Non-player character

A Non-player character, or NPC, is a character not controlled by a player. As a character, a non-player character is a sentient being who players can interact with, but most often cannot be attacked. Non-player characters include store owners, quest contacts, access granting characters, and some others that seem to have been added with the intent of adding future quests or content, or simply for entertainment value.

Store owners can be spoken to or traded with using the trade action in the right-click menu, and some can offer special items for members with the proper prerequisites. They may also be needed for quests, or may require that you supply them with some items in order to make the items you wish to purchase from them, such as apothecaries.

Quest contacts are non-player characters that need to be interacted with in order to further quests, gain information on where to go or what items are needed for the quest, or to acquire items or rewards for the quests.

Access granters are characters that can grant a player character access to certain areas, such as guilds or through gates.

There are also a few entities that cannot be attacked for other reasons, such as some of the random event entities, Dairy cows are not NPCs they are in fact objects. You can tell because of its name colour, a NPC has yellow text, but an object doesn't.

NPCs can also talk in public, but this will not appear in the chat list.

Unlike in RuneScape 2, RuneScape Classic NPCs can only talk to one player at once. When RuneScape was first designed, players took advantage of this and talked to NPCs and did not respond, therefore holding up the shops (in RuneScape Classic, players who stood in the same spot for five minutes would automatically be logged out, but this rule didn't apply when players were talking to NPCs). Players soon did this with new quests. Jagex changed the system such that if a player doesn't respond to an NPC when others were waiting, then the conversation would automatically end.

Trivia

 * If a player blocks the path for an NPC for to long the NPC will move to a random square near the area.
 * Most non-player characters have a small shadow while online characters have a bigger one.