Gaming can sometimes sound like another language, and in some way it is. The same way all nurses get their own language, and discourse in academia gets its own set of base terms, gamers have a dialect that they share, though the specifics very between games. To help those not entirely in the know, I’ll be compiling a short glossary here.

Character: The fictional person a player controls in a game world. May sometimes be used to refer to other entities in the game world that are not controlled by the players.

Gamemaster: The GM/DM/Dungeon Master/etc. The god of the game world, in charge of setting up struggles for the player characters to overcome. The GM is a player in the sense that they are taking part in the game experience, but as far as gaming group terminology goes, the GM is not considered a “Player.”

Party: A group of player characters. Used to refer to the group of people, or their characters in game.

Player: The human being controlling the character in a game. Sometimes I’ll differentiate between the player’s needs and the character’s, the player will always refer to the actual person, not the fictional persona.

Player Character: The combination of a character and the player who controls them. A player exists in the real world, and the character in the fantasy world. The player character is the synergy between the two, when the player is specifically acting in the real world to control the character’s actions in the game world.

Meta: Knowledge that the player knows but the character does not. Sometimes results in conflict between players or between the GM and other players, as a character can’t act on knowledge they don’t have, but players are often tempted to give their characters every possible edge.

NPC: Short for Non-Player Character. A character controlled by the Gamemaster instead of a player.

GMPC: More of a slang term. Used when a GM builds a fully fleshed out character (rare for NPCs) and uses it in the game alongside the player characters. Sometimes this is beneficial, when the party needs a specific role to be more successful in play, while other times it is considered bad practice if the GM makes that character much stronger than the player characters.