How do you make a "neutral" BBEG that is not a machine, an animal or a "force of nature"?

The party are Shadowrunners, and a job they're on a job that pits them against that corps security forces. Everyone is just doing their jobs, but unfortunately their jobs put them at odds with each other at the time.

Antagonist =/= evil

>BBEG

Ugh.

>non-evil Evil Guy

Double Ugh.

In my online-run game, my "BBEG" is a god of storytelling that got Writer's block and is throwing stuff at the PCs just to see what they do and get ideas from that.

But he's not doing it out of any malicious intent towards them in particular, and in fact revives them without penalty if they happen to die. (It's a pretty light-hearted game, outside of character drama.)

Sounds like it'd be a fun game to play using Ryuutama, if you replace "God of Storytelling" with "Dragon stalking the party and writing fanfiction about them".

someone fucked with genghis khan's envoys

>another lazy "BBEG" thread
Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay.

> (OP)
>>BBEG
>Ugh.
>>non-evil Evil Guy
>Double Ugh.
Found the turbo-autist

Could be a part of a balance-obsessed cult. The Party has been too successful at ridding the continent of evil, and so the feels it's their duty to restore balance to the world and eliminate the party.

Or it could be a secularist organization (government?) who rejects objective morality. They come to odds with The Party because who gives them the right to decide that goblins are evil? Theft if a part of their CULTURE. Who are you to call the followers of a particular God "evil clerics"? And you need to stop using the bigoted term "undead". The proper term is "differently alive"

Make the bad guy an interdimensional bureaucrat, somebody who has no interest whatsoever in the party, their goals or the world in general. The party are simply in violation of inter-universal law 153B parts iii-vi and therefore need to be destroyed. No hard feelings.

...

>How do you make a "neutral" BBEG that is not a machine, an animal or a "force of nature"?
Wait, so you're telling me it's a big bad evil guy. But he isn't evil. And presumably isn't "bad".
So that would make him...

That's not neutral though, that's a hard lawful alignment. OP specifically asked for neutral, presumably not just on the good/evil axis. You might as well make it a cosmic prankster with a hard chaotic alignment.

A guy.

The masketta man

How do you make a "good" BBEG?

Did you just assume his gender?

If he's the second wave bad guy, it works quite nicely and easily. Have him bound by an oath of honor, to avenge an actually evil dude the PCs got rid of. Or he could be oathbound to carry his legacy, for someone that's less personal towards the PCs, and actually sets plans in motion.

Or, the neutral individual could just have a pragmatic view of things, denying at every turn the PC's attempts to topple the evil empire, instead aiming for compromises.

Make them like your mother when you didnt come for dinner cause you were gaming

No, given it's in the meaning of BBEG. it can be a girl guy, or a guy guy, but it's definitely a guy.

Working on that in a campaign I'm going to resume eventually. It involves initiating an interplanar exodus on a large scale to dampen future conflict, and have a great justification to suppress the plane of shadows. Which isn't too bad or harmful an idea. Which is why I first make the PCs lord and work on developping a newfound land, so they have something to lose by following the plan, and thus, a great reason to counter it.

Avon Barksdale from the wire is a fairly good example of a neutral villain imo. He's active in community projects, fairly good natured. Crime just happens to be in his family, he's expected to run his criminal empire and so he does in an as professional manner as he can.

He's not your guy, friend.

Well I'm not your friend, dude

>Shadowrun Corps
>not evil

That reminds me of the Warriors of Darkness subplot in FFXIV.

Basically, it's the party from the cinematic cutscenes. They come to the scene of primal summonings ie. bad stuff, and do your job faster than you. Their reason however, is to accelerate these occurences, and in doing so, weaken the world more and more, so darkness floods it, and splills over to the world they came from. A world in which they were so good at being heroes they actually managed to eradicate all evil, letting the power of light good and overwhelm it forever.

Underrated

Actually, Big Bad Evil Guy minus bad and evil gives...

A Big Guy.

>neutral
>BIG BAD yada yada
>neutral
>BAD

This. This beautiful and glorious patriot right here.

UUUU

Make the party's actions questionable / evil.
The party thinks they're doing the right thing but in reality they're just doing what they want / what they believe to be the right thing. The Big Guy at the end of the story is literally "Look you fucking idiots, I've been trying to maintain balance and all you keep doing is enforcing your alignment onto everything."
The idea of 'if there's too much good in the world, the real evils of the world will rise up and get stronger to contrast the good that the players bring into it'

Party kills the goblins that are pestering the village. The goblin clans band together and in doing so, are lead by a powerful goblin warlord that starts a war with the countryside. Party now wages small scale war with goblinoid nation, Big Guy shows up and pacifies the fuck out of the region and discovers that the Party is responsible for the Goblinoid uprising. Party is now wanted for instigating a military engagement. Certainly not dead, mainly to be brought in for questioning.

A villain who is a potential ally of the characters at first but then is forced/required to betray them/oppose them due to circumstances beyond their control, such as orders from above or political necessity.

