Pierre Rosenthal

Pierre Rosenthal was born on 8 March 1961 in France. As a student in preparatory classes at the end of the 1970s he wrote science fiction reviews for the magazine Métal hurlant, and it was in that magazine, in 1976, that he first learned of Dungeons and Dragons. He played the game for the first time in 1981, when he began studying at the École nationale supérieure d'ingénieurs de Caen, formerly the ISMRA. In 1983 he produced the French adaptation of the video game Exodus: Ultima III.

In 1984 Rosenthal proposed a scenario to Casus Belli, the leading French magazine for role-playing and simulation games. It was the start of a long collaboration in which he became deputy editor in chief and edited several of its special issues.

In 1986 he created SimulacreS, a simple, adaptable role-playing system. It was first self-published, then included in a promotional booklet for the comic Le Roi borgne by Arno and Alejandro Jodorowsky, published by Les Humanoïdes Associés, and later printed in Casus Belli. In 1989 he published Athanor, la terre des mille mondes with Siroz, with a screen and the supplement Masques written with Tristan Lhomme. His pirate and voodoo game Capitaine Vaudou appeared in the 1990s and remained popular for decades.

Between 1987 and 1988 he wrote four gamebooks: Perceval le Gallois and Les Combattants de l'ombre in the Histoires à jouer series from Presses Pocket, Le Prisonnier in the Missions spéciales series, and Empire, in which the reader runs a ruthless company. He also wrote four interactive adventures for Bob Morane Magazine.

In the early 1990s he coined the word "rôliste" for a role-playing gamer, and later registered it with the INPI so that no one could take exclusive commercial control of it, while allowing everyone to use it freely. From 1994 to 2001 he translated Magic: The Gathering into French for Wizards of the Coast. At Ubisoft he worked as a game master on EverQuest and helped translate and debug it, and from 2004 to 2021 he was part of the web and marketing team at Blizzard Entertainment Europe, where he corrected part of the French translation of World of Warcraft for its 2004 to 2005 launch.

Rosenthal shared his passions widely online, above all music, and stayed close to the French role-playing scene through conventions, interviews and his own Facebook page, named Rôliste. Little else about his private life was made public, and this profile does not go beyond what he and his family shared.

Pierre Rosenthal died in the night of 4 November 2026 at the Georges Pompidou European Hospital in Paris, aged 65. His nephew Alexandre announced the death on Pierre's Facebook page, writing that he had died peacefully, surrounded by his family. French Wikipedia mentions vascular problems, but no cause was formally announced by the family. Tributes followed from the role-playing press and community, including the site SCRiiiPT and a video tribute from Rôliste TV on 6 November 2026.

Rosenthal helped shape French role-playing from its early days: as a Casus Belli writer and editor, as the designer of SimulacreS, Athanor and Capitaine Vaudou, and as a gamebook author. His most lasting gift may be a single word. "Rôliste", which he coined and deliberately kept free for all, became the everyday name French speaking players use for themselves, and generations of players have grown up with his games.