It's RPGaDay season again. Here's a link to the blog post with the current year's prompts.
Today's prompt is Ancient.
Another Traveller reference, I'm afraid.
Traveller's setting makes reference to 'the Ancients', an alien civilisation of great power and technology which wiped itself out some three hundred thousand years earlier. When I came across the game, it resonated with me because of the many Andre Norton books that I'd read prior to discovering roleplaying, particularly the Solar Queen series. In those, there is a similarly lost and mysterious civilisation called 'the Forerunners', which served a served a similar plot purpose. I've no doubt that this was an influence on the game.
That sense of mystery and wonder was also there in one of my favourite books, "Rendezvous with Rama", by Sir Arthur C. Clarke, which has a crew exploring an ancient alien vessel which was passing through the solar system. Alastair Reynolds also did this really well with his Revelation Space series, although opening the mystery box results in dire consequences for humanity.
Babylon 5 also had a similar theme with ancient civilisations with an ongoing war.
My heretical thought on the Ancients in Traveller is that they lose some of the reason that they fascinate once you know the story. Discovering the answer to the mystery makes it mundane. That's the paradox; we want to know, but when we find out, the magic goes away.
5 August 2025
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