“People who design machines and airplanes {or buildings}, no matter how much they believe that what they do is good, the winds of time eventually turn them into tools of industrial civilization. They’re cursed dreams. Animation, too. Beautiful yet cursed dreams.”
― Hayao Miyazaki
I'm making some assumptions here, admittedly. Tabletop roleplaying didn't really come about until the mid-20th century, so I figured that the material conditions to support it never really arose before then.