Precursors in Tabletop Games.
- Atlantis: The Second Age: The world is destined to be dominated by seven different species over its existence. Humans are the fifth of these races, making the Jinn, Ophidians, Lemurians, and Atlanteans all Precursor races, and making humanity fated to be itself a Precursor for two future species. Somewhat unusually, none of the old Precursors have gone extinct yet, but their numbers and powers have been greatly diminished. The Atlanteans are still trying to cling on to their power, but humans are already in the process of taking over.
- Cerulean Seas: The great civilisation of the drylanders and their sahuagin enemies, which flourished in the ancient past and perished in the chaos of The Great Flood. The phantom lobsters are also described as descendants of a once great eurypterid empire.
- Champions: As Precursors are a stock feature of superhero comics, Champions features the idea from time to time. For example, Kingdom of Champions introduced the "Progenitors" in this role.
- Claim the Sky: The Azari colonized Earth millennia ago, and left behind caches of ultra-high technology. In addition, their genetic experiments on humans are believed to be the cause of superpowers.
- Cosmic Encounter: The backstory has a universe-scale version of this to explain the game's huge number of alien races.
- Dungeons & Dragons:
- Forgotten Realms:
- The three great Creator Races — the saurian sarrukh, amphibious batrachi and avians aearee — ruled Abeir-Toril in the days when the world was warm, and created many of the modern-day sapient races as servants, soldiers and experiments. Their empires fell and most went extinct, although their ruins and creations endure into the modern day. Other races, including dragons, humans and the fey, are sometimes counted among the creator races. The exact listing is sometimes discussed, but the rule seem to be "Precursor, and native to Abeir-Toril". This makes humans a Creator Race (because at least some of them developed on Toril, and built mighty civilizations now gone), but elves aren't (they built mighty civilizations now gone before the humans did, but they came from the Feywild after the original Creator empires rose and fell).
- In more recent history, the human empire of Netheril built up their empire north of the Sea of Fallen Stars, developing extremely advanced magic beyond anything that has been replicated since (Elven High Magic can emulate it somewhat, but only through collaboration of several mages and long preparation). They founded several of the cities in the region that still prosper, but eventually declined following a long war with a species of magical parasites known as Phaerimm, their ultimate collapse coming when the archmage Karsus accidentally caused their floating capitals to fall to the ground. They had a comeback in 4th edition, with one city having survived by shifting into the Shadowfell, but were destroyed again recently.
- Planescape and subsequent materials have provided primordial precursors for the three modern fiendish races.
- The Neutral Evil yugoloths claim descent from creatures called baernaloths, who they say purged themselves of both chaos and order to more dispassionately spread evil across the multiverse, an act that gave rise to the demons and devils. Since this contradicts every other account of the demons and devils' genesis, few outside Gehenna give this story any credence. The baernaloths are still around, but most have withdrawn from the conflicts of the Lower Planes, living in twisted towers in desolate corners of the Gray Waste of Hades, where they pass the time by torturing victims. The lesser yugoloths still hold the baernaloths in high regard.
- The Chaotic Evil tanar'ri are actually the creations and former slaves of the obyriths, demons who ruled the Abyss eons before the advent of life on the Material Plane, explaining their horrific appearances. But the tanar'ri eventually overthrew their masters, leaving only a few obyriths clinging to survival. Some obyrith demon lords such as Pazuzu and Dagon have become accepted by the tanar'ri (in the latter's case due to his knowledge of Abyssal history and similar dark lore), while others such as Pale Night are respected because they're just that dangerous.
- The Lawful Evil baatezu were originally Fallen Angels who were given/exiled to the plane of Baator to convert into their Hell, but some stories suggest that the plane was already inhabited by bizarre and shapeless entities that breathed in light and exhaled darkness. One way or another, those Ancient Baatorians were toppled, but hints of them still remain in the form of strange shapes frozen in the ice of Stygia, or a glowing cavern on the layer of Malbolge that emits cries that mortals can't hear, but baatezu find innately terrifying.
- Dark Sun: The rhulisti, or ancient halflings, were the first civilized race in the setting; all other humanoid races, including humans and giants, are descended from them, while those who retained their original form are now mostly cannibalistic savages.
- Mystara's past history is chock full of this trope, including the Carnifex, the Blackmoorians, and the Nithians.
