Hi everybody I'm working on a scifi campaign in GURPS and I would want it to feature a highly technologically advanced species that's on the verge of dying out.
the problem I've run into is that no matter what problems the species has their tech should be able to overcome it. For example if they have low birth rate they can simply clone new members of their species.
So how would I, realistically, be able to make a high tech species be dying out?
depends, does your setting have space magic I.e. psykers n stuff or not
Cloning wears the DNA each time its copied until you simply can't make a viable person anymore, forcing the race to seek out fresh DNA and "clean" their genome with it.
They're losing a war to an even more powerful species.
They want to die out, or at least are at least ambivalent enough about their impending extinction to not attempt to reverse its course.
They're "dying out" because they're genetically or robotically altering themselves such that more and more of them can no longer be considered their base species.
Yes, it has space magic.
But DNA is just information, you can even 3d print DNA strands.
No matter what you come up with, it's going to be contrived. Stop trying to pound a square peg into a round hole.
Alternatively, you can have population of a race dying out within a galactic cluster due to the resources/ tech needed to reproduce trapped behind a cosmic horizon. That makes more sense than. " sure we master space travel but how do we ponis in vagoo?"
What if their genes/whatever has scripted universal time of death for every member of the race, and even if you clone somebody, the 100-year-old original and the fresh-out-of-vat clone will both naturally die at the exact same moment.
Japan is dying out. Model them after virginlord neets.
They don't care about reproduction. They are so stimulated and so engorged with their highly technological Civilization and magitech that each individual deems it a waste/inefficient use of their personal lifespans to reproduce. Play on that idea.
That's why the first 20 generations work just fine with cloning, it's when you get way down the line that issues begin to crop up, and by then it's too late!
Another quirk of this is the gradual suppression of sexual desire.
You could always go the old Destry all Humans route, they are cloning themselves and have been for a long while, but their DNA has become "stretched thin" and is almost non-viable for cloning these days.
Failing that, they could have been decimated by a war a long while ago and it's just them slowly withering away culturally as well as genetically as members of their species are stretched so far and wide across the game universe that it's pretty much impossible for them to procreate effectively and carry on a progeny.
That sounds like Western civilization.
>But DNA is just information
Are you telling me you never had a hard drive fail? At any rate, mistakes happen, even if you're highly advanced. Maybe by the time they implemented a valid cloning process, their birth-rate had reached approximately zero. Cloning helps, but the cloning/aging process is so lengthy that there are generational gaps in transfer of information, and those knowledgeable enough to manipulate or teach this technology are dying out.
This. While the servant class of this race is easy to clone and has been engineered genetically, mechanically, and socially to be productive and submissive, the ruling class has swelled in luxury for so long they've lost all interest in this universe and life. Having everything has left them with nothing to want, and they passively fade away, leaving self sustaining colonies of their servants that can't really be argued to be intelligent.
Eventually those colonies will be over run and stripped clean by invaders looking to harvest the abandoned tech or use the clones for their own purpose.
Many years ago they got into a fight with another species. While the OP species focused on space magic and advanced physical technology, the opponents focused on biological technologies. The second race, knowing they were doomed unleashed a bioweapon that slowly but surely induces sterility and painful death. OP species, so ingrained in their ways has an extremely difficult (nigh impossible) time fighting this specially tailored bio weapon.
Just a thought
Reminds me of The Endless from Endless Space.
But the Krogans aren't particularly advanced and got most of their tech from the Salarians.
That's because it is.
It's possible they never developed the technology which would allow them to save their civilization. It's possible that it was considered wasteful or useless, or even got ignored for moral reasons. Now it's desperately needed but they effectively have to start from scratch in a field nobody is familiar with.
look at the Asgard from SG-1.
literally too intelligent.
You could have it be like Japan, that they have reached such a stage of their civilizations that reproducing isn't high on the agenda;
Be like elves and just begin to leave/transcend to a higher state of being. The species are effectively immortal and not reproducing so once they 'leave' (either uploaded/transcended) they never return. Like the undying land from LOTR.
