We ARE Struggling Together in Tabletop Games.
- BattleTech: in the Clans' invasion of the Inner Sphere, the invading clans tend to have personal grudges with each other, the most notable being Clan Jade Falcon and Clan Wolf. The Clans are also divided into two groups: the Crusaders (led by the Jade Falcons and Smoke Jaguars) believe it is their right that they should conquer Terra, and the Inner Sphere, while the Wardens (led by the Wolves until the Refusal War in 3057) believe they should be its protectors, not conquerors.
- There's also a split between the "Home Clans" and "Invader Clans," the Home Clans being the ones who didn't get to participate in the invasion and the Invader Clans being the ones who did. Adding in the Warden/Crusader divide and the individual Clan enmities that go back centuries, and Clan politics gets very messy indeed.
- The Inner Sphere is all about this once the Clans come knocking. Even a full year into the invasion, the various Successor States find it almost impossible to work together (with the bizarre exception of two of the biggest enemies, the Federated Commonwealth and the Draconis Combine), and almost everyone is hatching some plot to turn the whole thing to their advantage (aside from the afformentioned FedCom and DC leaders, who actually grasp the scale of the Clan threat). And then you have ComStar, who's actually working with the Clans in the hopes that the war will finally allow them to bring their version of peace and enlightenment to the Inner Sphere. And within the individual Successor States, there are elements who just can't see their way clear to working with former enemies.
- And then within the Sphere, the Free Worlds League might as well adopt this trope as their motto. The League has fought about as many wars among themselves (either scions of the family making a play for the Captain-General's throne, or Andurien rebelling against the League's authority... again...) as they have against their neighbors. And even when they're not actively warring, there are battles between the Captain-General and Parliament, between different states in the League,and then there's Andurien making everyone's life miserable by heel-dragging. The various states have invoked the Home Defense Act (an act that in theory was to make sure that the provinces weren't denuded of troops by Federal demands, but has been used in practice to essentially veto provincial participation in wars they didn't want to be part of) so many times that the League can only reliably count on Federal troops for any given military campaign.
- Dead of Winter is a cooperative game about surviving the Zombie Apocalypse, but each player is also dealt a secret personal goal that might put them at odds with the rest of the Colony (for example, to hoard supplies). The optional Traitor mechanic includes explicitly antagonistic goals. Zig-zagged with one random event that inspires the player character to discard their personal goal and devote themself wholly to the Colony's survival.
- Dungeons & Dragons:
- The Blood War contains a fair bit of this. The Demons would be a much greater threat to the Devils if they weren't so keen on fighting that they turn on each other at the drop of the proverbial hat. Though if they stopped doing that, they'd have effectively lost the war since they'd no longer be Chaotic Evil. For the Devils' part there's a fair bit of resentment simmering between many of the Archdevils, which Asmodeus, Magnificent Bastard that he is, subtly encourages so that none of them ever decide to ally together and overthrow him. The Celestials also try to ensure the blood war continues, reasoning that as long as the evils are fighting each other, they're not trying to destroy the heavens.
- More generally, the forces of good and evil in many D&D settings are also like this. The good guys, such as they are, can easily bicker and snipe with each other over their own personal or political interests, allowing the villains to gain in strength. This tends to be balanced by the fact that the bad guys can just as easily be at each other's throats, whether through an Enemy Civil War or just plain Evil Versus Evil.
- The Revolutionary League from Planescape. Best summarized by asking a cell of them "How many Anarchists does it take to change a torch?""Just one. Why sacrifice more effort when it could be spent on other causes?"
"All of them! Only by a concerted effort can the Revolutionary League..."
"Affairs such as torch-changing should be handled by the elite (namely us) while the others concentrate on ensuring a supply of torches for the future..."
"If we get in, we won't need them. Infravision will be compulsory..."
"Torches are tools of corruption! Extinguish them all! We don't need them!" [extinguishes torch, bangs head on wall] "Ouch!"
- Eberron: Nearly every political entity and conspiracy is struggling against itself in addition to everyone else. This, of course, leaves things perfectly suited for adventurers, as everyone is too paralyzed by in-fighting and needs to hire outsiders.
