Greetings everyone!

I created my setting, called "Epitaph" due to the lack of a better name, two years ago to run a couple of games using the GURPS 3 and then d20 system. As it turned out, the setting (see footnote) apparently encouraged the players to actively work against each other, sometimes with devastating consequences for a GM who had planned them to work together.

Since I have come to like the setting, I am now trying to work it into a full-fledged game. However, I would like to incorporate said specialty into the system itself.
The core question here is: how can a system encourage distrust and intrigue between the players while maintaining its character as a group game? (Because otherwise, I could just as well run single adventures with every player.)

I am brainstorming this idea right now, but would appreciate any input you have to offer concerning this idea.
Thanks in advance!

(The Setting: Epitaph is set in a late industrial setting, complete with airships and electric power. However, due to a cataclysmic event similar to a nuclear meltdown (except for the fact that the mysterious substance "Savil" exploded) the whole world is shrouded in darkness. This has caused crops to fail and, consequently, the downfall of any order. Now, free corps, rogue telepath groups, mercenaries, bandits and a mighty church known as Universal Salvation vie for power, but after all, it's everyone for themselves.)

Have you read The Mountain Witch?

In it, players have a resource called Trust that they give to each other- you can spend it to aid your companions, or to betray them.  You get to decide how Trusting you are.

The only answer I can think of is that the PC's exist in some social context that brings them together, and then game play occurs in those moments when they are together.  The rest of the time is abstracted in some manner.  So what you have then is a game made up of brief encounters, balls feasts and public celebrations and whatnot, attendance at religious services, weddings and funerals etc., and possibly actual attempts at murder or assassination and the like.,

The system would then have to shoulder the burden of managing time and resources in the intervening gaps.  How characters enter scenes, and the use of NPC's as proxies would probably have to be controlled in some manner.  The system would have to generate conflicts, give the characters something to talk about when they meet.  It would be a very odd game.

I wrote a game for a contest a few months back..I called it "The Eighth Sea" and it is about time-travelling swashbucklers sailing the high seas of quantum uncertainty.

I've had a bunch of friends who have tried to get me to resolve this into a GM-less game, where ongoing storyline is driven by a blend of three things. The first of these is the ship's captain, who is the closest thing that the game has to a GM or narrator, the players in the game can choose to vote out the captain or perform mutiny if they don't like where the story is headed. The second is a random chart that determines story effects through a deck of cards. Finally, there are in-character tensions and rivalries over the destiny of the ship (and further toward the destiny of time and space itself).

The way I've managed to resolve the chaos of potentially constant GM changes, and arbitrary infighting between players (infighting between characters is desired) is through the events on the table randomly chosen through the cards.

Much the same function can be handled through a tight GM driven storyline, though this doesn't seem to be the approach you'd be after based on what I'm reading. Another variation on the theme would be ensuring that there is always some kind of menace present where the characters need to work together in order to overcome it. Even if they only have to work in pairs or trios, while the entire player group consists of 5 or more members. The other members of the group could accumulate some kind of benefit from roleplaying the antagonists in such scene, while the focus is drawn away from their characters.

Keep the theme in place that the character's will fail if they work on their own, but they may not gain the full benefits of success if they work with too many others.

Just some ideas...

V

What contracycle describes above is exactly what I've done with my live action vampire games for years. The players are all vampires who normally don't get along who are "forced" (for social reason, because they all belong to the camarilla) together once a month. The rest of the time (which is not played) they're alone tending their own affairs.

We generated content for these meetings by using "rumor mills" where information would fed into a common pool by both the storyteller and the players and then redistributed to the players at random. This gave everybody a "peace of the puzzle" sort of edge with which to negotiate and barter with everyone else, as well as giving everyone a reason to interact when they got together. Its also important to note that these gathering were "safe" in that there were laws protecting the participants from combat supernatural manipulation.

After being a Camarilla ST for a few years, that sort of thing has been in the back of my head for a while.

But the "gethering of the month" things can seem a bit trite after a while.

There needs to be something better to keep the interest of many players.

V

The only conflict I ever came into was when players insisted that their characters didn't go or when players wanted to interact off-stage, in between meetings... I could say more but I guess I'll wait until monsterfurby responds to make sure the whole occasional meeting thing might actual work for the Epitaph problem...

Hmm. A card-based game that features distrust and betrayal, huh? Sounds like what *I* was trying to propose with a spy game of my own! I envisioned players choosing a secret from a list of options (or a list they create themselves). One or more of which is a "double agent." Players then have two objectives in the game-- resolve the mission as a team and resolve their personal mission/secret. Just now, putting in a reply, it makes me think I've been influenced by Paranoia, which I haven't played in like 10 years. Yikes.  That said, Vulpinoid's suggestions sound like they're right in line with my own. That Trust mechanic in Mountain Witch sounds pretty nifty, too.

One of my inspirations is Mafia, where the goal of the game is to uncover the traitors within your midst. This is done through accusation, shifting blame, and alliances. You could always make the whole reason to band together in the first place to uncover the "traitors," 

Hi!
  Maybe you need to take a step back and take it to a meta level. Like you get 1 xp when chars accomplish a goal together, but you also get 1 xp when one pc proves that another is against them or something like that.
  Or give the players "hero points" for accusing a player of something (with or without proof), so that you create a symbiosis. The players are always distrusting each other, but they can't gain the Hero Points unless they have someone to accuse...

Since your setting is based on darkness, perhaps there is a shared resource called "light?" Each character adds their Light together during the session, and the value of Light is added to all attempts of success. Thus, a high shared Light is beneficial, perhaps even necessary. However, it also can be used during the game for individuals, so players are always trying to glean bits of Light for themselves as the story goes on, often right from under other player's noses. The interaction comes from how you encourage the stealing and sharing of Light.