You could have it be a 'fallen' civilizations that while maintaing a high level of technology they have retreated from galactic prominence to their core/home systems after a long period of decline in the distant past, adopting certain attitudes such as military isolationists, enigmatic observers, keepers of knowledge. Think the Imperium of Man but less depressing. Reason for the decline could just be reaching their zenith and inevitably going down hill, reached a stage of apathy to life, internal vice/chemical bliss, loss of skills/knowledge to reproduce the advanced technological feats they operate, space magic cursed their reproduction/DNA.
Here's an idea, maybe for some sort of reason they want to "die" out ?
Maybe they are not dying out but rather leaving this realm into a new plane of existence ?
Maybe they have decided also they have reached a peak and it's now time to leave and let this world develop on it's own ?
They've infected themselves with a techno-organic virus that's slowly killing them. It was originally designed as a self-healing and maintenance system but has some software bugs/mutated and has not only made them sterile but is riddling them with cancer. It has so far adapted through any attempts at removing it. While they can treat the cancer separately, it's still taking its toll on the body.
Penance. Perhaps their ancestors used relativistic kill devices to kill off one or multiple alien species, and now they've all sworn to just let the species die - to repent for the sins of their fathers.
Well here's some suggestions
>The cloning process causes minor genetic degenerations that have accumulated over the Millenia so that now the race has waited too long to fix something they could have finished earlier
>The race has mostly evolved past the need for physical bodies having become energy beings/digital/gone to another galaxy/etc leaving only a few stragglers who are not enough to sustain that races Infrastructure
>Long ago that race fought a deadly civil war using weapons of war so unimaginablely horrific that even with their surviving advanced technology they could not recover fully
>The race adopted a philosophy or religion that has either purposefully or accidently lead to it's irreversible decline kinda like how Taoism stagnated chinese civilization through its belief that they were at peak civilization and needn't advance more.
>The race was a victim of its own success, and thanks to centuries of ennui and decadence, has rapidly declined past the point of no return
>No body knows why such an advanced race has declined except for members of that species- and they aren't talking
pic only tangentially related
Maybe the civilization became too altruistic, invited a number of other alien civilizations to join their society, sharing their technology too freely, only to have the younger races eventually out-number and overthrow them.
The species in question is very advanced, but has holes in its technological expertise, ones that are making their fixes very resource intensive and risky.
>The tech in question is somewhat available if you look in normal space, but nobody wants to hand it over to these assholes because of WHAT THEY DID some thousands of years ago, and nobody wants that shit coming back.
The species was originally a widespread, near-feral sprawl, and through feeding on each other, they grew stronger and more intelligent. (Insert some genetic/magic/psychic bullshit explanation, also serving as reasons why genetic manipulation can't work) Attempting to have children lowers the relative strengths of both parents, and pride makes them not want to descend into 'barbarism'. (Normal galactic society)
The core species is a complicated hybrid of many others, and the various alien components that make them up are losing compatibility. Things like their mitochondria are either failing to work or outright attacking their biology.
>The core species retains its high degree of species compatibility. It may be possible to find 'donor' species out there to help save them.
Fuck up cunt, Japan is a shitty island, do you expect them to breed like roaches ?
If they are so advanced why are they dying?
The race existed for a sole reason, whether it be to invent something, find the chosen one, whatever, and once they completed this goal all of their species vanished or died out with no reason to exist anymore
Degenerate aliens stopped caring about anything besides their own selfish flesh pleasure.
Killed by their own creations
Well if you look at human society, not everyone has access to certain tech, despite it being made. Perhaps the richer aliens have no need for actual organisms because everything has become automated. lower classes of aliens die due to lack of food, infighting, etc. richer aliens are cloning themselves but losing the will to breed...
So all it would take is one little plague to wipe out most of the aliens
Two sub-species of the same species at war. Both have different diseases that only the other has the technology to cure. They wipe out in a planet-wide stalemate
Here's an idea: Most of if not all member of the species have digitized themselves and retreat back to their home solar system that now have turned into a Dyson sphere powering a Jupiter-sized Matrioshka brain where quadrillionth of paradise simulations is running.
