We described how authors often assign the roles of both Protagonist AND Main Character to the same player in the story. We mentioned this in our earlier discussion of what sets the Subjective Characters apart from the Objective Characters.

We find the idea of a "player" throughout Dramatica. It differs from what we mean by "character." Dramatica defines a character as a set of dramatic functions that must be portrayed to make the complete argument of a story. Several functions may be grouped and assigned to a person, place, or thing that will represent them in the story. The group of functions defines the nature of the character. The personage representing the functions is a player.

In other words, a player is like a vessel into which we place a character (and therefore a set of character functions). If we place more than one Overall Story Character into a single player, the player will have multiple personalities. For example, the dual characters contained in the player Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, or the many personalities of Sybil.