A game trope, where players are given a fancy title which ties into the game's theme.
Usually, this appears in games involving players being cast in the role of one of a special group of people with a special talent. The most common use of said talent is for battles with each other, which is what matches of the game represent. They could be epic battles with the fate of the world hanging in the balance, or it could be just as much of a game in-universe as it is out-of-universe, in which case you will likely see characters who take the game way too seriously. If people in positions of power take the game that seriously, it can be both at once.
One use of this trope is to emphasize that you and your opponents are playing as yourselves. If the game has a single-player campaign, its protagonist will be toward the higher end of the scale of Player and Protagonist Integration, somewhere between Heroic Mime and "you are you".
Another reason a game uses this trope is to create a sense of cameraderie and inclusion among players. When you buy this game, you're not just buying a game. Your purchase serves as your initiation into an exclusive group, and your starter set is your ticket to a new world of friends and adventure beyond the dullness of everyday life. When you sit down for a match, you're not just Bob the Ordinary High-School Student or Bob the White Collar Worker anymore. You're Bob the Planeswalker. You're one of us!
Or at least, that's what the marketing department would have you believe. The game's advertisments and packaging will refer to the game's players by the title, as will characters in adaptations, to drive the point home.
This trope can appear in non-game media, if an in-universe game or sport uses it. If a series featuring a game like this becomes popular enough and the game itself doesn't exist in Real Life, you can expect someone to make it eventually, technology permitting.
Examples:
- Angelic Layer: The series is centered around a game where players control fighting dolls called "Angels". The game's term for a player is "Deus". The early episodes play up the "initiation" angle in fine detail, with Icchan taking Misaki to buy a starter set, and Misaki going through the Angel-creation process upon arriving at her new home.
- Yu-Gi-Oh!: After the earliest portions of the manga, which revolved around games in general, the Trading Card Game of "Duel Monsters" took center stage, with its players being referred to as "Duelists". To most people, it is just a Children's Card Game, but a select few know its true mystical origins.
- Disney Lorcana: You are an Illumineer, a creative and imaginative person brought to the Inklands to protect stories and characters in the Illuminary. The game's story features several fictional Illumineers as well, using "Inkcasters" to summon characters, items, events, songs, and locations from Disney stories.
- Magic: The Gathering: You are a Planeswalker, capable of traveling through the Blind Eternities to all the various planes of the Multiverse. The game also has Planeswalker cards, which allow you to summon the fictional planeswalkers who play more direct roles in a set's storyline to fight alongside you.
- Yu-Gi-Oh!: Just like in the anime it came from, you are a Duelist.
- Robot Wars, a show where people built robots to fight each other with, called its contestants "Roboteers".
- Those participating in Model United Nations conferences are referred to as "Delegates".
- Blood Bowl calls the in-universe team members "players" and the real-world players "coaches" to avoid ambiguity.
- Pokémon: You are a Pokemon Trainer, who leads a team of Pokemon into battle against friends in playful competitions, and against enemies for the fate of the world.
- The original Starcraft single player campaign would call the player Magistrate, Cerebrate or Executor depending on which race's storyline you were playing through.
- In Warcraft II, completing a campaign level gave you ever-increasing ranks (peon, peasant, grunt, warchief...) after every mission... unless you cheated, in which case it would only call you a cheater.
- Capsuleers from EVE Online.
- League of Legends calls the Player a Summoner.
- Command & Conquer series... specifically Red Alert sub series calls the player Commander in all the scenes where the player is referenced to. Tim Curry starts with it.
- The Soviet campaign of the first Red Alert had you start as lieutenant and progress to general.
- More obviously, in Command & Conquer: Generals, you play under the title of General.
- All Evony players have the title "Lord" to fit with the game's feudalistic objective of conquering and developing cities, and because of the ad campaign.
- In the Kingdom of Loathing, An Adventurer Is You!
- The Elder Scrolls:
- In Morrowind, you are the Nerevarine, the reincarnation of one of Morrowind's greatest heroes, Indoril Nerevar, and the focus of an ancient prophecy. In addition, there are the dozen-plus other titles one can acquire by advancing through the ranks of all the various guilds and factions within the game.
- In Skyrim, the player is the Dragonborn, which is super handy since the Dragons have started reappearing and only a Dragonborn really stands a chance of defeating them and saving the world.
- Many achievements in World of Warcraft have a title as their reward, and there's a lot of them.
- In Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, you play as the Tactician.
- Likewise, in Fire Emblem: Heroes, you play as the Summoner.
- In Might and Magic VII, the player characters becomes the (feudal) Lords of Harmondale after completing Noob Island. The first story arc after that is about getting the title the respect and prestige it is supposed to have.
- Dungeon Crawl gives the player a title based on the level of player's highest skill. The game goes as far to having different titles for different gods (if the player's Invocation skill is their highest), and if the player's highest skill is Unarmed Combat, it even differs between higher Strength (Grappler and the like) and Dexterity (Black Belt and the like). All these combinations mean that there are way over two hundred different titles possible.
- Dragon Age: Origins casts you as a Grey Warden, a member of a rather secretive order dedicated to stopping the rampaging darkspawn at any cost. Unfortunately, all but one of your fellow Wardens are dead or too far off to be of any help, the Regent wants your head, and everybody else has decided now is the time to start fighting each other. Nevertheless, your job is to unite them and put down the darkspawn for good. Good luck!
- In Dragon Age: Inquisition, which takes place about a dozen years later, you're known as the Herald of Andraste, the only survivor of a cataclysmic event and the only one who has even the slightest chance of fixing the giant hole said event left in the sky. Half the continent praises you as a savior and the other half thinks you're a murderer who caused the event in question. But much like with the Warden, your job is to save everybody. Once again, good luck!
- RuneScape dubs the player character the World Guardian starting with the beginning of the turn of the Sixth Age. Old School Runescape averts this by only ever referring to the player as an adventurer, one of thousands inhabiting the world.
- Skylanders: The player is a Portal Master, being the one who places the character figures on the portal in the real world.
- Fate/EXTRA and Fate/Grand Order revolve around the idea that the player themselves are one of many Masters from the Fate Series, a mage capable of commanding Heroic Spirits, mythological and historical figures who are incarnated as Servants, and refer to the main character who serves as the player's stand-in as said Master.
- Granblue Fantasy refers to the player character as "Captain" because they command the giant airship crew that almost all player characters belong to.
- Inscryption: You are the Challenger, so called because you are challenging the Game Master at his in-universe tabletop card game. An additional meaning is further revealed later on- in Act 2, it turns out that you are challenging one of the four Scrybes for their position as a Scrybe.
