Quote Originally Posted by Midgardsormr View Post
Nah, there's no such thing as "official."

"Big Bad" was, as far as I know, a term coined in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I don't know who appended "Evil Guy" to it, but I suspect it was to differentiate the initials from the hundreds of other things "BB" could mean.

The Big Bad isn't necessarily the biggest physical threat, though. A chessmaster-type villain like Lex Luthor isn't going to go toe-to-toe with the heroes because he doesn't stand a chance in that situation. In terms of the "boss fight" (to use the video game term) a mastermind's henchman is likely to be more relevant. I am likely to shorthand such a minion as a "sergeant" in my planning notes.

My players can call the opposition whatever they like, although if they fall into video game speak, they're likely to earn a malevolent frown from me. I prefer to discourage reframing my scenarios in video game terms because that tends to cause them to devolve into purely tactical problems instead of narratives.
Ah, a kindred spirit.

When D&D4 came out, I was immediately driven away from it by all of the MMO/Videogame style references.

If someone can't immerse themselves into a game any further than pixels on a screen, they don't belong in my group.