- The Church of the Silver Flame that rules Thrane is largely split between the idealistic Keeper of the Flame (led by the twelve year-old Jaela Daran who is directly empowered by the Flame) and the harshly pragmatic Council of Cardinals (led by Cardinal Krozen). Not to mention that sometimes the demon bound in the Flame whispers to the faithful, driving them to acts of evil "for the greater good."
- The Lords of Dust consist of the fiends who once served the great demon Overlords who ruled the world in the first age, and now work to free their masters from imprisonment. Except they all hate each other even more than they hate mortals, and many of their paths to freedom are steeped in esoteric prophecy and also are mutually exclusive. It's even suggested a heroic character can knowingly work for the Lords of Dust, as a Lesser of Two Evils situation; yes the Rage of War will plunge the world into an eternal war, but he needs mortals around for his wars to have any meaning. He's better than the Heart of Winter, who will happily kill literally everyone in endless winter.
- The Dreaming Dark, despite being excellent at presenting a united front to both their servants and their enemies, get this as well. Lady Sharadhuna believes that the Dark has already won, and that they can largely be content to consolidate their already impressive power in Sarlona. The Devourer of Dreams, on the other hand, thinks that conquering the rest of the world (slowly, subtly) is the best option—unless he's pursuing his own selfish agenda and not working in the best interests of the quori.
- The Eldeen Reaches are protected by a mess of druidic sects who all agree on the need to revere nature and defend the wilderness, and who nearly all swear fealty to the Great Druid (except for the Impartial Purpose-Driven Faction the Gatekeepers, focused on defending the world against Demonic Invaders), but disagree about what "revere nature and defend the wilderness" exactly mean. The civilization-hating Ashbound clash with the Wardens of the Wood who believe that civilization should be a part of nature, the Children of Winter want to bring about an apocalypse that will weed out the weak, and the Greensingers are a bunch of very-slightly-insane druids with ties to the fey and few clear goals to speak of.
- Eclipse Phase:
- The Autonomist Alliance is composed of practically every anarchist faction in the solar system plus one sympathetic state and the only reason they work together is to ward off the Planetary Consortium and Jovian Junta. The Extropian anarcho-capitalists and collectivist Anarchists in particular despise one another with the mutualists caught in between. While the Scum heartily embrace Anarchy Is Chaos. The collectivists and Titan are on slightly better terms considering that they both use the same money-less economy, but the Titanian Commonwealth is still a state, albeit one governed by direct democracy, so the Anarchists have issues with them.
- The Barsoomian movements on Mars range from runaway Synthmorphs to primitivists, the only thing they agree on is an end to indentured servitude.
- Firewall's non-hierarchical cell structure tends towards factionalism and some rather nasty infighting. Especially between Conservatives with their "nuke-em-all" attitude and Pragmatists who are more willing to use asyncs and xenotech to achieve their long-term goals.
- Exalted:
- The Scarlet Empress actually encouraged this infighting among her subordinate governing and administrating organizations, so that they would be unable to effectively overthrow her and have the less-than-instant decision-making process of a multi-person body give the enemies of Creation time to re-invade. Which was all well and good, until she disappeared...
- Which is the smallest cast on the trope in the setting. On a grander scale, Creation, the normal world that is, has at least three whole groups of mortal enemies roughly as strong as itself, bent on its destruction; that is, Old Unseated Gods, Old Dead Gods (who, being dead but unable to cease to exist, just wish for everything to cease to exist so they can as well) and Mutating Energies Of Aether. Creation would be surely doomed if only those three forces wouldn't hate each other with roughly the same passion and fight on every opportunity, because their image of what should be are so different. Only two times in history have two of those forces seriously joined an effort against Creation, and both times they did landed a mighty blow. Ironically, the first attempt still in many parts failed because of poor coordination. (Mutating Energies attacked lands struck with super-Plague engineered by Dead Gods; they really should have made sure all of Creation's defenses were down...)