The only sign of their existence is the extremely high tech and destructive drones, weapons and magical artifacts they left behind. Maybe your campaign goal is for your party to connect with these simulation and spend the rest of their lives in untold bliss.
Maybe they're not dying out, just relocating. Uberaliens have developed the tech necessary to create and edit their own pocket universe, so they don't need this shitty backwater any more.
They're not dead, they just moved home without leaving a forwarding address.
Bloody primative neighbours were too much of an eyesore.
Over reliance on their technology, they augmented themselves nonstop because they could, all memories they picked up after this were incompatible with being inserted into cloned original bodies, attempts to clone their current selves end with mindless ones called husks, they are scared because they can't truly carry out their legacy anymore, they are very ambitious and don't want to divert from their path by losing a part of themselves
>they can simply clone new members of their species.
Perhaps the cloning technology isn't perfect. Clones are sterile and aren't quite as bright as the original and can really only do basic chores. Great if you need labor, not so much if you're trying to keep your species alive.
Duh! Clones lack a substance that gives them a drive to live, it is called a soul in game
Culture, mate, it could be that they don't do cloning because they simply view it as immoral, blasphemous, whatever.
> Souls come from God
> Technology gave them hubris, turned on their own Gods
> God says fuck off and declares war against own creation
> Super psychic tech severs Gods realm from the material universe
> God keeps souls in his realm and eats them instead of creating new life
> Cannot reproduce
> Clones are soulless
Overall despondence after the species advances to the point where they merge into a singularity.
Without the natural instincts and hormones to drive certain behavior, they slowly retract from prior behavior such as empire building, conquering, advancing and instead simply exist.
You could also spin the history so some small groups of the species chose not to integrate into the singularity and were abandoned.
They have achieved the "perfect" brain or intelligence.
They can still clone themselves or reproduce, but the process to enhance their own species to perfection has been lost.
Entire star systems where used up to create one "perfect" individuel.
Planets have been strip mined and massive artificial intelligence were used to create perfection.
They can no longer sustain this bloated, inefficient system, nor are they willing to go back to anything less than perfection, they would rather die out.
So now you have race of super intelligent immortal aliens that can outsmart the biggest and baddest AI's,
but every loss they take is unrecoverable and time is grinding them.
All of the problems with cloning posted here would disqualify them from being an advanced race. Worst case scenario is they would have to assemble DNA with nanobots and not rely on biological copying.
A better explanation would be that their biology relies on exotic matter that is not renewable.
They genetically engineered themselves to survive in space and on other worlds. This invention was the lynchpin to their expansion as an empire for millions of years.
This would be fine, if not for one thing. The faster-than-light galaxy spanning datanetwork their civilization used was crashed during a war with another race.
They won the war, but lost everything in the cloud. They dont have the millioms of years of genetic backups they used to use for gene maintenence. With each new generation the errors are getting worse, and they have barely scratched the surface of ressurrecting the most advanced organic technology the galaxy has ever seen.
OP here.
You've all posted some really great ideas but the analogue to our human society is something I would like to focus a bit more on.
So, like you've mentioned, in more developed countries (Japan and the West) we see fertility rates drop but if the society is sufficiently advanced cloning will take care of that, even if 99.9% of society is against it all you need to do is wait 1 generation for them to die off or just make a new colony with your clones.
So what if I change the scale a bit: instead of having a whole galaxy this all takes place on one planet? That way the tech level can be more around ww1-ww2 weapon vise and the super advanced alien race couldn't have access to cloning since they're not technologically evolved enough to have it.
Ideology, foreign immigration, artificial intelligence, transforming alien species, mind control technology, civil war, instability, eternal life in the Matrix - hard drive went boom... Maybe suicide became trendy?
>cloning
Bad idea friend.
The problem is you're seeing a race as a single unified nation. Technology can't take care of internal strife, at least not in any humane fashion, and out and out civil war would certainly be capable of pushing a race to decline.
