Can we now have more interesting Ancients?

[alex_greene]

The title of the thread says it all, really.

Not just a monomyth. Look at Doctor Who. Weeping Angels, Things from the Howling Halls, the Racnoss, the Satan Pit and The Beast, Abaddon, Carrionite witches; extremely old, some of them; impossibly old, a few of them; but all of them with their own stories and legends.

Well, maybe not the Carrionite witches because they were drokking stupid.

And then B5. First Ones, Shadows ... Lorien ...

I think the Ancient tree needs to be shaken up a bit, yes? A few enigmas millions or even billions of years old. Extragalactic phenomena, perhaps extradimensional phenomena, and some Things that predate this universe and perhaps a few universes before.

The sort of beings that say something like "three hundred thousand years? Is that all?"

 

[EDG]

Oh, yes please!!!

And for the love of the gods, don't explain them!

 

[rust]

I would really love to see something like that.

The whole Ancients part is the one piece of the Third Imperium setting
which I never even considered for a use in one of my settings, because
it always seemed to be too one-dimensional to be plausible.

 

[zanwot]

I agree, the Ancients could be modernised a little.

And for the love of the gods, don't explain them!

I personnaly very strongly disagree. I hate games that just throw out mysteries for the sake of it, without giving at least a set of keys to the GM.

 

[alex_greene]

I agree, the Ancients could be modernised a little.

And for the love of the gods, don't explain them!

I personnaly very strongly disagree. I hate games that just throw out mysteries for the sake of it, without giving at least a set of keys to the GM.

I don't mind some explanation. I personally have no preference for a Procrustean explanation for everything inexplicable as "Oh, it must be something left behind by The Ancients," as if there was only one Ancient species; only one Ancient mystery.

 

[Zowy]

Make up more of your own. I have lots of pre-human leftovers sprinkled here and there. Most of them are -not- from "The Ancients", but from the millions of years before and a few after.

 

[alex_greene]

I agree, the Ancients could be modernised a little.

And this did not escape me. I just let it lie for a bit, to see if anybody else caught on.

 

[BP]

Can we now have more interesting Ancients?

Hmmm... let's not!

What I mean is - lets have more mysteries, more storylines, more details - but not one over-riding, galaxy spanning, species originating back story...

With all due respect - good game writers don't necessarily make good science fiction writers.

And the whole Grandfather/Ancients thing is just to poor to expand upon... the temptation to 'explain' will be to great - and the holes created so great you could drive whole subsectors thru them!

Now some new mysteries and excellently thought out stories that fit into various, but well defined, areas of the OTU - that would be good. If this is playable - with multi-century characters, aliens and artifacts - cool. Just keep it so tightly defined that it does not effect the entire OTU - so it can be embraced or ignored with equal aplum.

 

[Dave Chase]

Grandfather lied. There are others older and more dangerous (or interesting) that he is and he couldn't stand it.

But that was discussed on another thread.

Wonder if anyone will be able to read that first sentence this time. :twisted:

I would like to see some other ancient sites or finds. That could start a whole new massive push by the Imperial and MegaCorps to get their hands on what ever it is first.

And it would be very interesting to see how the Dryone react to the find.

Dave Chase

 

[rust]

Hmmm ... an adventure where Grandfather has to ask some characters
for help because he had to flee his pocket dimension when something far
older and far more powerful decided to teach a lesson to the old arrogant
braggart ... :shock:

 

[kafka]

Certainly, we need more interesting things than the Ancients currently on offer...however, I would rather want something that would have me ask more questions and more puzzles than provide me with all the answers. Therefore, even if there was a sourcebook for the Droyne Empire. For if we can detail a subsector with all sorts of useful and imaginative creatures what could we do if we wiped clean our assumptions of Chartered Space... Not all Ancients need to be Godlike just interesting. One of the things that like about the new Doctor Who is that the Time Lords only exist as a faint memory.

 

[Anonymous]

I tend to take the view that if you are bored witth the ancients, you have probably used them too much. Most traveller is perfectly aventuresome enough as a result of extant races and their shenanigans. Good plots hardly ever need ancients but they can add an extra flavour from time to time.

Also, I've always played it as if there were lots of ancient races - but none as powerful, briefly succesful or megalomanic as THAT one.
And yes, grandfather and other ancients lied and made numerous mistakes.

 

[EDG]

One issue for me is that the Droyne are just so damned dull. They're an irrelevance on every level - they do nothing in the setting, don't run an empire, aren't major enemies, don't have wars... there's no reason to really raise them above any of the myriad of inconsequential minor races. So what if they were the Ancients (or at least, were enslaved by the Ancients)? They're a far cry from that now (and have nothing to say about it anyway).

