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oai:keep.lib.asu.edu:node-2010892025-06-16T22:02:55Zoai_pmh:alloai_pmh:repo_items

201089 https://hdl.handle.net/2286/R.2.N.201089 http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0 2025-05 56 pages Popelier, Cailet Jakubczak, Laura Mack, Robert Barrett, The Honors College School of Public Affairs School of International Letters and Cultures Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies, Sch This thesis explores the intersection of historical analysis and tabletop roleplaying games to test the validity of the Great Man Theory—a historical perspective that attributes significant societal change to the actions of extraordinary individuals. Drawing on works by Thomas Carlyle, Sidney Hook, Leo Tolstoy, and E.H. Carr, it examines the ongoing debate between individual agency and structural determinism in shaping history. The project utilizes a custom Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition campaign that reimagines four major Russian historical figures (Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Tsar Nicholas II, and Peter the Great) as player characters navigating a Dante’s Inferno-style fantasy world inspired by three 19th-century Russian literary works: A Meek Woman by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin, and Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol. By placing these figures in fictional settings detached from their original historical contexts, the campaign isolates their core traits and explores their ability to impact narrative outcomes. The results reveal that players, even when stripped of historical constraints, retained strong character identities and influenced story lines through personal agendas and decision-making. Though not without limitations, this experiment suggests that individual agency can indeed redirect the course of events, supporting the central claim of the Great Man Theory while acknowledging the persistent influence of structural and contextual boundaries. Dungeons and Dragons D&D Russian History Great Man Theory Can One Person Change History? Exploring the Great Man Theory in a Russian historical context through Dungeons & Dragons