BW

Considering examples of it date back to earlier than the Iliad (which was itself an example of it), probably never.

Deal with it, some people like different shit than you. Want it done differently? Run your own fucking game, you lazy turd.

Game of thrones is shit.

Also what is the entire judeo Christian literary Canon

Why is it inherently bad to have a setting where the world isn't black and white? Nobody is really inherently bad, maybe their goals go against yours or their means of accomplishing their goals are extremely harsh but the goals themselves don't need to be bad.

...

When you manage to pull that cock out of your mouth. But, since you've been suckling on that thing for years, I doubt that it's ever going to happen.

it's unretarded.

There, you got your answer, BBEG

I like morally grey antagonists in other media, but I don't think it works well in tabletop games - the villain will probably be more reasonable and sympathetic than the "heroes".

>The Bible is all about Good vs Evil so obviously Fantasy should be just like that.
History is full of literary and cinematic examples of characters who don't fall into neat little categories of Good or Bad. Or are Han Solo, any Clint Eastwood character, Odysseus, Heracles, Theseus, and every single outlaw myth in every culture which as them just gritty "shades of grey" edgelords?

Even Arthurian legend has more to it than just Good vs. Evil.

>Also what is the entire judeo Christian literary Canon
It's shit. It's a story full of holes, plagiarized from other myths and thrown together by a bunch of goatfuckers. Good is defined by being a sycophant to God and evil by rebelling, while by any sane standard God is evil as all fuck.

inb4 argumentum ad fedorum

>Odysseus, Heracles, Theseus
Which, pointedly, also means that moral uncertainty in protagonists and antagonists--you know, kind of a thing in ancient Greek storytelling, and even mythology--are older than the bible and the entirety of the Abrahamic canon..

So thankfully this whole dumb conversation (, ) can be nipped in the bud

We could get into an edition wars debate and point out New Testament alignments are a lot less ironclad. The new Messiah deity had a much more forgiving perspective. In 2e Catholic games, as long as you just did good deeds you were still largely considered Good.

Then Martin Luther came out with 3rd Edition and it kicked off one of the dumbest alignment rules I've ever seen. Basically, you're only Good as long as you win a dice roll at the beginning of the game.

I have no problems with moral grey.

What I have a problem with is a gm trying to use moral grey to try and teach a lesson.

It is doubly insulting when a friend does this and I notice it as the same way I explain things to my 1st grade students.

I hate that too.

I'm and I didn't intend the character to teach any kind of lesson, beyond maybe not judging a book by its cover in that he looked and acted like a stereotypical paper thin villain but there was more to him than that.

Villain is lawful evil and trying to legitimately save the world from a very real threat that nobody else wants to really recognize, heroes are all various alignments of good but are puttering about doing comparatively minor quests.

The PC's have actually met him out of his armor and like him quite a bit, they don't know it's him but his alter ego is a perfectly charming and polite individual, he simply does what he feels is needed to turn back Armageddon.

>When will this meme die already?
It will die along with the BBEGs that are morally gray.

>>everything is a meme
when will this meme die?

>The BBEG is "morally gay"
>It means he doesn't stick it in the pooper until they're married

>The Bible is all about Good vs Evil so obviously Fantasy should be just like that.
>History is full of literary and cinematic examples of characters who don't fall into neat little categories of Good or Bad.

Fuck, the Bible ITSELF is filled with those exact same characters. One of the things the Bible does pretty well (at least compared to other holy books) is presenting its characters, barring Christ Himself, as human beings, with flaws and redeeming traits. Just look at the stories of Noah, Moses, Joshua, Solomon, David, and even the Disciples themselves - they did some things that were very much human, and are presented as such.

>It's a story full of holes, plagiarized from other myths and thrown together by a bunch of goatfuckers.
>inb4 argumentum ad fedorum

You can't fedora that hard and then not expect people to call you on it. It's pretty obvious that your understanding of the Bible is superficial AT BEST, if you have even fully read the book at all.

Could you be more transparent Lucifer?

Nah, Lucifer has at least read the book cover to cover.

Everyone's the hero of their own story, user.

