We ARE Struggling Together!/Tabletop Games

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of We ARE Struggling Together! in Tabletop Games include:

Board Games

  • The wildly assorted powers of Chaos in Warhammer 40,000 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.
      • Fotunately (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.
    • Also the defining quality of the Orks; they like to talk about Da Orks iz gonna tak ova', but are constantly infighting.
      • Taken to a quite hillarious extreme with the Orks in fact. 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.
    • The Tyrannids 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 Tyrannids 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. The Dark Eldar play it pretty straight though.
      • Dark Eldar play it very straight indeed. Most Dark Eldar exist in Kabals which are perhaps most simply described as a cross between tribe-like social constructs and paramilitary organisations. 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.

Card Games

  • 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...

Tabletop RPG

  • A big part of the idea behind 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.
    • 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.
  • In 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 it's 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 too can) 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...)
  • Another White Wolf game, Werewolf: The Apocalypse also 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. As a result, the werewolves have all but annihilated all non-wolf shapeshifters, and completely wiped out one of their own tribes, the Bunyip.
  • The Blood War in Dungeons & Dragons contains a fair bit of this. The Chaotic Evil Demons would be a much greater threat to the Lawful Evil Devils if they weren't so keen on fighting that they turned on each other at the drop of the proverbial hat. 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.
  • In 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 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!"


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