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In a wargame that is.
As a player, you take a role. But in my experience, those roles do not strongly correlate with a single person from the milieu of the game. Most often I see players taking parts of multiple roles, and all of none.
(In professional military wargames, it takes a huge amount of effort to get a player close to a specific role. And even then, it's never perfect.)
I find that the player interfaces with a command surface much more than taking on the role of a commander.
Advanced Squad Leader is a great example. You think the name tells you what you will be doing. But in play, ASL swings among:
* squad-level initiative,
* platoon coordination,
* company fire planning,
* individual weapon employment,
* and omniscient replay-level awareness.
The player is effectively:
* every junior leader simultaneously
* plus an external analyst.
Not that that mix isn't good for "realism" or even for training – in training a lot of what we do is to help individuals understand better what other people are doing (and why) to help them with their contribution.
Harpoon is another great example of mixed roles. And it's a great game (for me). I've done that in real life, and would say the multi-role player – focused on the important stuff and glossing over some "stuff you gotta do" – is pretty realistic and useful.
