Drumming II (split)

I'd actually think more in terms of a tuba, but that's just the brass player in me.

This sort of behavior, especially in the context of what Mario said about his styles in other games implies that perhaps it's not the immediate role, but the approach to role selection that's really important. One fairly critical element that seems to be often ignored in terms of decisions is the idea of purely meta-game based decisions. To classify these I usually use two other regimes of player decisions: Socialist and Sexist. (I find it's less confusing to take an entirely warped use of a term, than it is to simply modify it. It means that the reader pretty quickly realizes that this term has a novel meaning in the context of your discussion.)

Socialists seem to be motivated by the social ramifications of their game decisions, i.e. they want to achieve particular social goals in the context of the game. This often implies a variety of substrategies, depending on the game and meta-game. The most often goal is the general enjoyment of the group. Note, many players have this goal, but significantly fewer make this a primary goal. Mario it seems is one of those.

Sexists seem to have more personal social goals, rather than in reference to most or all of the group, the Sexist has target a particular member of the gaming group. Often if recognized and appropriate this can be quite useful. On the other hand it can also be unwelcome and disruptive. As the name suggests the classic example of this is players who exhibit romantic meta-game goals in the midst of given game. This also describes the elements related to the GM's SO, or even just the motiviations related to the recently introduced player new to RPGs (such as the conversion frenzy).

All in all, I suspect that no theory of the meta-game roles players adopt will be consistent without consideration of the meta-game goals of those players.

-Mendel S.