nonplayer character

American  

noun

1. a character in a tabletop role-playing game who is controlled by the Game Master.

2. a character in a video game who executes scripted roles and is not controlled by the player. NPC

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Etymology

Origin of nonplayer character

First recorded in 1990–95

Example Sentences

Tech journalist Kara Swisher, who has covered Musk for decades now, explained to the New York Times that the billionaire views himself as "the person who matters the most," and that "everybody else is an N.P.C. — a nonplayer character," which is video game slang for preprogrammed characters in a video game.

From Salon

He danced like a nonplayer character, or NPC, in a computer game for 39 minutes at a town hall meeting the other night after taking a handful of questions.

From Salon

Ryan Reynolds is a nonplayer character who realizes he lives inside a videogame in the convoluted corporate comedy “Free Guy.”

From Los Angeles Times

That shouldn’t be in Guy’s code, and when he starts stepping outside the expectations of a nonplayer character to pursue the mysterious Molotov Girl, it causes an uproar that turns him into a star known as “Blue Shirt Guy” to the “real world” outside the game.

From Los Angeles Times

He also has an action-comedy in production titled, “Free Guy,” where he plays a bank teller who discovers he’s a nonplayer character in an unforgiving open-world video game.

From Fox News