That said, just be clear to your players what you're trying to do. Make sure they get to fight the evil sorcerer Zargothrax and his legion of ancestral demons if that what they signed up for, but if you're playing Shadowrun or agents of a not-Venice trading empire, you're not gonna fight the hordes of evil, you'll fight a bunch of dudes trying to earn for their families, and probably some noble who can cite exactly as many atrocities your house has committed as you can against his.

It all has its place, but every villain, even if horrible, evil and irredeemable, deserves to be more than just one-dimensional.

I feel that Veeky Forums has had a huge influx of christian believers or apologists lately.

Not that believing is wrong, but it somehow confuses me how it can be fit into a hobby that calmly discusses fictional worlds other, tangible gods without some kind of cognitive dissonance.

I can understand that if you really literally believe that there's gods watching over us, then perhaps you imagine fantasy worlds as just other worlds with different gods doing that.

But... if you believe that there are supernatural elements shaping our world and daily life, then aren't you actually thinking that we already LIVE in a fantasy world?

you say that like you've never played a cleric of Yahweh or Jehovah before

>It all has its place, but every villain, even if horrible, evil and irredeemable, deserves to be more than just one-dimensional.
One dimensional villains are fun though, especially if it's painfully obvious how much they enjoy doing what they do and simply do not give a fuck about the consequences. In Shadowrun or other dystopian future settings, I always imagine it'd be fun to have some incredibly corrupt corporate crook as the big bad. The kind who runs the largest company in the setting, a company that has a damn near monopoly on [insert valuable commodity here] because all market competitors end up going bankrupt under questionable circumstances. Or their CEOs disappear. Or the board of directors suddenly decides to take that company in an entirely different direction. Or suddenly the leading figures are accused of crimes so scandalous that their careers are ruined even if they're proven innocent. And the political establishment, in as far as it is active, always tends to pass laws in their favor.

The BEG is responsible for many horrible atrocities, and she knows this. But she's not losing any sleep over it, mostly because she knows she's untouchable. The media can always be... convinced to depict her in a favorable light and she cannot be harmed as long as she's in public. This is why she takes great joy in rubbing her invulnerability in the faces of the protagonists.

And why does she do all this? Because she's an incredibly petty person who loves power and holds grudges for years, if not decades. A boy once pulled her pigtails in elementary school. Twenty years later she got the man evicted from his house, demolished it and turned the lot into a garbage dump. Why? Because she can.

Veeky Forums is counterculture. As culture changes, so does the counterculture.

>Also what is the entire judeo Christian literary Canon
Remember David became a vassal of the Philistines, seduced a woman and murdered her husband, killed his own son (which even he thought was awful)?

You're right OP,
characters that are evil for the sake of being evil are so much more interesting and mature.

Absolutely, but you've just described the villain as something more than just one-dimensional. She does it because she can and because she enjoys it. See every process serial killer ever, essentially. Their reason, their extra dimension if you will, is that once way or another they get off to the power trip.

And a villain you hate can be fun too. Each has their place.

>2016
>BBEG
Have you heard about terms like "antagonist" or "villain"? Or a story that doesn't involve some moustache twirling evil-doer and instead focuses on other stuff than Bond-style camp bullshit?

I've played clerics in RPGs, but being a cleric of a supernatural power granting me the power of miracles is clearly in the realm of fiction to me. Within the same realm as ghosts, dragons and goblins.

I just feel it would be weird to think goblins and dragons are fiction, but at the same time believe supernatural powers are not. If you believe in gods, what's to stop you from believing anything else. Like those ghosts?

Doesn't the world become quite strange and unpredictable if you believe in that stuff? How do you justify this worldview when you, day after day and year after year, never see anything supernatural?

What's this comic?

You sure are butthurt about this trivial matter. It's just a term people use, get over it.

>When will this meme die already?
when will this meme die?

I don't really understand why people think moral complexity automatically means shallow contrarianism. Other than they just have that knee-jerk reaction to Game of Thrones because it's popular.

