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Ageless, Faceless, Gender-Neutral, Culturally Ambiguous Adventure Person. Pronounced either as "aff-n-cap", "aff-n-cape", or "Afghan cop."

Perhaps the most common type of player character in the early Adventure Game.

In an attempt to reinforce the notion that the player of the game "is" the player character, most early games went out of the way to avoid applying any characterization to the player character.

More often than not, a thorough examination of the game will cause this to break down, as providing any kind of substantial interaction with a player character who is a total cipher is problematic. Most often, the first thing to slip through will be a tacit assumption that the character is male.

Less common in its extreme form today, as it makes anything like compelling storytelling highly problematic. Much easier to achieve in Interactive Fiction, for the same reason that text is better suited to the Tomato Surprise, and to this day, many text games still take this approach, and enthusiasts have been known to be disappointed if "forced" to play a character who does not reflect their gender or sexual orientation.

The name "AFGNCAAP" comes from Zork Grand Inquisitor: the Haunted Lantern which serves as your sidekick dubs the player this after failing to find an accurate third person pronoun to describe him/her/it.

Beyond adventures, most games at least need to graphically present the player, so some amount of customization is required. The result is often an extended form of Purely Aesthetic Gender, with little additional influence on the story.

A weaker form of this attempt results in the Heroic Mime. Often used in conjunction with Second Person Narration. Mediums which try to put a definite name and face on the protagonist result in Canon Name.

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Examples:

• Perhaps as a nod to this, though slightly characterizied, the player character in The7th Guest is referred to in the manual as "Ego", Latin for "I", and starts the game with absolutely no idea how he got there or who he is.
  • It is revealed at the end of the game that Ego is the spirit of the little boy Tad, who has been forced to relive the events that occurred during the party at Stauf Manor over and over again.
• The player character's gender in the Myst series is never made specific; Atrus only ever refers to you as "my friend."
  • Thanks to the Myst games being a series however, the need for a persistent player character is met quite cleverly, by only providing 'hints' here and there about the character as they become Atrus' family's friend. This more encourages players either to perceive themselves as part of the story or use their own imaginations, rather than leaving one to wonder who the hell they're playing. The avoidance of even hinting at gender might almost be called impressive - though a couple of points in the series do present players with the ability to create a customisable character.
• In Shivers and its sequel, though the player is given a home town and set of friends, he is only ever referred to by others as "You", and only ever described in gender-neutral terms.
  • Except near the very end when you fall down a large slide and your screams are clearly masculine.
• In The Journeyman Project, the player is only referred to as "Agent 5", and though we see his reflection, his face is computer-generated and featureless (all other characters are photorealistic). He gets a full name (Gage Blackwood), identity, and face in both of its sequels, as well as the remake, Pegasus Prime. Perhaps as a bit of Lampshade Hanging, in the second game, the player comes across an action figure of himself (The events of the first game had been turned into a popular action movie) with the same mannequin features.
• In The Elder Scrolls series of games, you can customize your protagonist, but when a character or an in-game book refers to the protagonist of a PREVIOUS Elder Scrolls game, the said protagonist is always an AFGNCAAP referred to with a nebulous nickname ("The Eternal Champion", "The Emperor's Agent", "The Nerevarine", etc.). The game does not know what kind of character did you play the previous one with.
• Interactive fiction game Jigsaw takes this to extremes: Neither the player nor the main villain is ever referred to by gender-specific terms, but only by the names "White" and "Black" (after their costumes), but are taken to be whichever pair of genders the player is most comfortable with, given their evolving romantic relationship. That said, a number of details from the game have been taken to suggest that the two are almost certainly of opposite sexes. It is also possible to provoke responses indicating that both Black and White are male, though this is believed to be a bug. One scene—set aboard the train bringing Lenin to Petrograd just before the Russian Revolution—requires the player to don the uniform of a British Army officer. However, as many people have pointed out (including the game's author), stories of women passing themselves off as male soldiers in times of war are not uncommon in fiction, nor are they unheard of in reality.
• Dark Fall: The Journal is bold enough as to give the player character a last name, ethnicity, and approximate age range, but still sees fit to leave the character genderless.
• In most Real Time Strategy games, the player is either an AFGNCAAP or just a Non Entity General who directs the action but doesn't even have a character. The tendency for Real Time Strategy games to avoid actually assigning any sort of developed character to the player is so pervasive that it could nearly qualify as its own subtrope.
  • Subverted in Warcraft 2, where you find out that the orc commander from the previous game, Orgrim Doomhammer, did in fact overthrow his Warchief and is now the boss of your new orc character. This was very original for the time, but unfortunately never happened later in the series. Warcraft III avoids the problem by having the player not correspond to any in-universe character.
    • Note that the character you see at the end of the Orc campaign did not look at all like Orgrim Doomhammer—but presumably, we were still playing as him.
  • Inverted in Fire Emblem 7, called Fire Emblem in the US for the Game Boy Advance. You did in fact have a character represented, a novice tactician who commanded the units and was actually spoken to often. However, your sprite was just a person in a robe, with nothing visible, and you never said anything. However, the character was given Gender, which minorly effects dialog with Florina and Sain during the Tutorial chapters and changes a pronoun in the end credits. However the sprite doesn't change and your character still looks Gender Neutral.
  • Most games in the Command And Conquer series use this; however, in Tiberian Sun you are implied to be either Michael MacNeal or Anton Slavik, and in Red Alert 2 two female characters compete for your affections.
    • Particularly bizarre is NOD mission 8 in which you have to rescue Slavik—-when selected, one of his lines is "yes, CABAL?". Yet the ending of the Firestorm expansion is a fight against CABAL (NOD's AI).
    • It is also implied in the manual that the player character from the first game may in fact have been General Solomon (your boss in Tiberian Sun).
    • The third game, Tiberium Wars, follows this trope to a T, while its expansion pack avoids it, as you are a Nod AI called Legion.
    • Red Alert 3 ups the ante and adds a massive helping of its token silliness to boot. The entire game, you will never be referred to by any name other than "Commander". In the last Soviet mission, this is implied to be because the player's name is Commander when a soviet soldier comments that they should rename New York "Commandergrad".
    • Or possibly just Lampshade Hanging
  • In Star Craft the player is refered to as "Commander" (Terran campaign), "Cerebrate" (Zerg campaign) or "Executor" (Protoss campaign) and does not have a specific gender, appearance or personality.
    • Blizzard later confirmed that the player was the character of Artanis (who later appeared as a hero in Star Craft Brood War) during the original Protoss campaign, though this was never mentioned in the game itself. Which brings the question as who is this new Executor the protoss (including Artanis) are talking to now, and why Artanis goes from Executor to Praetor, when he did such a good job and the Executor orders the Praetor around, at least in-game.
    • The Protoss are a Proud Warrior Race, so it's entirely possible that a Praetor out on the battlefield is a higher rank than an Executor ordering troops around.
    • Or alternatively that the fall of Aiur to the Zerg and the death of about 90% of the Protoss race has caused some changes to their hierarchy.
  • End War apparently has you take the role of the (named) commander of whatever battalion you choose to join.