Give this race multiple factions, multiple ideologies, perhaps ones that seem strange and, well, alien to humans. Don't just make it a race of hats.
Hell, even Alpha Centauri had this (though their aliens weren't dying out, per se)
The Swarm Universe by Thinking Horndog.
It's sex but whatever. In it many species reached a point where they joined a galactic confederation of advanced species where they have AIs to do nearly everything for them.
As such they've lost many things such as the desire to wage war, they've become super pacifist and the mere idea of violence would kill some of the races in the confederation. Enter this new species that no one can talk to because plot and the AIs decided to find a race that will be strong enough to fight back, but not become worse than the thing they fought.
After a failed 1st contact where the race they aproached nuked themselves to oblivion, they found humanity.
After 1st contact the AIs made a deal with Earth, they'll give the humans means to colonize solar systems away from the advance of the Sa'arm, or Swarm after some fuck messed up the alien name, and they'll get a temporary entry into the confederation.
Many of the techs given to the humans are entry level to the galaxy at large but it's the next level shit compared to what we have currently on earth, after some times a few guys datamined the stuff the other races created and they've found out that weapons that could end the conflict in days do exist but as the AI fears what an upjumped race like humanity could do with it, they decided to block most of it. Of course if humanity came with it's own version of the same tech then sure, they wouldn't be able to block the construction of such weapons.
>So how would I, realistically, be able to make a high tech species be dying out?
Just continuing falling birth rates after achieving universal literacy.
They live for centuries, but they keep putting off having a family and raising kids.
So besides living for centuries they're just The Japanese?
I like the white guilt idea.
You could do the opposite to. They're a proud warrior race, left with no opposition. They're now going to sleep, to await Armageddon and the final confrontation. (This might just be a euphemism)
>make a colony of clones because 99.9% of the race don't want to reproduce
>99.9% of the clones feel the same way, race still doomed within a few generations
>make another colony and try to tightly control how the clones feel through either totalitarianism or deliberately restricted technology levels
>clones figure out what you're doing and rebel against your project for submitting them to shitty conditions because of your issues
>make ANOTHER colony and use technological means to control how the clones feel
>great job, the clones are just AIs wearing meatsuits now
Also, you're assuming that the social factors encouraging dying out are just people not wanting to reproduce. Look up antinatalist philosophy, there are reasons people might actually be oppose keeping the race alive, so you could have one or more factions that actively sabotage cloning projects and whatnot. With them being aliens and all these lines of thinking could be way more popular. Hell, just have it be a struggle for the cloning project to get enough unique genomes, because most of the race feels really strongly about their genetic code being their property, and trying to steal samples winds up upsetting those it was stolen enough from to kill.
They're not "dying" per se, they've merely advanced to such levels that they're gods and have no interest in the affairs of lower beings. They reside in their corners of the universe, no threatened even by the strongest empires and not interested in conquest nor domination. They merely exist for their own goals.
All of the West really. Never add some MGTOW aliens just to add flavor.
One of their most advanced techs, which basically gave them near-infinite power generation, also emits an extremely powerful ghost radiation that they didn't detect until after the technology had propagated throughout their society to the point where nearly every member of the species had been affected.
It didn't kill everyone outright, but over time it causes large mutations in the genetic code, and within the next 1000 years the entire species will either be sterile, or will have deviated genetically to the point where they are no longer the same species.
I like this idea. It sounds a lot like the race is dying because they just irreversably fucked up. They can breed and clone all they want, but thanks to religious/magic bullshittery, the clones are braindead meatbots.
They have the technology to upload their minds into virtual reality. Most of their race does this, as the fantastic realms they construct for themselves are more stimulating than reality. Even though they have enacted laws requiring individuals to attempt to live a normal life, and use the simuverse as an "afterlife", many simply spent their lives in hedonistic pursuits while they wait to upload into a virtual paradise. Currently they are reproducing at below replacement rate, and while they have cloning technology most of their kind are no more willing to raise a clone than they are to raise a natural child.