But not even the show is that bad. It's got some pretty retard-tier moments, but that's just because Dan and Dave are hacks who think shock value is all you need for good storytelling

If you play it like that, what's the real threat no-one wants to recognize then? It has to be convincing enough too.

Personally, I'd have no problems with either morally gray antagonists or actually evil ones. The problem with 'gray' ones is that you have to give them good enough reason to stay antagonists.

If the opponent is reasonable, then (s)he can be reasoned with, and ceases to be an opponent. It'd be silly if a big showdown could be avoided just by having a little chat. Not necessarily unsatisfying, but definitely a bit silly.

And really evil antagonists can be great fun if they're just honestly that and somehow believable. Wouldn't mind something like at all.

>it somehow confuses me how it can be fit into a hobby that calmly discusses fictional worlds other, tangible gods without some kind of cognitive dissonance
I'm also an atheist, and it somehow confuses me how that kind of mindset can be fit into a hobby that is half about complex and nuanced characters. Identity and beliefs are really complex things, man.

>How do you justify this worldview when you, day after day and year after year, never see anything supernatural?
There are plenty of things we can't directly see. The electrical transmission of information in a brain. Atoms, the way planets rotate around stars, what's inside a living cell... yet we firmly believe in them because since we were kids we've been told they were true.
Of course, you could go and check for yourself. But you, like me, probably never did it. Thus you can't be totally sure it's true. Yet you are. And without having ever seen it for yourself, it is as weird as believing in a god, and can also be seen as totally arbitrary.
The point I'm trying to make is you don't need to see something in person to believe it to be true.

Just as long as you realize you sound stupid for using it.

>especially when people just fling it about when they mean "antagonist."

Well sure, when people incorrectly use a term it's retarded. Look at how many times you see "cuck" on this website now. But people have been literally figuratively been doing that shit forever.

>I feel that Veeky Forums has had a huge influx of christian believers or apologists lately.

What it is, is that Veeky Forums is contrarian as fuck. It is built on being counter, even counter to the counterculture. So when there begins to be an influx of pseudo-intellectual edgelord fedora atheists, user, who for the most part does not actually believe in much of anything except ass and titties, will feel the need to step up and be a smartass. That's why we had moralfag and anti-moralfag arguments, that's why the Trump support is so strong, and that's even why you're starting to see a lot of anti-Trump stuff around the site. There is so much vitriol on Veeky Forums that it regularly turns in on itself to leech some of the hate.

Every meme dies, that's a fact. Maybe every meme that dies, someday comes back.

In this setting, the moon is brought close to the planet, resulting in meteor showers and monsters falling down to ransack the surface world.

Everyone just wants to think it's random monster attacks, few want to realize that it's actually an organized invasion at the behest of the lunar gods who want to exterminate or subjugate all life on the planet.

Character in question is a hellknight fighting the invasion to save the world, because he's LAWFUL evil and right now lawful is way more important. Good and evil can wait for when the world isn't facing imminent extinction.

He's only an antagonist because the party stumbled into one of his operations and attacked him and his minions, he would be perfectly willing to resolve their differences peacefully and work together against a common threat, but the party, especially one character, hates his guts for somewhat unjustified reasons and wants to kill him on sight.

Interesting inversal of how it usually is, with the good guy party being the one continuing the conflict out of sheer hate and spite for a character who only really fought them because they were both after the same maguffin and ended up fighting over it.

I made the character, the players made him their antagonist.

Wouldn't that instead make him a "BBNG"?

>People say sound when they mean look
When will people stop doing this?

>bbeg is evil as fuck in exactly the way that many humans in real life are evil
>our characters have direct motivation to stop him and ultimately taking him down is satisfying
It's almost like tropes exist because their effective, who knew?

>he actually believes good and evil exist in real life

Well maybe not but characters that are characterized to my sensibilities of evil are good enough.

Oh Anti-BBEG-kun, please never stop being butthurt over a common term. You make me feel so much more adjusted.

Because life is exceedingly rarely morally black and white.

Art imitates life after all.

Put your photoshop on, fix your gif real pretty,
And meet me tonight in canhascheezburger city.

