How do games work when players all have opposing secret motivations?

The upcoming Infinity RPG is actually doing something with this, with each player being assigned a secret objective from their home nation alongside whatever mission they're undertaking for O-12.

In line with your picture, this also sometimes comes up in Legends of the Wulin, with allies sometimes having different ideas about how to approach things, sometimes coming to blows. Thankfully, LotW is the best system for PvP I've ever come across, making it fun and interesting for everyone involved no matter who wins.

>>51337306
But will the infinity RPG have rules for having a fantastic ass

>>51337316

We can only hope

If you're interested in that kind of experience, sans all extra fluff, then you might like Mafia, Werewolf, Resistance, Secret Hitler or Mafia De Cuba (very different game to Mafia). They're all card games, not tabletop RPGs, in which players are assigned random roles in the game which dictate their objective. Players are expected to keep these roles a secret however, because the games usually revolve around getting the other players to vote in your favour, even against their own interests.

For instance, in Werewolf, the players are all inhabitants of small village, except for one player, who is secretly a werewolf. Each round, players must vote to execute one of the villagers, with the aim of killing the werewolf. When the players execute someone, that player must reveal their card so everyone knows if they killed a villager or a werewolf. If the werewolf dies, the villagers win. If they killed a villager, or chose not to kill anyone, the werewolf gets a chance to kill any villager they like, whittling down the group. The werewolf wins if they can kill off every other villager in the game.

I suggest these games, because I feel they simulate secret machinations and brazen duplicity better than any RPG can. They cut away all the fluff and padding, and just throw the players straight into an impossible situation. They are the purest "roleplaying" games imaginable - where you have exactly the same goals (stop the bad guy/subvert the group/kill everyone) and the same information to go on (who can you trust? Who seems suspicious?) as your in-game character would, and are asked to face the same problems they would.

>>51337287
Take a look at Shinobigami.
Being a game about Ninjas, it was specifically made with such a playstyle in mind.

>>51337287
That japanese Ninja RPG does exactly that.

Quit playing D&D.

You're welcome.

>>51337287
Be willing to have a game where players will come to blows against eatch other.
Also be willing to run a game where players are not always one coherrent group, but instead are bunch of individuals moving around in shared world.

Of course those advice assume that secret motivations won't be secret forever.
As long as they remain secret, you can just run a normal game.

>>51343739
Everyone has an open goal and a secret.
Each PC gets (usually) three scenes to fight and/or interact with the other PCs in order to further their open goal or their secret goal, if they have one, by learning secrets, bonding with characters or just plain stealing stuff.

>>51337287
man that show was such a fucking ride