- As for the defenders of Creation, they're not even pretending to be on the same side. Broadly, the Dragon-Blooded are the ruling power of Creation, and by and large most of them are as interested in plundering the riches of their vassals as they are in guarding Creation. Out in the boonies, you get the Lunar Exalted, who are barely a faction at all; they're in a guerilla war against the Dragon-Blooded, but exactly what they hope to accomplish is unclear and often Depending on the Writer (not helped by the fact that a lot of the elders are insane in some way). The Sidereals are themselves divided between upholding the Dragon-Blooded and manipulating them from behind the scenes, lifting up the resurgent Solars and manipulating them from behind the scenes, a couple of jokers who want to manipulate the Lunars, and a bunch who are just trying to do their jobs and not play politics. And then the returning Solar Exalted...no. There is no "the Solar Exalted," there are about a hundred and fifty individuals who are reincarnated heroes of the First Age with the power to reshape the world, all of whom are either developing their own agendas, becoming pawns in someone else's agenda, or just trying to survive (and "surviving," for a Solar, tends to wreck a lot of people's plans).
- Genius: The Transgression: The Lemurians are all insane, refuse to admit they're insane, and their insanity leads to unique and wildly contradictory worldviews that they're absolutely convinced are true. The only thing that loosely holds them together is a few general ideas about where they think humanity went wrong, and the notion that there's a unified theory where all their viewpoints are valid.
- Legend of the Five Rings: The Clans are extremely guilty for this. They are supposed to do what their hats tell them to do all the while protecting the Rokugani from Shadowlands threat, but they are too busy getting at each others' throat. About the only clan that averts this is the Crab: no one wants to invade their land for they are right next to the Shadowlands and are tasked with manning the Kaiu Wall, and the Crab don't have the resources to invade anyone else. But even they have a fair bit of bad blood with the Crane...
- In Mekton's "Invasion Terra" setting, this actually worked against the invading aliens. One of their tactics was to hold political leaders hostage for the good behaviour of the population, but as they didn't understand the geopolitical differences on Earth, they tried to do things like get Irish partisans to behave by threatening English statesmen.
- With all the backstabbing and general politicking in Munchkin, it can be easy to forget that you're playing as a party of adventurers who are supposedly working together.
- Paranoia:
- The Humanists want the Computer to be subordinate to human governance, and might actually get somewhere with it if they weren't constantly bogged down by infighting and red tape.
- The whole world of Alpha Complex plays this trope straight (unless the GM says otherwise, of course). The various Service Groups are meant to be all on the same side, yet are likely to spend more time getting in each other's way rather than serving the Computer, and Communists play into the whole People's Front Of Judea/Judean People's Front archetype at the best of times. Not to mention the First Church of Christ Computer Programmer, which is otherwise basically just a bunch of Computer loyalists.
- The Resistance in SIGMATA: This Signal Kills Fascists is comprised of the Old Men (patriotic militias), the Party (working-class socialists), the Faith (devoted Christians) and the Makers (ultra-rich capitalists). About the only thing they can agree on is that the Regime has to go, but they all know that once that happens, there'll be four very different ideas for what should happen next.
- Unfathomable by Fantasy Flight Games is set on an ocean liner trying to survive an attack by deep-sea monsters. Meanwhile, the first-class passengers pull stunts like demanding a banquet and falsely accusing the staff of theft, and might literally sabotage the ship if the Player Characters don't waste resources catering to them.
- Warhammer 40,000:
- The wildly assorted powers of Chaos regard the destruction of the Imperium of Man as one of their main goals, especially the Night Lords and Iron Warriors legions, but as one might expect of Chaos, they are, well, chaotic, and spend as much time fighting each other and anyone who happens to be nearby as working against the Imperium.
- The Imperium, meanwhile, considers the destruction of everything that is not the Imperium to be its main goal. Precisely how this should be achieved is a matter of dispute between the Astartes, the Imperial Guard, the Sororitas, the Inquisition, the Adeptus Mechanicus, the Ecclesiarchy, and so on — and that's before you get to the divides in individual factions. Fortunately (for them) most of the Imperium don't think these divides take precedence over killing the nearest alien/heretic/mutant.
- Mix in divides within the divides within those factions. i.e. the Inquisition is split into multiple branches and each of those branches ends up arguing both with each other; and individual Inquisitors within those branches tend to argue with each other as well (along such lines as radicalism vs orthodoxy and so on). All in all it gets rather messy.
