe.There is a pitfall, of course - since you always focus on the group, maybe individual characters motivations, goals and story-lines fade into the background, and you lose some story-telling potential and hooking the players. This, of course, works well if you play a lot of published modules or adventure path, where the individual characters motivation can affect the game less then in a homebrew game where the DM can (and hopefulyl) does tailor everything to his group.</blockquote>

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