June – July 2014: ‘VINPCs’

Blogs of the Round Table – June 2014

As promised, Blogs of the Round Table is back with another rousing topic. This time, it’s ‘VINPCs’:

As players, writers and readers, we are often focused on player-characters: the protagonists, anti-heroes and avatars whose destinies we directly control, whether alone or as a party of adventurers. Yet there are so many other characters we meet, befriend, bed and kill whose stories are perhaps even more interesting than our own.

Tell us about a memorable experience you had with a non-player character (NPC). Were they were fighting by your side in Skyrim or visiting your house in Animal Crossing or The Sims? Did you ever have a fierce rivalry with a faceless driver in Ridge Racer? How many attempts did it take you to defeat Goro in Mortal Kombat? Whose audio diaries intrigued you in BioShock without ever meeting the character who recorded them?

We’re accepting your blogs until July 31st. You can see the current submissions here:


Use this code to embed the links in your blog, if your publishing platform allows iframes:

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Please email us your submissions or tweet them to @AGBear with the #BoRT hashtag. Happy blogging!

Rules of the Round Table

  • Blogs of the Round Table is not curated. If you write it, we’ll publish it, as long as it’s connected to the topic and has been written specially for BoRT or up to one month prior.
  • This BoRT post is the home of the discussion: as I receive new submission blogs, I’ll update the ‘BoRT Linkomatic’ so new blogs are reflected on this page immediately. We’ll also use the @critdistance Twitter account to post regular updates, so follow us!
  • Your duty as a knight of the round table is to leave a comment on a blog to which you respond with a link to the response piece, to give them a ‘right of reply’. Keep the conversation going.
  • Your blog does not have to be in English. If you submit a German piece I’ll try my best to read it; if it’s another language I’ll find someone else.
  • If your work contains potentially disturbing content, please include a suitable warning at the start. Use your common sense.
  • You can submit as many articles as you like throughout the month, and it doesn’t matter if they are commercially published, paywalled or available for free. We will need a transcript for paywalled content to be approved.