Showing results for "NPC" in All Categories

What happens when the haggling is done and the shops are closed? When the quest has been given, the steeds saddled, and the adventurers are off to their next encounter? They keep the world running, the food cooked, and the horses shoed, yet what adventurer has ever spared a thought or concern for the Non-Player Characters? In the town of Maplebark, four such NPCs settle in for a night of actively ignoring the adventurers drinking in the tavern when things go quickly and fatally awry.

New York Times and number one Audible.com best-selling author Jeremy Robinson takes listeners on a journey that is not only action-packed, but full of scientific and philosophical intrigue. In his most mind-bending story since Infinite and Alter, Robinson blends genres, belief systems, and bold prose into an unputdownable tale exploring the nature of reality.

The SynthNet is a galaxy-sized simulation where every sector plays by its own rules. One moment you’re casting fireballs in high-fantasy ruins; the next, you’re hacking elevators in a neon megacity or fighting off raiders in a sun-scorched desertpunk outpost. For Fen, a gruff NPC whose job is to hand out beginner quests and pretend it still matters, it’s just another day in the loop—until everything changes. A mission glitches. A player dies. Permanently. Now the system blames him.

Bob Johnson is a good man. He’s a husband, a father, and the manager of a massive interstate travel center outside Chicago. His life is full, busy, and carefully balanced. There’s just one problem. When Bob is focused, everyone outside his immediate circle starts to blur into obstacles — background characters in the story of his day. They aren’t villains. They’re just… in the way. A delayed trucker. A man in a BMW in a hurry. Shoppers blocking aisles. Strangers in line who seem to forget that other people exist. As Bob moves through work, family, and the small frictions of ...

Yoshio is thirty years old, and his life is a mess. A shut-in living with his parents, he has no job, no relationship, and no prospects. When he receives a new sim computer game that boasts characters created with a new kind of A.I., he doesn't think much of it--until he gets drawn into a fantasy world so vibrant and lifelike that its residents can't just be game characters. Suddenly finding himself the benevolent god of a scrappy fantasy village is a lot for Yoshio to handle, but it might be the key to the change he is desperate for.

NPR's Up First is the news you need to start your day. The three biggest stories of the day, with reporting and analysis from NPR News — in 10 minutes. Available weekdays at 6:30 a.m. ET, with hosts Leila Fadel, Steve Inskeep, Michel Martin and A Martinez. Also available on Saturdays at 9 a.m. ET, with Ayesha Rascoe and Scott Simon. On Sundays, hear a longer exploration behind the headlines with Ayesha Rascoe on "The Sunday Story," available by 8 a.m. ET. Subscribe and listen, then support your local NPR station at donate.npr.org. Support public media by joining NPR+ at plus.npr.org. You’...

Yoshio was a thirty-year-old unemployed shut-in when a mysterious village-building sim, The Village of Fate, showed up at his door. Through watching and caring for the game's intensely realistic NPCs, Yoshio has started getting his life back on track--getting a job to pay for microtransactions, and using the villagers' care for each other as inspiration to reconnect with his family. But despite overcoming the first challenges thrown at him, more complicated issues, both in and out of the game, are closing in. And are the game's monstrous enemies controlled by real humans, too?

For Prince Hail Teoran, there's never been a greater hero than his own father, a true living legend who came through the gates with his fellow Travelers years ago to rescue the continent of Lagrea from the forces of darkness. Unfortunately, when the young prince actually meets his dad for the first time, he turns out to be, well, a total jerkweed. Naturally, Hail is crushed. That is, until he's visited by a seemingly all-powerful administrator who explains that Hail, his mother, and everyone in their world are part of a game the Travelers are constantly playing.

Players versus NPCs. Who will win? Daren Schultz got SAO'ed inside Legitimate Science Fiction and Fantasy (LSF) game as Dore, a Master Porter with numerous sub-classes, and became an NPC. He can't log out anymore and faces permanent death inside the game. Somehow, he got lucky, visiting secret realms left and right and making connections with important dragons, becoming a pet master, a dragon mage, and even marrying one as a Dragon Prince. To cement his NPC status, Dore got a daughter with a Void Mother in his harem. Juggling fatherhood and the responsibilities of ruling a country, Dore has...

