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Message: <blockquote data-quote="robertliguori" data-source="post: 4117818" data-attributes="member: 47776">In order:To simulationists, the story is what happens.  Sometimes, the story is the story of The Adventurers Who Hung Out In A Tavern While A Mystery Happened To Someone Else.  Sometimes, it's The Adventurers Who Got Ambushed and Died In Their Second Random Encounter.As for your list of people, there is a large amount of difference between exceptional and different.  Simulationist adventuring would hold that if you substituted someone with comparable desires and abilities into Bill Gate's life at the important points, you'd have a good shot of getting another Bill Gates.  What makes the people on this list special is not that their natures were qualitatively different than humanity; it was their choices, and their actions.Because, when you start to look at the closely-detailed bits of history, you start noticing that people are pretty much people, and that not only do heroes and villains both have their human sides, but there are veritable loads of people just as heroic and villainous who failed and were forgotten.  I think that most people choose not to attempt great things, but those who do choose only buy themselves the chance of success by their decision, and those that do not can always choose differently.  To the simulationists, the difference between Bilbo and Frodo Baggins was not their protagonist status, or their elven heritage, or the fact that Eru hand-designed their souls to be adventure-capable; it was that they chose to leave the Shire.  Choice, not inherent characteristics, makes heroes heroes.</blockquote>

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