Mat Westhorpe (@matwesthorpe.bsky.social)

1984: The Year I Invented Roleplaying Games 1984 was the year I invented roleplaying games. Or so I thought. I had yet to encounter the work of my arch-rivals and peers Gygax & Arneson (Dungeons & Dragons, 1974), Jackson & Livingstone (Games Workshop, 1975). But that was because I was nine years…

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1984: The Year I Invented Roleplaying Games 1984 was the year I invented roleplaying games. Or so I thought. I had yet to encounter the work of my arch-rivals and peers Gygax & Arneson (Dungeons & Dragons, 1974), Jackson & Livingstone (Games Workshop, 1975). But that was because I was nine years old and not allowed near that stuff. At that time, my influences were those Choose Your Own Adventure books you could get by collecting Weetabix boxes, and wandering around in a school playground playing make-believe between the painted netball court tram-lines (or Corridors of Certain Death as they quite clearly were to a group of pre-pubescent boys). https://westhorpe.net/2026/05/1984-the-year-i-invented-roleplaying-games/