NPC

Information

Status

Hiatus

Year

2014

Author

Argos

• 1.24 - Demon Child
  May 5, 2020
• 1.23 - Puddle
  Apr 28, 2020
• 1.22 - A drop in the Puddle
  Apr 20, 2020
• 1.21 - The Wall
  Mar 28, 2020
• 1.20 - Her Name Was Sian
  Mar 15, 2020
• 1.19 - Call Me Je’Hiantl, Call Me Maya
  Mar 7, 2020
• 1.18 - In the Company of Darkness
  Mar 4, 2020
• 1.17 - Hiking Simulator 1458
  Feb 27, 2020
• 1.16 - Quests
  Feb 16, 2020
• 1.15 - Purpose
  Feb 10, 2020
• 1.14 - Broken
  Feb 10, 2020
• 1.13 - Dark Shadows
  Nov 21, 2019
• 1.12 - Chaos and its aftermath
  Nov 14, 2019
• 1.11 - The Wound Which Does Not Heal
  Nov 13, 2019
• 1.10 - Never Again
  Nov 6, 2019
• 1.09 - Wake
  Nov 3, 2019
• 1.08 - Careless
  Nov 1, 2019
• 1.07 - A Sister’s Resemblance
  Oct 30, 2019
• 1.06 - Sunny
  Oct 29, 2019
• 1.05 - Damn Fluffballs
  Oct 27, 2019

What readers say about NPC

• “Only 3 chapters so far, but it's really good so far. Interesting world, likable characters, engaging story. It was a great idea to start with the NPC POV, it really cements the idea of the players as these weird strangers and differentiates the story from y…”

  TechmanRoyal Road5.0 / 5

• “2 Stars, Stopped posting puppy photos after chapter 6. Just kidding. The moment I picked up on the hook I knew this story would be just a little different. Pairing and contrasting the real world vs the virtual is an important theme in the subgenre and only…”

  wordsinalineRoyal Road4.5 / 5

Reviews

Community Reviews(6)

• TechmanRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 5.0

  Only 3 chapters so far, but it's really good so far. Interesting world, likable characters, engaging story.
  It was a great idea to start with the NPC POV, it really cements the idea of the players as these weird strangers and differentiates the story from your usual VR LITRPG opening chapter.
  I look forward to seeing how this story progresses. Definitely recommend.
• wordsinalineRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 4.5

  2 Stars, Stopped posting puppy photos after chapter 6. Just kidding.
  The moment I picked up on the hook I knew this story would be just a little different. Pairing and contrasting the real world vs the virtual is an important theme in the subgenre and only the best LitRPGs do it well. Only time will tell whether Hi&Hello manages to effectively balance the two clashing pillars of their story, but I'll say this: they're off to a good start.
  Let's talk specifics and avoid spoilers. Grammar is fine, with relatively few mistakes. A few outlying apostrophes, and some issues with misselected homonyms. But it never negatively impacted readability.
  Style I'm torn on. There are a lot of bold choices here, but also the author generally knows enough not to outstrip their limits. I think managing timelines becomes a little difficult here, and that needs a hint of cleanup, but generally these are smart choices.
  The characters... I'm less excited for. They're well realized, and the interplay between them feels natural and engaging, it's just that some of these archetypes, well they're written as 20 years old, but act like they're 16. I just don't have patience for young folks anymore, everything's a catastrophe or a heartbreak or true love! Humbug!
  Now remember how I said the success of this fiction depends on whether the author can juggle two worlds and deliver a meaningful payout? Well so far, we've seen a strong throughline of setup and delivery on some heavy stuff. It bodes real well for the long term.
  If I have any real complaint it's this: The story right now is built like a really nice quilt. Each individual patch is lovely, but you need something that crosses the boundaries and unifies things. Temporaly, narratively, perspectively. Maybe that's done structurally, maybe it needs little recurring threads of language. Personally I think it only really needs some more refinement in its use of foreshadowing
  Or maybe the connectivity is incoming anyway and I just have to be pati
• MTurnerRoyal Road