- The Imperium intentionally invokes this. All organizations and individuals are taught to foster an inherent distrust of each other, and the command structure is designed to be as loose as possible while retaining some level of cohesion. On one hand, this makes the Imperium a bureaucrat's worst nightmare, and allocations of military and humanitarian aid are haphazard at the best of times. On the other, this means that the Imperium is ironically less vulnerable to inside threats, as if not a single high-ranking official with his own agenda could be a huge problem. This is the same reason why Imperial Guard regiments are often incredibly specialized and Imperial Navy fleets aren't allowed to carry troops that would be useful in land battles. As for what reason that is... Well, let's just say it was a harsh lesson learned long ago.
- Also the defining quality of the Orks; they like to talk about Da Orks iz gonna tak ova', but are constantly infighting. This is taken to a quite hilarious extreme with the Orks, as the generally accepted view is that if the Orks were ever to stop in-fighting and actually unite they'd probably easily defeat everyone else. However all that is required to stop any Ork force of any size is to take out the Ork in charge of it; the inevitable fight for dominance between subordinate Orks being all but guaranteed to cause the whole enterprise to fall apart. They did manage to band together as one, just the one time, and they nearly stomped the Imperium (holding Terra itself at gunpoint with a heavily armed moon) until they managed to kill the organizer, at which point things returned to the usual chaos.
- The Tyranids subvert this. While different hive fleets will attack and eat each other if they meet on the same planet it doesn't diminish the overall strength of the Tyranids one bit. The winner simply consume the loser's biomass and uses it to become much stronger. Arguably, the Tyranids are heavily involved in this trope with regard to the other species as well. Given that the Tyranids are believed to be flat out on their way to consume the entire galaxy and everything in it then you'd perhaps expect that at the very least the likes of the Eldar, Tau and the Imperium could see their way clear to putting aside their differences and uniting against the common foe. But this being 40k they tend to be too busy trying to get one over on each other to worry about diversions such as galaxy-devouring swarms.
- The Craftworld Eldar mostly avert this. Anything less than full unity would mean their quick and horrible deaths. That said, disagreements between Farseers have been known to result in conflict from time to time, as both will be convinced that their path is the one that will lead to future Eldar prosperity.
- Dark Eldar play it very straight, however. Most Dark Eldar exist in Kabals which are perhaps most simply described as a cross between tribe-like social constructs and paramilitary organizations. Given that the way of advancing in Dark Eldar society is (in most cases) to murder the person above you and take their place the leaders of the Dark Eldar literally can't trust any of their subordinates (who may be plotting against them) and the subordinates can't trust their leaders (as the leaders might kill them off out of fear of a plot). This results in senior Kabal members having to hire independent mercenaries known as Incubi to act as bodyguards against their enemies (i.e. basically everyone else). Dark Eldar society, and life on Commorragh generally, is effectively one long struggle for power and survival where the weak are subjugated and enslaved by the strong and the strong are constantly having to fight to stay at the top. One wonders how they manage to cooperate long enough to successfully pull off any raids at all or, indeed, where they find the energy to do so after all that in-fighting.
- This is (or, at least, was) totally averted by the Necrons. Being near-mindless automatons under the sway of the C'tan, they existed only to wage war against the living. It was later revealed as more arose that there were actual separate dynasties, lead by individual Necron Lords who were a little bit loopy before going into stasis for about sixty or so million years. While the Necron typically devote more time to fighting non-Necron forces than each other, aided by the spread out nature of their dynasties' locales, there's nothing stopping them from warring against their fellows.
- Even the Tau, ostensibly united as they are under the banner of "The Greater Good", are quite prone to this, especially when two Tau disagree on what the Greater Good actually is and what course of action must be followed to reach it. Most prominently, the breakaway Farsight Enclave faction has routinely engaged in armed conflict with the Empire proper when not under immediate threat from an outside force, but far more sinister examples also exist. Fire Caste armies will clash over petty differences between their Ethereal leaders, or the Water Caste will purposefully undermine their comrades to avoid threatening diplomacy. In once particular case, a famous Shas'O and his bull-headed nature was threatening to reignite warfare between the Tau and the Imperium after long and arduous negotiations by the Water Caste. Rather than risk losing all of their hard work and getting millions of soldiers on both sides killed, the Water Caste conspired with the Imperial Guard to get the Shas'O and his cadre wiped out, cold-blooded betrayal costing the lives of hundreds of their most loyal soldiers was a worthy price to pay for continued peace.
