Acronym Advice - NPC

  • NPC and what is means!

    There are a lot of acronyms in the world of gaming and I am going to write a few posts to help try and clear them up for you.

    Topic 2 – NPC – Non-Player Character

    They’ve been here all the time!

    From the dawn of videogames there have been characters in the world that the player does not control directly:

    • Toad in Super Mario Bros.
    • Impa in The Legend of Zelda
    • Wanda the Warsmith in Sea of Thieves (pre-curse)

    Regardless of their animosity towards the player, these characters enrich a game either as an a plot device, merchant, helper or a sidekick

    DND to blame!

    In the days of table-top gaming, Dungeons and Dragons Gamesmasters would develop into their lore and game worlds characters designed to progress the game in some way, either to assist, or to try and destroy a character.

    This obviously rolled over into modern videogames, with a connotation that any character within the game who was not directly controlled by the player was an NPC.

    Enemies are mobs, not NPCs

    It’s important to note that any malevolent force in a game who you are battling against is actually an enemy. These characters are their own sub-class of NPC, as they often have different stats and interact with our playable character in a very different way.

    So next time you visit a Merchant Alliance trader, remember:

    (part 1 can be found here
    (part 3 can be found here)

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