  ★★★★ 4.0

  NOTE: This is in my poetry review series. Naturall I haven't read all of the published material before reviewing, so bear that in mind.
  A starship going outside our solar
  Sets the scene for a mind, which is the controller
  A LitRPG with full explanation
  Explains why our players, have no other vocation
  The intro I found, I felt was slow
  For this though, the payoff may grow
  I think this will be aided in your choice
  To give both player and npc voice
  Into the world, with a cute charm
  Easy reading, another chapter won't harm
  There were parts, I got carried away
  Soon enough, I passed half a day
  Worldbuilding there, but info dump not
  Even in prose, you mention this lot
  I'm glad you got stuck into movement
  On this aspect you need no improvement
  Stakes afew, lacking of tension
  You'd garner interest, more attention
  If characters had something important to lose
  A hint of risk, or struggle to choose
  As now it seems there's only the fun
  Of people playing a game, nothing to be won
  Perhaps its due to my earlier stage
  Perhaps I need to read more page
  To conclude I'm enjoying your book
  I'll try my best, to further look
  I'm sure you'll manage, to keep me engrossed
  The best of luck, I wish you the most!
• AnjinRoyal Road

  ★★★★ 3.5

  I agonised over how to review this one, I really did. On the one hand, we have a great story, with wonderful characters and a really immersive style. On the other hand, it's just a few proof-reads and edits away from being perfect.
  In the end, I decided to shoot somewhere in the middle.
  The story is a great one, loosely inspired by West World, by the author's own admission, but with a nice breath of originality coursing through it which keeps the whole thing very fresh. I particularly like the details surrounding the virtual world, and the way that is juggled with the VR. A few paragraphs here and there were somehow more effective in conveying a distinction between reality and virtual reality than Sword Art Online achieved in two whole seasons.
  Nothing feels superfluous in the style. It bounces around, sure, but in a way that is engaging and juggles multiple plot threads well. I love the little scenarios the author flits between, and I love the over-arching mythology that lurks ominously at the beginning of each chapter.
  The characters are great, and hi&hello presents them very well. I particularly respect how Aiden is written, because his depth is a nice contrast to quaintness of the NPCs, who are necessarily more superficial at first. Things get really interesting once our NPCs start to become equally fleshed out.
  Now on to the trickier section...
  hi&hello writes from the heart, is my way of looking at it. I feel like the author has a strong connection with their world, their characters and their work, and they paste it onto paper with great efficacy. Where they are let down, is in the nitty-gritty, finer points of writing: the grammar, spelling and typo checks.
  However, there is genuine improvement in this regard, especially in later chapters, and at times I found myself wondering why I had even flagged this as an issue. hi&hello knows where their strengths and weaknesses lie, and seeks to improve on the latter whilst still leaning into the former. I have to resp
• B. A. Baker (Thedude3445)Royal Road

  ★★★★ 3.5

  For a story with as much heart put into it as NPC, it wasn't something I wanted to do to give this a 3.5-star rating overall, but I can't give it higher in good conscience at the moment thanks to some very odd choices made in the story's first several chapters.
  The story is about a sci-fi space colony ship that puts its inhabitants into VRMMO worlds while they sleep, and it follows one boy named Aiden as he enters a new world and learns its fantasy LitRPG system stuff. On the other side of things, it's about Maya, a young shopkeeper girl who is one of the NPCs in the game. Except, clearly, she's not just some static program and has a life and personality of her own, and one that clashes with her duties.
  The writing style is decent; there's no real grammatical issues, and the prose is nice and descriptive, something I always appreciate. The dialogue could use some punching up, but it's well above-average.
  However, with all of that out of the way, the biggest problem with this story in its first ten chapters is that it is very jumbled and chaotic, often hard to follow and hard to connect with its characters as a result.
  The story apparently has two protagonists in Aiden and Maya, but there's also other POVs occassionally like a demon lord who seems to have almost no connection to the rest of the plot that I could tell. There are also these short snippets at the beginning of each chapter that I could never quite discern the relevance of; it mentions characters who appear in the story itself, but it's presented in a way that is easy to confuse, for sure. The prologue is also a bit odd, setting up Aiden's family relationship which, because of the VRMMO plot, seems to have absolutely no bearing (as of chapter 1.10 at least).
  This is a variant on my often-made complaint about ambitious fantasy/sci-fi on Royal Road, where too many POVs and subplots introduced too quickly can overwhelm readers and lose interest. Here, the issue isn't really about overwhelming the reader as m
• PumkinRoyal Road

  ★★★★ 3.5

  The concept of an NPC gaining sentience isn't new or novel, but it's not tired yet.  The SciFi ship setting is just ok so far. There are spelling and grammatical issues on every page (and dear god, the homophones). If you're a stickler for apostrophes and commas, skip this (for now, at least). It seems alright though, I'll probably read through more when the story is further along. Character score is low just by virtue of it being a new story in which the characters are not yet fleshed out.
  This part is just my opinion, but I'm less interested in what the heroes themselves are doing, we've all read that story a hundred times before. Townsfolk struggling to meet the unreasonable demands of a bunch of overpowered battle lunatics is more compelling for me.