- Warhammer does this with multiple factions. In addition to the Greenskins and Chaos (who are just as prone to infighting as their futuristic examples above), we have the Empire of Man. Made out of multiple different provinces each ruled by an Elector Count, the Empire is a mass of politicking, backstabbing, deliberate obstruction, and more. The election of an Emperor from among the Counts is often the subject of some contention with at least some of the counts, and the provinces sometimes squabble amongst themselves. The Empire has actually collapsed into civil war on more than one occasion, though against an outside threat they (most of the time) manage to pull together in order to fight it off...before going back to being at one another's throats. This came to a disastrous head in the End Times arc that ended the game, as despite the various races of the setting having to work together in order to stop Chaos from destroying the entire world, multiple different agendas and crises and disagreement on how exactly to save the world resulted in Chaos claiming victory and opening a Chaos portal that consumed the whole world.
- Warhammer: Age of Sigmar:
- Sigmar's original Pantheon of Order, back when he first created the setting after the End Times of the World-That-Was, which spelled the end of the original Warhammer. Originally, Sigmar, along with the various gods of the other Mortal Realms, were all able to work together to keep Chaos from tainting the realms. However, when the Chaos Gods launched a concerted attack, Nagash betrayed Sigmar at a crucial moment and cost them the battle, allowing Chaos to invade every Mortal Realm simultaneously, which made the other gods withdraw to their own realms. Part of Sigmar's strategy to reconquer the Mortal Realms from Chaos is to rebuild this alliance, working together to destroy Chaos once and for all.
- All four of the present day "Grand Alliances" (Order, Chaos, Death, and Destruction) are technically this. Despite what the name might imply, each is really more of a loose affiliation of allies pursuing their own agendas, often to the detriment of each other. The Grand Alliance of Order is unified solely by their shared opposition to Chaos, but will just as often find themselves at cross purposes, and include some very morally shady groups. Death's sole unifying factor is being under the tyrannical boot of Nagaash, and the Flesh Eater Courts don't even have that, being completely independent bodies. The gods of Chaos are as happy to fight each other as anyone else, and will immediately turn on one another in the absence of any other foe. The same goes for Destruction, who are more like barbarian hordes of Orruks, Ogors, Grots, and giants whose only unifying factor is that they all really like to break things, and the other three Alliances have a lot of things to break.
- In The World of Darkness:
- Vampire: The Masquerade: Vampires as a whole have this as a part of their predatory nature. The Kindred are supposed to be solitary predators, and the only reason they interact at all is because the circumstances of the modern world force them to.
- The Camarilla has this trope in spades. The Brujah hate the Ventrue, the Toreador and Nosferatu loathe each other. Nobody likes the Tremere, and everyone would prefer to keep the Malkavians either locked up or at arm's length.
- The Anarchs aren't much better off. They lack the Camarilla's structure and the Sabbat's loyalty rituals and are really a movement of loosely affiliated gangs that constantly bicker and outright fight for territory and leadership than their actual ideals.
- Zig-Zagged with the almost Always Chaotic Evil Sabbat. While they can and do politics and backstab one another with the best of them, and have a... savage justice system, they also have a special ritual called the Valuderie which specifically blood bonds each of its members to each other. The result is an Ax-Crazy, fanatically loyal death cult of vampires that bands together against outsiders. With that said, the Sabbat has had several civil wars over the years due to the rivalry between the Lasombra and Tzimisce as well as the various antitribu clans' frustration at being glorified Cannon Fodder for the former two.
- Vampire: The Requiem also has this in the form of The five Covenants. While every city is very different, let's just say that the Invictus do not get along well with The Carthian Movement, and The Circle of the Crone and Lancea et Sanctum are hardly on friendly terms. The Ordo Dracul tries to stay out of it though.
