The Lantern Hall
Painting: an ancient lexicon open on a carved lectern in a dark chapel of books, glowing runes and symbols lifting off its pages like fireflies.
TermTabletop term1974

Player character

A character controlled by one of the players rather than by the Game Master. The shift from commanding armies to embodying a single persistent hero, who remembers, grows and can die, is what separated the roleplaying game from the wargame.

A character controlled by one of the players rather than by the Game Master. The shift from commanding armies to embodying a single persistent hero, who remembers, grows and can die, is what separated the roleplaying game from the wargame.

Origin

The persistent individual character emerged in Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign (1971) and was published in Dungeons & Dragons (1974).

Quick answers

What does "Player character" mean?
A character controlled by one of the players rather than by the Game Master. The shift from commanding armies to embodying a single persistent hero, who remembers, grows and can die, is what separated the roleplaying game from the wargame.
Where does the term "Player character" come from?
The persistent individual character emerged in Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign (1971) and was published in Dungeons & Dragons (1974).

Nearby in the archive

Non-player character

Tabletop term

Any character not controlled by a player: the innkeeper, the villain, the hireling and the king, all voiced by the Game Master. The term passed into video games for computer-controlled characters and, much later, into internet slang as an insult (see NPC (meme)).

The party

General term

The group of player characters who adventure together, pooling complementary skills. Its fantasy prototype is the Fellowship of the Ring; its gaming form is the fighter, cleric, wizard and thief of early D&D, carried into computer RPGs and the holy trinity of MMOs.

Character class

Tabletop term1974

A package of abilities that defines what a character does, such as fighter, wizard, cleric or thief. Classes make roles distinct and parties interdependent, and they became a backbone of computer and online RPGs, from Wizardry to World of Warcraft.

Blackmoor

Campaign setting1971

In a Twin Cities basement in 1971, Dave Arneson sent his wargaming friends beneath a model castle to hunt monsters and gold — and invented the dungeon adventure.

Painting: three small plain tan rulebooks in a wood-grain cardboard box beside strange new polyhedral dice, pencils and a graph-paper dungeon map.

Dungeons & Dragons

Tabletop RPG1974

Three little booklets in a woodgrain box, hand-assembled in Lake Geneva in January 1974: the first published roleplaying game, and the template for every tabletop and computer RPG since.

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