I'm not saying you are wrong in you're beliefs, but your justification is fucking retarded.

If most people don't use it "correctly", and it's just a bit of dumb slang without any inherent definition (big bad evil guy doesn't really tell you anything and is often completely wrong because the villain is either not big, not a guy, or not even not bad or evil), it's no surprise that it's just developed into a dumb thing dumb people say because they've never encountered the 40+ words used to describe an antagonist.

It's just a dumb meme used by dumb people, a la frogposting.

Honestly, I don't know. I just find it really, really amusing.

It's been a long time since I've watched Doug, but I don't ever remember him sharing any traits with Rorschach.

Well maybe I want some FANTASY in my fantasy instead of it being like real life, so I put shades of grey in my fantasy

How many people has Lucifer murdered compared to God throughout the Old Testement.

Hell, God wiped out all life on earth in a great flood yet Lucifer is considered the prince of evil...because God said so.

>The OP posts a single line of text describing a trope followed by "when will this meme die already"

When will this meme die already?

>When will this meme die

When you stop wearing hats indoors.

Well, I mean he does turn into a crazy superhero and fucks with people on rare occasion.

Also I think it's just a reference to an episode where he got stuck in a burger joint with that asshole.

>The BMGG is "bad evil"
When will this meme die already?

David didn't kill his son. David ordered Joab to "be gentle" to Absalom for his sake but Joab had him killed anyway. biblehub.com/niv/2_samuel/18.htm

>BBEG is definitely both evil and an asshole
>still has a coherent motivation and isn't stupid

Except I don't. You're the one who looks like sperg with a stick up his ass.

Except you do.
You also seem really committed to trying to defend your dumb little acronym, and that makes you extra stupid.

I don't even use that acronym, I'm just annoyed by how anal you get every time someone else does.

The real idiot is getting spergy about an acronym that conveniently says what it need to say because it's not using the longer to write word.

You are a fucking dumbass faggot.

Wouldn't he be a BBMGG in that case?

Aren't you mixing up Lutheranism with Calvinism? I don't remember Luther preaching predestination. Also, wasn't Luther the one that preached salvation through faith alone, rather than requiring faith and works?

>that conveniently says what it need to say

So why are you using BBEG, which doesn't conveniently say anything, thanks to its expanded form meaning largely nothing and people failing to agree on its exact definition?

Also, foe is a letter shorter, Mr. "I'm trying to argue that using a dumb-sounding four-letter acronym is done for the sake of efficiency."

Because fuck you. Fuck you, specifically, you rancid sack of shit.

>wah, my pet term is stupid

That's your fault for having a stupid pet term.

No, the term is fine. One little triggered shiteater =/= something being bad.

Foe is for an enemy.

BBEG Is for the evil mastermind.

Stop butthurt user, you're becoming virt level annoying

I'm not even the first guy to complain about it in this thread. Sorry if you're hoping to pretend that your pet term doesn't genuinely sound retarded and you fail to recognize that.

Big bad evil guy. Do you think you're being cute talking like you're in preschool?

Do you think you're being cute samefagging like a faggot, and throwing a fit when everyone disagrees with you?

Except a lot of people don't use it that way.

And, some people argue that BBEG isn't "just" the evil mastermind, but the power behind the evil mastermind, the "true villain" or "final boss", which might not even be intelligent.

It's not as clear as you want it to be, because, surprise, it's a level of unnecessary obfuscation for the sake of sounding like a little kid because you think acting dumb is the same as being humorous.

Why are you so desperate to pretend that only a few people don't think "Big Bad Evil Guy" sounds stupid? What's your attachment to it?

Except the vast majority of people use it that way, my samefagging little triggered bitch.

Stop crying because you got hurled out of the last game because they got annoyed you threw a fit when someone used it.

Why are you so desperate to pretend otherwise, little triggered bitch?

Anti BBEG user is the true Veeky Forums's BBEG.