Example; a king or local lord who is distant but considers the party helpful and useful, maybe even likes them a little bit, but later finds out that his liege lord wants them arrested or dead.
He then betrays them and ambushes them because he wants to loose as few of his own assets as possible because it makes his own job more difficult.

The villain arranges a competition where the PC or other competitors will brave dangerous areas, hopefully by accident recovering artifacts that the villain desires. He has no intention of using the artifacts for personal gain though, instead intending to use them to protect/benefit the country and all it's inhabitants.

Over the campaign he displays ruthlessness as well as benevolence, a strong sense of personal honor and other traits to make the PC question whether they're on the right side or not.

A demigod/exarch who doesn't want his divine status anymore, but wants to make sure his power is in the right hands. As such, he pits the party against a variety of challenges to make sure they're worthy. At the end of the adventure he gives each of them a fragment of his power (and/or his diefic weapon of some kind) so no one of the party has his FULL power, but acting in unison they have some sway over his domain. It would also be a good introduction to epic-tier play, and would introduce them to whichever God the demigod was beholden to/was an exarch of.

Nah, it's not nearly autistic enough to be considered Turbo. He hasn't sperged a lengthy rant into existence that almost reaches character limit of the post. More likely just one of the imitators that like seeing anons get triggered.

1)call BBEG an antagonist
2)he wants a thing that PCs also want
boom

Have the villain forced by circumstance somehow.

Random example - the villain is having a dam constructed which threatens to ruin the agriculture of your province. He is doing so to combat a drought in his province. There simply is not enough water to sustain both. As an additional complication, the people in that province feel bitterly justified after decades of borderline starvation, and are on the cusp of revolt should the BBEG not act, and possibly war against your people anyway.

There. You have a villain who has been essentially strong-armed into opposing the PCs, and is strongly motivated. Harming others is certainly not 'good', but saving his own people and likely his own family isn't especially 'evil', either.

Killing people and doing harm is not inherently "evil", or else every human institution or group of people would be evil by default. Consorting with demons and devils is, however.

Having a war that fits whatever norms of the time is perfectly neutral as long as it doesn't become willful genocide and rapine. Completely screwing over your business rival is perfectly neutral as long as you don't hire the mob to kill their CEO or do anything needlessly spiteful.

>"BBEG"

Ugh.

that doesn't make as much sense as you think it does

That would by definition make the a BBNG, would it not?

A loyal soldier, a villain by necessity, that sort of thing.

...

An individual/organization that wants to impose totalitarian rule over a populace legitimately and demonstrably for their own good but without their consent.

Maybe an out of touch monarch that causes a lot of suffering in an effort to maintain the status quo. He doesn't want more power, he is comfortable with things as they are. Unfortunately comfortable for a king and comfortable for the masses are two different things. Though he does not think about it and might not even be aware of it, the choices he makes to maintain the status quo has peasants working through conditions that did not exist during his father's reign. Conditions such as droughts, famines, hostile neighbors, and so on.

To this king the status quo is the peaceful reign of plenty that his father had and he does not believe that it is impossible to replicate that reign. He is not malicious or power hungry. He just wants things to be as he remembered them to be as he was growing up.

A militant pacifist who continuously heals all combatants until they get bored and leave.

This one is the best one yet.

The next country over to yours is invading your home, for reasons that are, well, reasonable. The leader is a high level general/warlord/tough guy, and defeating him will be vital for ending the invasion successfully.

You are describing the capitalist market as it would be intended...

pretty evil

It's pretty simple. Just make sure the scale of whatever conflict the BBEG is involved in is way bigger than the players are used to. A small country that is caught between two warring empires will seem like hell on earth and the emperor of the aggressor nation may seem like a BBEG, but make it clear that the collateral damage or atrocties committed by some, not most or all, or his men isn't important to him. Equally give him reasons to be doing what he is doing.

Here's an example:
There are three kingdoms. Duchy A, a small state located between the B Confederation and the C empire. Duchy A is small, unimportant and maintain neutral relations with B and C.

Empire of C has recently begun to close it's far borders and has begun impressing travelers and merchants into some sort of service. Rumors swirl that the Empire of C has been pursuing research into dark arts, conspiring with forbidden creatures and groups.

A trade caravan led by a nobleman of B confederation that was sent to the Empire of C has disappeared and not been heard from. The father of the missing nobleman, a high minister of B confederation takes his house guard and marches to the capital of the Empire of C.

A few of his retainers quickly return to B confederation and tell that the whole diplomatic host and the minister were executed and that foul things are being brewed in the Empire of C. Seeing that two formal missions have failed, the B Confederation decides to dispatch a small warhost to open a dialogue with Empire of C. The diplomatic oriented warhost is ambushed by hostile forces at the border between B and A.

B has now declared all out war but to reach C they will cross through A where embedded agents of C have prepared insurgencies against any forces of B.

Now B and C and small elements of A are in a savage war in the Duchy of A.

technically B is the BBEG because it will not stop until it gets justice. In some ways they are in the right, but to A they are BBEG's

That's fucking stupid.

you do a BNNG

One who, quite simply, does not give a shit about anything that isn't himself.