If I had my way, I'd ditch the droyne completely (or make them an actual Minor Race) and come up with more varied, more interesting, and more mysterious Precursor races. I like how the First Ones from Sigma 357 were handled in Babylon 5... just popping by in their gigantic mothership every now and then, completely ignoring the insignificant humans and other races, doing their own thing, and not being explained much.

 

[alex_greene]

Grandfather lied. There are others older and more dangerous (or interesting) that he is and he couldn't stand it.

But that was discussed on another thread.

Wonder if anyone will be able to read that first sentence this time. :twisted:

I got as far as the second ...

 

[Ishmael]

Its dawned on me that Grandfather left the coyns for the Droyne. These coyns show the 6 major races...
Its known that Grandfather fooled around with 3 of them ( humaniti, Vargr, and Droyne )
What about the other 3?... did he monkey around with them? If not him, then who?
another ancient race manipulating 'modern' races in a very slow war with Grandfather?

What if the war of the ancients was caused by a disagreement concerning humans?...
Grandfather chose to fool with Vargr, but his children decided to bring the humans along in the same fashion. Grandfather beat the children ( ??? can we be certain? ) and is taking a break before wiping out humans.... when you're immortal, a few thousand years means nothing.

 

[rust]

What about the other 3?... did he monkey around with them? If not him, then who?

This seems to be a bit of a mystery, because Aslan, Hivers and K'kree we-
re hardly more than semi-intelligent animals when the Ancients were ac-
tive ca. 300,000 years ago.

Unless Grandfather & Co. were omniscient, had a time machine or mon-
keyed around with these three races, there is no explanation how the
ones who designed the coyns could have known that these species would
become major races - there must have been dozens of equally likely can-
didates.

 

[EDG]

Unless Grandfather & Co. were omniscient, had a time machine or monkeyed around with these three races, there is no explanation how the ones who designed the coyns could have known that these species would become major races - there must have been dozens of equally likely candidates.

More to the point, why would he have completely arbitrarily picked the races that invented jump drive on their own? (and even then, the Aslan may not have done so - according to some sources, they nicked it off a crashed Solomani ship). The major/minor race distinction wasn't dreamed up by Ancients after all.

 

[Dave Chase]

And why did Grandfather let the Imperium find all those black globe generators. And now they are experimenting with 'white' glode generators.

Because Grandfather lied. He was (is) in hiding because some other Ancient kicked his ass.

Now he knows that they are coming for him and any who follow him and it will be war. (sounds like B5 shadows and vorlons )

So which side will you be on. And do you think that the other ancients are going to take time to listen to you explain that you were tricked by Grandfather. Heck no, if you were tricked, all the more reason to eliminate you in their eyes.

Dave Chase

 

[EDG]

See, this is what happens when an author includes a Mary Sue

 

[RandyT0001]

According to CT's Alien Module 5 "Droyne" book p6-7 the Droyne were in a period of decline until about -75,000 PI. The Droyne had lost the ability to caste and were headed to extinction (according to Imperial scientists). When the coyns appeared on twenty different Droyne worlds the decline stopped and over the course of a couple of tens of thousand years they slowly regained technology. The Droyne on those worlds explain the recovery on the appearance of a mythical god-like figure called Yaskoydray (Grandfather). Imperial scientists and researchers dismiss this explanation. In their opinion the most likely explanation is that one of these twenty worlds developed spaceflight several thousand years ago and then lost it before the present.

My explanation is that Yaskoydray stayed in his pocket universe until visited by Travellers according to Adventure 12 "Secret of the Ancients". After this brief visit Yaskoydray decided to come out of his pocket universe since he had not done so since the Final Wars 300,000 years ago. He found that five new spacefaring races had expanded across 'Charted Space' and was very impressed by their advancement. This originally had occurred in a different timeline where the Droyne had become extinct. Heartbroken that his race had not survived he went back in time and changed history. He picked the twenty Droyne worlds most likely to survive if assisted and introduced the coyns. For inspiration he chose to put the five new spacefaring races and his own race on the new coyns to be used to caste in the new Droyne societies he would help re-create. Over the course of several thousand years he continued to assist these twenty Droyne worlds until he was sure of their survival. Yaskoydray then proceed to go forward in this new timeline to see the results of his intervention. Satisfied he returned to his pocket universe. This new timeline is the one the PC's know. In fact nobody (except for Yaskoydray) knows of this change nor will ever know of it. The six races on the coyns mystery will never be solved by inhabitants of this timeline.