What are NPC characters ?

You have probably heard the term NPC somewhere. In case you are still wondering, we are going to explain who are NPC characters. NPC stands for Non-player character. The origins of the term go back to the early Role Playing Games

The term NPC applied to any and all characters controlled by the Game Master or Dungeon Master as opposed to characters controlled by the players. So in short, NPCs (non-player characters) are any characters in the game which are not controlled by the players. You can think of them a bit like the extras in films. In fact, one of the role-playing systems, Savage Worlds is also using the term Extras to describe less important NPCs.
To give you a couple examples, your typical NPC would be a city gate guard players meet when entering the city, or a shopkeeper etc. Many systems will have special rules for NPC's. Like the fore-mentioned Savage Worlds Adventure Edition where we have two types of NPCs: extras and wildcards.

The extras will be very much like the film extras, as in they will not play nay major part. This could be a shopkeeper, a beggar etc. The Wildcards will be slightly more important, think supporting characters in a film. Therefore some NPCs will be much more detailed than others. Some NPC characters may even join our players as part of their team. Again some systems have special rules for that. Like the Sidekick Edge in Savage Worlds which give player NPC companion.
NPC are not limited to Role-Playing Games, we also have NPCs in Video Games. Again, that would be all the characters not controlled by the player. However, since there is no Game Master in video games. The NPCs in a video game would be controlled by a computer.
That's all for part one. I will be soon adding a new article about the best tools to create your NPC characters.