Getting Rid of Precursors

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Have you read The Stone Canal or The Cassini Division? The fast folk are pretty plausible, IMO.

I haven't. I'll check them out though

[gjc8]

Here's a thought to supplement ideas about precursors withdrawing (or getting them out of the way before they wipe out their civilization with strangelets, etc, so the catastrophe doesn't ruin things for PC races). Perhaps main sequence stars and "habitable" planets are no longer the most convenient places for them to live. They live in places with abundant energy, like X-ray binaries, that aren't friendly places to anyone with less than precursor technology.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by gjc8

Here's a thought to supplement ideas about precursors withdrawing (or getting them out of the way before they wipe out their civilization with strangelets, etc, so the catastrophe doesn't ruin things for PC races). Perhaps main sequence stars and "habitable" planets are no longer the most convenient places for them to live. They live in places with abundant energy, like X-ray binaries, that aren't friendly places to anyone with less than precursor technology.

The problem with all those withdrawing as a species ideas is that there will always be back to nature luddites.
Imagine trying to get every single human on earth to move somewhere, anywhere.

[hari]

Why not just have precursor races decline in the same way that historical civilizations have, by depleting the resources their civilization is based on? Yeah yeah yeah, they are all great precursor races and all, but don't they need something? Isn't it possible to over use that?

[Befuddled]

Mix ascending to a higher plane with black holes. With their advanced tech, the precursors learned to become gods while within the event horizon of a black hole. They've got everything they could ever want or need in their computronium singularity and only bother messing with the outside world for reasons of plot.

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by hari

Why not just have precursor races decline in the same way that historical civilizations have, by depleting the resources their civilization is based on? Yeah yeah yeah, they are all great precursor races and all, but don't they need something? Isn't it possible to over use that?

Assuming that they can get the resources they need in the areas the younger races will hang out that means that either

1 They deplete them and move somewhere else.
or
2 They deplete the resources somewhere else and move to where the younger races hang out.

Now their resources might not be here (for instance the post above regarding abundant energy) but otherwise it either results in a depleted for the setting (which might be cool but does have disadvantages) or brings the precursors over.

If they hang out in more abundant energy locations then if they had to move for some reason it might be an excuse for them to abandon this area.

[jason taylor]

Why not give no explanation at all of what happened to the Precursors? Or why not give several contradictory ones from Unreliable Narrators?

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Why not give no explanation at all of what happened to the Precursors? Or why not give several contradictory ones from Unreliable Narrators?

Well that is probably going to be what I am going to do anyway but I'd like to have a truth to guide the setting consistently and in case the plot leads the PCs to learn the truth

[Tyneras]

I remember a book, the name escapes me fore the moment, where the reason the precursors declined was that as the universe gets older and keeps expanding, the physical laws change very, very slowly. The precursors realized this and basically built a pocket universe and moved their entire civilization into it, leaving behind only a portion of space that gave wonky mass and distance readings and a few crumbs of their semi-functional tech behind for the younger races to puzzle over. Any precursors that wanted to stick around obviously died off when their very metabolisms and vital bits of tech stopped being compatible with the universe.

[gjc8]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

The problem with all those withdrawing as a species ideas is that there will always be back to nature luddites.
Imagine trying to get every single human on earth to move somewhere, anywhere.

Sure. But that's not really a problem. The point of Precursors to seed technology (or the results of technology) far above the campaign tech level, but that generally can't be reproduced or analyzed. You need to Precursors to exist to create that technology, and then you need to get rid of them to maintain the "can't be reproduced or analyzed" bit. And getting rid of them is tricky because they're a widespread, advanced technological civilization.

But Luddites won't be as widespread (because they're a minority position), and by definition they're rejecting high technology. So they're easier to wipe out without ruining things for the PC races, and even if they are still around, they're not problematic in the same way (and their descendants may not even know they used to be members of the Precursor race).