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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5248885" data-attributes="member: 2067">I think part of it has to do with "competitive" play vs. "cooperative" play.With a competitive game, this sort of wang-measuring contest ("who's got the biggest?!") is resolved with clear winners and losers. If you're not good, you'll lose.With a cooperative game, it's pointless. Nobody cares if you've got the l33t35t damage, it only needs to be l33t enough, and even then you can't slap someone else in the face with it, because you still need your cleric and your fighter and your rogue to be able to win. On the other hand, if you're not pulling your weight -- if your cleric can't heal -- then you make everyone suffer.It's the difference between hunter/gatherer and agricultural societies. It's the divide between Capitalism and Socialism. It's "All for one and one for all!" vs. "None for you and all for me!". D&D is very much in the co-operative, agricultural, socialistic, people-coming-together-to-do-great-things vein. Party-focused play ensures that kind of specialization. You can't do everything yourself. You can't win by yourself."System Mastery" is only good if it ends up supporting yourself. Which makes sense for younger players, especially, to be into it. They're trying to figure out what they're good at. It's probably also the reason a lot of people in college really love Ayn Rand, but that's sort of orthogonal.The thing is that, for a cooperative game like D&D, system mastery isn't much of a benefit. It's more important to make sure that even newbs can contribute to the whole party's success without screwing everything up. It's more important to have that gameplay safety net. In a competitive game, that safety net isn't as fun.</blockquote>

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