Virt was just a foe :^)

>vast majority

You can't say that, because you can't actually tell that. From the raw context, BBEG just ends up being largely interchangeable with the more general "villain", so it's no surprise that a lot of people end up thinking that's the definition and just using that instead. What you're making the mistake of is assuming that people follow your definition, when there's plenty of examples of people mislabeling characters as BBEGs when they're actually just second or lower in command and similar, common "mistakes" like in the case of OP.

Hell, you even managed to fail a bit, because you added "evil" to the mastermind definition, when plenty of BBEG examples are not evil, such as is sometimes the case with evil protagonists.

Also, your personal definition is limited, and less useful, so it gets used less. I know YOU think it's all easy and clear, but that's part of you being just generally dumb, with the second part being you failing to understand how other people communicate because you get violently upset when people tell you your use of language is awful.

It's a bad, needless term that sounds like you're six and is neither self-evident nor anywhere near as universally understood as you hope to claim it is, with even you yourself tripping over its definition.

Fantasy worlds have completely different supernatural elements, though. I believe that, at least in the modern day, the power of God tends to be far more subtle, if God is in fact intervening in the physical world at all. A world where powerful supernatural beings are running around violating the laws of nature, and where humans can do the same by chanting nonsense and waving their hands, is just as fantastical for me as it is for you. Possibly moreso, since it's antithetical to my "fantasy world." But it's still fun to tell stories about those kinds of fantasy worlds.

The vast majority of people use "literally" to mean "figuratively."

You first. Why do you love sounding stupid?

Do you do it for the "irony" of calling scary villains something childish and not scary-sounding, complete with the redundant "bad evil" part characteristic of something that comes from the mind of a small child?

Or do you just have the mind of a small child?

No, I can, and am, saying it. You are in a major minority. Now stop crying, and pull up your bigboy panties, you samefagging faggot.

>No, I can, and am, saying it

Saying something wrong doesn't magically make it right.
I kind of expected you to flounder a bit when I called you out on failing to define BBEG properly under the assumption that BBEG even HAS a proper definition, but to just try and completely sidestep your mistake is just a poor show.

It's a bad acronym. It's not cool to use it, and trying to perpetuate your little "secret club" mentality has wound up corrupting the term to the point of uselessness.

It would be like referring to western dragons as "SLGL" (scaly large giant lizards), and then wondering why some people use SLGL to refer to dragons in general, to non-dragons, or even just any big lizard, and also wondering why some people think you're stupid for using SLGL in the first place.

And you being a salty autist doesn't change the truth.

Look, only one of us is throwing a bitchfit about a word we don't like, and gets actually upset that people dare to like something you don't.

Take a few steps back, and actually think about your fucking life.

This is hardly a bitchfit. Explaining to you why you sound stupid is simply that, and you grasping for weak Ad Hominem makes it clear that you either already recognize how dumb your pet term is, or you're just genuinely incapable of simple comprehension.

If you like it, that means it reflects your tastes, and your tastes are apparently enjoying sounding like a small child, using cloudy jargon just for the sake of using jargon, and trying to defend a largely senseless four-letter acronym as if you genuinely think it's clever and adorable.

Also, guy. It has a proper definition.

Type it into google. You get this.

Now try to be less of a salty, triggered bitch.

See And no, this is a bitchfit. You have been whining, non-stop for the last half-hour of how DARE people use something you don't like. The actual fuck's wrong with you?

That definition is not "evil mastermind."

I think BBEG should only be used for the bad guy in charge of all the others. He's the big bad evil guy, the others are just bad evil guys.

It won't ruin my day if you disagree with me, though.

I'm explaining what's wrong with it. In clear language, which seems to be alien to you.

If anything, I'd have to call you simply screaming "STOP DISLIKING WHAT I LIKE" a bitchfit.

I don't like it because it's worthless jargon that's neither clever or amusing. Are you going to argue it's clever or amusing?

I'm going to argue it's amusing to watch you open up a sodium mine because you're so triggered over people using an acronym you don't like, yes. It's utterly hilarious.

It's something you don't like. That's ok. Most people don't seem to think it's childish or silly, otherwise you'd have a lot more people agreeing with you, rather then pointing and laughing as the salt flows.

That's literally the actual thing it describes.

The final final boss.