• In Halo, the protagonist Master Chief, while obviously male, is only referred to as his title, we never see more of him that his SPARTAN armor, and he only speaks a handful of lines. His official designation is the rather generic "John-117" though its not clear if that was his original name, or what his last name was. The one time he takes off his helmet, at the end of the first game, the camera angle shifts to obscure his face just as he removes it.
  • In the PC version, it's possible using cheats to keep the camera in the cockpit when he does it. Turns out, under that helmet he has another helmet!
  • In the first in the series of companion novels, it is stated that he is white and that John is his birth name.
• In the original MechAssault, the main character was an AFGNCAAP. As new gameplay elements of the sequel required an onscreen avatar for the main, they were revised into an explicitly male Heroic Mime—to the disappointment of anyone who had previously imagined him as female.
• Slightly subverted in an interesting way in the pornographic Interactive Fiction game Leather Goddesses Of Phobos. The game plot features several instances of (heterosexual) sex, so in order for the genders to "match up" the player had to specify his or her gender (but no other details about their character). This was done by making the player go into a restroom—either the men's or women's room.
• Non-videogame example: Back in the days of single-player roleplaying gamebooks, the player character was never referred to by a pronoun other than "you", and in the unlikely event they had a name, it would usually be one that could be a male name or a Tomboyish Name.
• The old BBC-B puzzle game based on Jack and the Beanstalk asked you if you were male or female at the start, and designated you "Jack, a bold young lad" or "Jackie, a bold young lass", depending.
• The Freespace series of games, where the player is only ever addressed as "pilot" or by the wing position "Alpha 1". Just like all the other Red Shirt wingmen, except the Red Shirts actually talk, so they aren't exactly AFGNCAAPs. The only thing we know is that the PC is Terran ("Terran" being the only name the Vasudans use to address the PC, ever).
• Subverted in Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere. The Player Character turns out to be an AI. The planes you were flying the whole time? They were completely unmanned.
• Bioshock starts out like this—the only clue to your nature are your hands, which are Caucasian, kind of masculine and have little tattoos of chain links on the wrists; and your voice, heard only in the opening cutscene, which has a non-descript American accent. Then it gets weird and you find out you're actually the artificially aged Tyke Bomb son of Andrew Ryan.
  • If you examine the photographs pinned up right outside Ryan's office, you can see Jack's face captured in a couple of them.
• The main character in Overlord is AFGNCAAP. Besides being male, all his features are obscured and blurred out by his impressive helmet. He's also never refered to by name by his former friend and collegues.
  • Overlord II you may be able to customised your gender and how spiky you armour is
• Jamie, your rival in Harvest Moon: Magical Melody will always be the opposite gender of the player character and is considered a marriage candidate. Because of that, while s/he will always have a gender neutral appearance consisting of a colorful poncho and cowboy hat. However, if you marry Jamie, s/he will attend the wedding wearing either a dress of a tuxedo depending on what gender s/he is.
• Star Trek: Bridge Commander plays this straight. You are the nameless Captain (or maybe your name is Captain) of a Starship, and nowhere, anywhere, can you get a glimpse of yourself. The entire game runs in first person view.
• The first and third Final Fantasy games apply all characterization to your whole party; the individual members are completely interchangeable. This is especially true in III, where you can change your characters' very identities at any time through the job system — all they have to call their own are their names (which you chose).
  • Only true for the original NES release; the DS re-release of III gives all four characters their own names, personalities and backgrounds, and they each have their own character models for every single possible class.
• The Player Characters of the Fallout series have no canon gender, nevermind any other attribute. The Fallout 1 character is canonically called the Vault Dweller and married Pat. Likewise, the protagonist of Fallout 2 is canonically called the Chosen One. It's too soon to speak for Fallout 3, but it tends to focus on Lone Wanderer, or The Guy From Vault 101.
  • The statue of the Vault Dweller in Shady Sands is male.
• The hero of Super Solvers Out Numbered! wears a giant hat, a giant coat with the collar turned up, bermuda shorts and tennis shoes. Either the hero's skin is stark white, or they're wearing tights...
• The Interactive Fiction game Everyone Loves A Parade appears to use this. However, it subverts it. Towards the end of the game, you learn that your character is decidedly female. Using this to your advantage is necessary to actually complete the game.
• Link from The Legend Of Zelda series was originally meant to be this...in fact, that was the very reason he was named Link, because he was the "link to the gameworld," simply a player avatar. Ironically, he is now one of the most recognizable faces in all of gaming, endlessly tributed and/or parodied.
• The original release of Dragon Quest IV allowed the player to select a name and gender for their ultimate main character (though unusually, you wouldn't actually get the character until very late into the game, and so could easily be confused when the game first has you playing someone else.) However, this breaks down at many points, especially in bath scenes that have decidedly (and presumably unintentional) Les Yay overtones if you're playing a female character.
  • The DS version of DQIV lets you choose your name and gender again, with some of these incidents corrected. They also added a 'Prologue' that lets you see your hero briefly before the main game begins.
  • Dragon Quest III also allowed you to pick the name and gender of not just your hero, but the rest of your allies. Again, in the original translation of the NES game, several referred to you as 'Ortega's son' — starting with the king himself. This was corrected in later versions, though.
• As far as this troper is able to ascertain, the player character in the upcoming Ghostbusters will be one of these, as Dan Ackroyd and Harold Ramis (YES) figured that was the best way for the jokes to work.
  • There is also an in-story reason: the team is still very shaken up by what happened to the previous new recruit so they refuse to learn even your name to avoid emotional attachments.
• Masterfuly averted in the Knights Of The Old Republic games. While the games are pretty character background driven and thus don't allow for an AFGNCAAP in the first place, very subtle dialog options in the second game determine in what gender the main protagonist of the first game is referred to. Considering every line is voice acted, they did a hell of a job there.
  • Canonically, however, the protagonists of the first and second games are respectively male and female humans.

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