- Mage: The Ascension:
- The Traditions can agree on exactly one thing — they all hate the Technocracy and want it gone. The fact that just about every one of the nine Traditions loathe and despise the other eight may just be a large part of the reason why the Technocracy (which is all about working together for the greater good — well, for a given value of "good," anyway) has been kicking their butt for the last six hundred years...
- However, by the time of the books, the Traditions have been better at cooperation for quite some time. Apparently, differences in outlook seem smaller when you are on the brink of destruction (they still don't like each other, but they are working together).
- Also, in their own books, it is shown that the Technocracy isn't half as unified as it looks. The five main groups are constantly politicking, both internally and against the others.
- The 20th anniversary edition introduces the Disparate Alliance, a group of Crafts who also can agree on only one thing — in their case, they all hate the Technocracy and Nephandi and want them gone.
- In the spiritual sequel, Mage: The Awakening, the Orders are continually at loggerheads. Their war with the Seers of the Throne is only kept from being one-sided because the Seers are themselves suffering continual inner strife — far too many of their factions are too interested in gaining advantages over the others for them to focus and take out the Atlanteans.
- Werewolf: The Apocalypse:
- The game suffers from this trope big time. There are thirteen tribes that struggle against each other; they have a combined set of rules called the Litany but all have different ideas on which rules are important; there's also a lot of struggle within most tribes; and the fact that all werewolves are prone to berserk frenzy if mildly provoked doesn't help. Add to this that werewolves aren't the only werecreatures, but each werecreature had a different focus in Gaia's grand design, with their own special magical tricks to fulfill these roles... and the werewolves often wondered why they couldn't get their hands on that goodness for what they saw as "their" war. As a result, the werewolves have all but annihilated all non-wolf shape-shifters, and completely wiped out one of their own tribes, the Bunyip.
- The sequel Werewolf: The Forsaken applies this trope primarily to the antagonist faction, the Pure, with the three Pure tribes being so outright mutually exclusive that, despite outnumbering the Forsaken (player faction) two to one and theoretically placing their shared enmity toward the tribes of the moon high on their priority lists, they rarely actually get anywhere so far as actual extermination goes.
- Hunter: The Reckoning: The Characters are not really divided up into political factions so much as philosophical approaches to hunting monsters called Creeds. Many of whom are by nature opposed to one another. For example, The Innocent and Redeemer try to empathize with and rehabilitate monsters respectively. This is in direct conflict with an Avenger, whose approach is often to Kill It with Fire.
- On a further level one cell of Hunters can easily come into conflict with another over territory, morality and specific goals.
- The Vigilant in spiritual successor Hunter: The Vigil in general are prone to doing this, since any two cells are likely to have very different ideas on what they are hunting, why, and how. Going up the higher tiers doesn't improve matters. At the Compact level, you have things like the Long Nightnote vs. Null Mysteriisnote , or the Unionnote vs. the Barett Commissionnote , or more active Compacts hating on Network Zero, Null Mysteriis and the Loyalists of Thule for being the Non-Action Guy by comparison. Conspiracy tier brings things up even higher, where you have the Lucifugenote , the Malleus Maleficariumnote , and Cheiron Corporationnote .
- The Loyalists of Thule are prone to a lot of intra-personal strife. Beyond the fact that one faction is eyed carefully by the other two for being alarmingly close to the Volkisch mentality that condemned them to being The Atoner in the first place, a Compact where the vast majority are only in the Compact in the first place because they are being blackmailed by one or more of their superiors is... well, it doesn't cooperate very well.
- The Ascending Ones have three factions that are so diverse they're almost like three Conspiracies sharing a common Endowment. You have the Knife of Paradise — militant Islamic/Christian/Jewish zealots, the Order of the Southern Temple — paganistic alchemist-magicians, and the Jagged Crescent — drug dealers. Needless to say, when two factions have to come together, things can get very terse.
- Vampire: The Masquerade: Vampires as a whole have this as a part of their predatory nature. The Kindred are supposed to be solitary predators, and the only reason they interact at all is because the circumstances of the modern world force them to.
