The characters are good

>The characters are good
>The big bad is lawful good

Can this work?

yes

It can, but you need a lot of misunderstanding and obscurification. If you have the two meet and greet it's going to be become obvious fairly quickly that they're at least nominally on the same side.

Yes.

You can do it without confusion, but with radically different approaches or motivations. Consider the following options:

>The BBGG is the evil emperor's sworn friend, meaning he is stuck between a rock and a hard place: two oaths he cannot break. He's dancing on the cord between the two until the best of his abilities, delaying his fall (both figuratively and literally) as long as possible
>Both the BBGG and the Party are aware of a certain evil, but both have radically different solutions to the problem. Both also believe that the other side is foolish, naive and only trying to make things more difficult (for example: two competing demon clans invade the human world. While the BBGG may think it's best to cooperate with one clan of LITERAL DEMONS in order to crush the other, the party thinks it's better to fight a much more difficult two front war)
>The BBGG is the leader of a rival party. Both parties have been sent out by kingdoms plagued with evil to retrieve some magical McGuffin that'll save the kingdom. The problem is that there's two kingdoms, one McGuffin and said McGuffin is single use.

Yes, but I don't think it would make for a good story. You can cite historical examples of the crusaders versus Saladin, and yes, Saladin could be technically considered an antagonist... But if the crusades were a campaign, would he really be the big bad? Or would it be someone like Reynald de Châtillon?

Conflicting causes that are both in the pursuit of a common good

Yes. The two sides just need different definitions of good.

Wasn't Fable 2 or 3 basically like this? The king seemed like an evil shit bag until you depose and replace him and realize he was doing what he had to do to save the most people in the realm? Just rip off that storyline OP.

Ideological differences

Yes. Check out Left Beyond in the archive

Raynald Did Nothing Wrong. He was one of the best generals of the crusaders and a model of being a great general, an epic level troll and an excellent knight. (He was very anti-Muslim because he was kept by them in captivity for 15 years and has read the Qaran so he knew why they where not trustworthy and wanted peace only to prepare war against Christians)

Yes.

After all, Hitler was textbook Lawful Good, but we wouldn't call most of the allied soldiers anything other than Good.

Who cares what alignment they are?

Works well in an duty / honour based setting.

The characters are soldiers in service of their lord, who wants to wage a war against the other rival lord. The Rival lord is known to be honorable and good, but so are the characters. Duty demands they obey even if they have complaints.

Alternatively look at Dawn of War and how often the IG got into battles with the Blood Ravens due to conflicting superior orders.

Befehl ist befehl.

>After all, Hitler was textbook Lawful Good, but we wouldn't call most of the allied soldiers anything other than Good.

>alignments

Why would it be bait?

...

...what? That's you, right now.

>buy every house and shop
>save rent money
>have enough money to build orphanariums and kill the bad shadow with 0 loses.
>proceed to sent home rent down to zero
Am I and absolutist King or a gommie?

Code Geass
Justice vs Mercy (Batman vs Raas Al Ghul)
Robinwood vs Lancelot
an evil force tricks both parties to believe the other is evil (BvS)
BBEG wants to kill X because she's evil or will unintentionally summon some great danger or some shit but she's PC's love interest
Assassin's vs Templars

>the world will be destroyed if magical mcguffins securing the kingdom's prosperity are not removed from their altars for a ritual
>the benevolent ruler has no reason to believe any of this is true, and sees the PCs as terrorists