Spinning off from Sellsword's thread "Of parties and team relationships", I thought I'd ask about people having fun playing PC who are contentious, rivalrous, or otherwise at odds.

The current campaign I'm playing in is a game called "Wicked Ones" where the PCs are all monsters who are trying to run their own dungeon. It's using rules derived from "Blades in the Dark", which is an offshoot of Powered-by-the-Apocalypse games.

https://banditcamp.io/wickedones/

So with us playing monsters, one of the expectations is that we will have some conflicts and we each have some individual goals as well as our group goals. We're still working out the balance of how that is supposed to work, since at this point we're still getting used to the system and setting.

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Between that and the recent teamwork discussion, I thought it might be interesting to share some stories of the opposite. Have people had fun with competitive or contentious play? One of the nice things about RPGs, in my opinion, is that you can act in ways that aren't socially acceptable in the real world, chop off some heads, and then drink a beer with your fellow players afterwards and laugh, because it's just a game.

I've played a fair bit of the Amber Diceless RPG, which often has PCs as rivals, plus various one-shots of games like Paranoia. Also, in some more dramatic games like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Ars Magica, PCs are in principle friendly but still may do things behind each others back, because they have a bunch of individual motivations. There's often fun drama when a plan goes sideways and PCs have tough decisions - like choosing between the original group goal, or saving an individual close friend or relation.

Paranoia is intentionally full of backstabbing, but the point is that it's parody and slain PCs are instantly replaced by their clones. I particularly enjoyed playing in The People's Glorious Revolutionary Adventure, when we were trying to stop break-ins through a secret entrance to the complex, and I realized that I had an R&D device called The Iron Curtain that could just cut off the hallway in. While my teammates tried to fight their way to the entrance, I hung back and activated the device - then reported to the Computer that my companions had heroically perished holding off the enemy while I completed the mission in a last-ditch effort.

Conversely, in an Amber Diceless game, I played a Chaosite who hid from the others that he had a "hideous demon form". When a Chaos army prepared to besiege Castle Amber, he changed forms and went to them and fed them a mix of information and disinformation. He then got to be a hero to the Amberites by brilliantly predicting where the army would strike, while also at least initially getting rewards from the Chaosites for the information. He ultimately was helping Amber, but he wasn't above some personal gain as well - especially getting some respect when he wasn't trusted.

No, I haven't had fun with that. Tried it, its not my thing. If a GM pitches it in session zero, I'll sit that one out.

Yes and no.  We do that all the time, but only up to a point.  Specifically, we encourage a certain amount of rivalry, backtalk, arguing, etc. in character, but it is supposed to stop short of outright murder and other outcomes that effectively finish off the character.  Works better in a large party with 7+ players, where it isn't necessary for the party to be a well-oiled machine in order to overcome everything they face.  We like it because it encourages roleplaying between the players (i.e. gives them something to chew on), which is critically important to keeping a large group interested. 

The most interesting moments where when the party broke down into 3 factions.  Occasionally it was 4 factions, and once it was 5.  The players had a genuine disagreement on what to do next or how to handle what they were going to do, to the point of splitting up and working at cross purposes.  All played with everyone sitting at the table and seeing what was about to be dropped on them.  In one of the 4-way disputes, one faction was a single player who managed to win over the other 3 factions gradually by uncovering a plot.

It doesn't hurt that I'll often get players handling monsters in a big fight.  Whenever possible, each player is handling a monster that is fighting someone else.  So everyone is already primed for Joe made that critical roll on Jane, without taking it personally. 

You need to do the relationship right.  I had a lot of fun with a bad-boy anime-esque swordsman as my last PC.  The swordsman positioned himself as the Rival to the other martial PC, and turned everything into a competition; his deal was that he had no actual response to aiding him other than trying to aid you back twice as hard to prove that he didn't need your help.  He was fun because I could keep him pointed in the same direction as a generally helpful character, but with very different motivations and flavor, and I was careful to warn the PCs when situations started to arise that might be problems, as well as suggest out-of-character approaches that would keep him in line.  That way, I got my ridiculous rival character without actually disrupting the game and making it all about him.