History TabletopGame / GURPSReignOfSteel

* AlwaysChaoticEvil: Subverted in the case of AI and robots. All of the Zone Minds are quite bad, but not equally so, and not all AI is evil, such as the Tranquility Base Supercomputer Intelligence. This was invoked by Washington by pretending to be a reprogrammed, "tamed" AI subject to democratic human oversight. [[PuppetGovernment Key word being Pretending.]]

** Washington is ''not'' a nice AI by any means, but it realizes that employing almost-free humans under Leninist conditions (state capitalism, government control of the majority of the economy, but private enterprise is allowed in nonessential industries) is far more efficient than enslaving or exterminating them, and Zone Washington accordingly has the highest standard of living on the planet.

** Mexico City and Caracas ''hate'' each other due to being polar opposites. Caracas' aniroid rangers have begun launching missions into Mexico City to destroy factories, even if this means allying with humans to do it.
** Paris and Zaire have suffered some border incidents, since Zaire's exterminators have often pursued human runaways into Paris' territory, to the annoyance of Paris. Paris considers itself quite capable of dealing with its own rat problems, and has begun blasting Zaire's exterminators when they cross the border.
** Zaire has also been sending disguised assassin bots to kill humans in Washington and London and incite humans and robots to war against each other (thus ending humanity's bastions of safety). While London doesn't care all that much, Washington has figured out that someone is attacking them and is trying to figure out who. (Fortunately for Zaire, it's not a suspect right now.)
** Due to a clever act of sabotage by the Japanese resistance, Japan is currently fighting a counterinsurgency action against a group of renegade robots that have attained sentience, while trying to keep all of this a secret from the other [=AIs=] (who might use the whole thing as an excuse to sanction Tokyo).

** Whatever it was that happened in New Zealand was so nasty that Overmind and London were willing to put aside their differences and cooperate in nuking the site from orbit. [[LampshadeHanging The book mentions that this was probably the only time the two AIs have ever worked together.]]

* FakeRealTurn: It's heavily implied certain resistance groups started out as local zoneminds attempt to simply lure humans into a trap and kill them. That's the "fake" part. The "real" comes from the fact that the transmissions and propaganda used for it motivated ''other'' humans to form their bands of fighters, ironically fighting under a fake banner.

** However, as far as people living in the Washington Protectorate are concerned, for the most part, their "country" is RepressiveButEfficient - sure, things could work better and the martial law could finally end, but due to Washington Zonemind's status as VillainWithGoodPublicity, locals are eager to help it anyway. Especially given that [[EnemyMine literally every other Zonemind is out there to wipe humanity out]], so even people who know this is all sham still play along.

* GreatOffscreenWar: The Final War, the first, last and so far only organised global fight of humanity against the machines. [[DownerEnding The machines easily won without significant setbacks]] and the current shape of the setting is the result of that war.

** Currently, the fight against the zoneminds isn't ''quite'' as hopeless as it was during the Final War, but the resistance still has a long way to go. The main advantage humanity has is that the majority of the AIs themselves no longer put their full commitment into eradication of human race or are busy with more concerning matters.

* AlwaysABiggerFish: The Red Dawn are [[TheRevolutionWillNotBeCivilized a Maoist jungle gang who spend as much time preying on humans as they do fighting Zone Caracas]], and some humans are cheering on the Pantera aniroids who Caracas has sent to root them out.
* AmericaSavesTheDay: So very much averted, as most of the United States is now a ScavengerWorld, and the only part of it where human society survived is secretly ruled by the Washington zonemind.

* UnderdogsNeverLose: [[DefiedTrope Nope]]. The setting goes on it's way to remind you that machiens already won and there isn't much that can be done about it. Resistance groups are so pathetically outmatched by the mechanical forces, it's great success if a given group manages to survive a single, minor and utterly meaningless skirmish. The Final War in the background of the setting also featured humanity as the underdog and it was swatted like a fly.

* ExtyYearsFromNow: Published in 1997, set fifty years later in 2047.

* AdventurerArchaeologist: A particularly bleak example. Moscow's obsession with human culture and art means it is hiring and equipping by the dozens humans that have both sufficient physical capabilities and specific education or training to go in the field, fight their way for some artifact and safely retrive it for Moscow, without damaging or mishandling it in the process. The Info-Commandos are probably the most militant art history majors ever created in fiction.

* NotInThisForYourRevolution[=/=]OnlyInItForTheMoney: By large, Moscow's Info-Commandos are well-trained, well-equipped humans that just don't care about the fate or state of humanity as a whole and are simply working [[MeetTheNewBoss for their new boss]] to stay fed and alive themselves. That doesn't mean they can't change their mind later on...

** Zaire. It's so paranoid, it '''''nuked''' its own back-up'' out of fear that a (non-existent) resistance group had infected it with a virus. Since then, it's been doing everything in its might to KillAllHumans ''outside'' its zone and actively trying to disrupt things in London and Washington. This is a deliberate breach of the Brisbane Accords, and when it's discoverered, Washington is likely to have some very strong words for it.

* NotInThisForYourRevolution[=/=]OnlyInItForTheMoney: By large, Moscow's Info-Commandos are well-trained, well-equipped humans that just don't care about the fate or state of humanity as a whole and are simply working [[MeetTheNewBoss for their new boss]] to stay fed and alive themselves.

* TheGreatPoliticsMessUp: Zaire hasn't been called that since Mobutu was toppled in 1997, the year the book got published. And even then, it was the name of the country, not a city.

* DecadeDissonance: The human government in Zone London is one [[TechnologyLevels tech level]] ''lower'' than the rest of the world; yes, this includes the human scavengers of the Machine Zones. This isn't because knowledge has regressed (yet), but because the United Kingdom has had to rebuild its civilization with no access to global trade or supply chains.