- Subverted in the Ravenloft setting: while many societies have legends about Precursors, it's all false history imposed upon the memories of natives, as their world's only a little more than four centuries old.
- Exalted does this several times with its First Age, Second Age, and possibly the Sixth Age. It even has 0th Age and 1st Age civilizations that few inhabitants are aware of.
- GURPS:
- GURPS Space includes Precursors as a potential element a Game Master might want to weave into his game world.
- In the Meta Origin of GURPS Supers: IST, beings called the Seeders (who may or may not be the same as GURPS Space's Precursors) travelled the galaxy millennia ago, tweaking the genes of varous species to give them potential for intelligence and a unique superpower. Humans Are Special because this went wrong, and instead of evolving so we all had the same power, we evolved to have the possibility of developing all kinds of powers.
- Mutants & Masterminds have this in the form of the "Preservers" in Freedom City.
- Numenera: The game's central premise involves discovering the unfathomably advanced technology of eight previous godlike civilizations, some of which were capable of moving stars and bending the fabric of reality to their whim. One civilization was responsible for extending the lifespan of our Sun, which would have become a red giant and scorched all life from existence on Earth, a fate completely unknown to all the inhabitants of the present day. The world is still littered with the wreckage and detritus of the Precursors, from half-working, country-sized machines and bizarre architecture to still entirely functional robots, genetically and cybernetically engineered animals and long-stranded aliens, making for a very Adventure-Friendly World.
- Pathfinder:
- Azlant was once a mighty empire whose magic and technology far outstripped their neighbors. The secret to their power was the aboleths running the nation from behind the scenes, whose advancements were even greater than their puppet nation. When their shadow empire was discovered, they called down meteors to obliterate the entire continent rather than allow their subjects to disobey them.
- Thassilon, founded by Azlanti secessionists, was itself a massive empire with incredible magic, but was brought low during the same meteor impact that annihilated Azlant.
- The xiomorns were an ancient species from the Plane of Earth who had mastered the secrets of life and came to Golarion to practice their work, creating caverns deep below the earth to use as test chambers for environments and lifeforms. Come present day, they're nowhere to be found and their self contained caverns have cracked open, revealing their remaining treasures to the world even as it loosed their creations.
- Race For The Galaxy: The Alien Overlords were apparently a very advanced species and the dominant civilization in the Milky Way at some point in the past, but have now vanished. They did leave behind many artifacts, including some very advanced technology. They also seem to have uplifted and genetically engineered several servitor races. Since the backstory in Race for the Galaxy is told only in the sketchiest fashion, however, very little is known about the Overlords.
- Spacemaster has the Sianetic Harbingers, a long dead (?) race of beings that seeded the Galaxy with humanoid life. They were powerful telepaths and had a level of technology that dwarfs modern Terran equipment. Their artifacts and ruins are both desired and feared. Also, in the Privateers campaign setting, the "Architects" seeded life on many planets 4 billion years ago and guided the evolution of the seven major races until quite recently, then disappeared. Very little is known about them in-universe.
- The Splinter: The history of the Realm stretches back 100,000,000,000 years and includes potentially thousands of precursor species/civilizations. This results in a tremendous range of (some very bizarre) Schizo Tech that can be scavenged by players.
- Traveller has the Ancients, who left ruins all over the galaxy and were responsible for kidnapping a population of humans from Earth 300,000 years ago and transplanting them to various worlds. There have also been vague references of dubious canonicity to even earlier civilizations.
- Warhammer (both fantasy and 40k) has the Old Ones, who created most sapient races. In Fantasy they just left, never to return, when the polar warp gats collapsed and let Chaos into the world, but in 40k their backstory is given out in more detail. Apparently they had a massive, galaxy-shaking war with another old race, the Necrontyr (which later became the robotic Necrons), and created many races to help them fight. They (as well as most life in the galaxy) were nearly wiped out in the aftermath of the war, when the psychic disturbance caused by the massive amount of warp-fueled power used by them and the races they created caused the reality to tear apart and horrible creatures to spill through.
- These may or may not be the same race, and the two collapses may be parts of the same event. The 7th edition Warhammer core book and Lizardman book hint heavily at this, and the 40k Necron book suggests using Lizardman models to represent the last refugees of the Old Ones.
- The Warhammer world (un)officially used to be an isolated world in the Eye of Terror of 40k, but had been drifting from that idea for a while before Word of God revealed them to be distinct settings, sometime around '98.
