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<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6838947" data-attributes="member: 996">D&amp;D has long had a sort of tension between the cooperative and competitive aspects.&nbsp; Early on it was all over the map.&nbsp; Some players cooperated, others had their PCs come to blows, some DMs were adversarial, &amp;c.&nbsp; And it wasn't without reason, the presence of a DM echoed the 'Judge' or referee sometimes used in wargames to mediate rules disputes or handle other issues between two competitive players.&nbsp; The way a party could pull together overcome a DM created challenge implied the DM was competing with them.&nbsp; The way rewards were doled out and risks were incurred encouraged players both to cooperate to succeed or even survive, and to compete for the best treasure, most exp, and, again, simply to be one of the survivors.&nbsp; All 3e did was shift some of that tension to system mastery and optimized builds.&nbsp; Players cooperated by creating builds that pulled their own weight, and perhaps even complemented the rest of the party and synergized, but also competed to have the 'best' build.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 6838947, member: 996"] D&D has long had a sort of tension between the cooperative and competitive aspects. Early on it was all over the map. Some players cooperated, others had their PCs come to blows, some DMs were adversarial, &c. And it wasn't without reason, the presence of a DM echoed the 'Judge' or referee sometimes used in wargames to mediate rules disputes or handle other issues between two competitive players. The way a party could pull together overcome a DM created challenge implied the DM was competing with them. The way rewards were doled out and risks were incurred encouraged players both to cooperate to succeed or even survive, and to compete for the best treasure, most exp, and, again, simply to be one of the survivors. All 3e did was shift some of that tension to system mastery and optimized builds. Players cooperated by creating builds that pulled their own weight, and perhaps even complemented the rest of the party and synergized, but also competed to have the 'best' build. [/QUOTE]

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