He died in a hospital bed in Seattle. He woke up as a vending machine. Jake Mercer was a systems architect — a man who built complex digital infrastructures for a living, who debugged the invisible machinery that kept the world running. He expected nothing after death. What he got was Millhaven: a living, breathing RPG world where reincarnated souls from Earth arrive daily, each granted a character sheet, a class, and the divine right to grow. Jake got none of that. He's Level 0. No class. No XP gain. No future. He is Subject 4782 in the guild's maintenance ledger — a quest-giver NPC, ...

New Standalone Tower of Gates Novel! Learn how Benji entered the simulation and other surprises! Bernard, responsible for his father's gambling debts, decides to sign up for a study at ECNEP corporation. Their fully immersive virtual reality simulations are being tested for consumer use. At first he's not very into it, but he soon becomes friends with at least one person he finds interesting. When they try to hack the code of the simulation, things begin to go very wrong. Can they survive and hang onto their humanity while trapped inside a limitless virtual world. This is a STANDALONE ...

The game is over for Yoshio. His villagers are gone, all dead as far as he can tell. But just as he is overcome with despair, one final gift arrives from the Village of Fate--a package containing the NPC Carol, and she's clearly a real, live girl. With Carol in tow, Yoshio leaves the safety of his home to travel to Hokkaido, where the developers are located. He will uncover the truth of this mysterious game once and for all!

Timid, socially awkward, and plagued by self-esteem issues, Fred has never been the adventurous sort. One fateful night - different from the night he died, which was more inconvenient than fateful - Fred reconnects with an old friend at his high school reunion. This rekindled relationship sets off a chain of events thrusting him right into the chaos of the parahuman world.

As Qube and her companions reach the end of the now thoroughly broken game, they must come to grips with the nature of their reality, and the world beyond. Interested parties from the real world clash with our heroes as they scramble to defeat the Evil Emperor in time and reveal the secrets they’ve been keeping from one another. In an increasingly relevant dilemma, these video game characters, born of AI, must decide what it means to be free.

Lily is back from Australia for the first time in seven years to spend Christmas at her mum’s house in a small, gossipy English village. To her surprise, she returns to find that her mother is dating the man next door, who also happens to be the father of her ex-boyfriend Tom. Tom, who broke Lily’s heart all those years ago. Tom, the real reason Lily fled to the other side of the world and stayed there. Tom, who is also home for Christmas and right there, next door.

Non Player Character Player Headquarters Gil Motoli is an unemployed crewman, down on his luck. He knows his sole purpose in the game is to be a random crewman choice by the player, or even more randomly become crew to an NPC ship, either of which might get him killed quickly. It’s been a long time between assignments, and he’s more desperate than he’s ever been. So when lady luck presents him with the perfect opportunity, he takes it. He hasn’t seen this plot before, and this time is his time. Now he’s his own boss, and can forge his own future. But there’s a problem. The game ...

A game is only a game if you can quit. This is something I learned the hard way. I just wanted to let off some steam in virtual reality and ended up getting murdered and imprisoned in the body of one of the undead - slow, clumsy, and cursed to die at the hand of other players over and over again. The only way out of this awful predicament was to find the legendary Scroll of Rebirth, but the helpless plague-ridden corpse would need to be turned into a real killing machine. If only people knew what it was like to level up a dead rogue....

Nature is dying. Perhaps before the world is turned into an industrious machine, nature itself can play one final trump card to save itself. Summoned to a new world, a mushroom-loving mycologist needs to grow up and grow stronger in order to accomplish the goal that brought them to this new place: to save nature from the system that the sentient races have created. Stats, levels, classes, and skills are all well and good, but when you're a Child of Poverty in the slums of City Nineteen, there's little you can do to change the world. Not unless you're willing to think outside the box!

The player gets SAO'ed and must find a way out. Daren Schultz owns a Master Porter character named Dore and joins quests, missions, and raids as a freelancer for cash in the Legitimate Science Fiction and Fantasy (LSF) game. The "Pot Fairy" serves as a war medic and keeps players alive during tough fights against field bosses. He's got plenty of space inside his Item Box to store Quest Items that might be cursed. It's a tough, high-stakes job, but somebody's gotta do it. And Dore is among the best mules in the business. Unfortunately, LSF throws the raiders a curveball by tossing the ...

A man. His ex-girlfriend's cat. A sadistic game show unlike anything in the universe: a dungeon crawl where survival depends on killing your prey in the most entertaining way possible. In a flash, every human-erected construction on Earth - from Buckingham Palace to the tiniest of sheds - collapses in a heap, sinking into the ground. The buildings and all the people inside have all been atomized and transformed into the dungeon: an 18-level labyrinth filled with traps, monsters, and loot.