They want to die out because they've predicted some terrible catastrophe on a galactic scale is coming in a few centuries, and they don't want to be alive to deal with it. If they struggled to survive the whole time, that would not only have a small chance of success, it would warp their culture beyond recognition.
So they came up with a plan to preserve the essence of their civilization, all their knowledge and culture, in a non-sentient form that could weather the storm and hide in plain sight, and then they'd come out of extinction somehow, perhaps not even as the same species. It would take such a long time that even stasis tech would be unreliable. The individuals who started this plan will be long dead no matter how you sugarcoat it, but by weird advanced alien reasoning it's the least bad way.
Humans are aware of all this, but being HFY to a fault, refuse to come to the same conclusion.
A new alien species that's, like, RETARDED advanced compared to them comes to town or something.
Or try like Azathoth and Cthulhu-tier alien threats.
Constant alien wars with unimaginably powerful beings could easily dwindle them down as they attempt and throw everything they have at fighting a menace like that.
> God eats souls
Heh! Sounds like the title of an "Iron Maiden" album.
Glances at pic
> Who named an alien "Hemorrhoid"?
Oh wait...
I had a dude legitimately argue that you can't clone a clone. Whether or not that's true I don't give a shit, but his reasoning was "You can't Xerox a Xerox."
Best answer. "Ghost" radiation is always especially tragic, think Children of Men. Cursed perpetual-engines, cursed FTL engines, cursed inter–dimensional Highways (40k Warp/Event Horizon)
>most of their kind are no more willing to raise a clone than they are to raise a natural child.
That's great. I always thought of cloning to produce adults (20-25 year olds) but your idea that cloning creates babies who then still need 20 or so years before they're full fledged adults is great.
Apathy and Atrophy.
They didn't foresee the consequences widespread use of their extreme levels of tech would bring about over the course of generations. With it, everything is simple, everything is easy. They can replicate any food they want in an instant. They have no need for currency. They have the ability to experience the heights and depths of any emotion or sensation at the touch of a button, and generations have grown up with this being the norm. As a result, they have no motivation, no drive. They have overcome the very animal instincts that drove them to evolve, only to find that they are nothing without them. Now, their lives have become pointless, empty, because when you can experience the most intense sensations imaginable whenever you want, create buildings or works on art in an instant, or simulate anything and everything you desire, what meaning does life hold?
Some take their own lives, eager to experience something new, to find out what awaits beyond mortal consciousness, if anything. Some keep indulging in the same sensation or creation over and over in vain, searching for meaning that is lost to them. Some retreat within themselves, shutting down and taking no action, at once aware and comatose, for nothing in the world is enough to rouse them. They, as a species, have lost the will to live, and either chase after it fruitlessly or surrender themselves to oblivion. Some individuals, exceptions, still function reasonably normally, typically those that keep themselves frantically occupied with a task that accomplishes nothing of value, simply for the sake of distracting themselves. Such individuals will generally be difficult for members of other races to communicate with, as they display bizarre mannerisms, such as constantly counting what appear to be random numbers but are actually a small part of an elaborate and vast equation that will take them decades to solve in it's entirety, simply to keep their minds occupied.
Language got a little flowery there but you get the idea. They live in a society of extreme plenty and their technology has reached the point where all of their wants can be met instantly with no significant impact on their resources. They have everything they could ever need and want at their fingertips. How do you think a human-like mind would tolerate such a scenario? It's only a matter of time until the fantastic becomes mundane and then boring.
You can clone a clone, but the second clone ends up having the genetic age of the first clone when it is born and that first clone is born the genetic age of the original subject at the time the sample it is cloned from was taken. Each subsequent clone ends up with a shorter life expectancy and increasingly severe health problems.
This isn't necessarily the case with all kinds of life forms, but it's what happens with mammals.
>You can clone a clone, but the second clone ends up having the genetic age of the first clone when it is born and that first clone is born the genetic age of the original subject at the time the sample it is cloned from was taken. Each subsequent clone ends up with a shorter life expectancy and increasingly severe health problems.
That's a good point, maybe I can use that as the reason. It's not realistic but it seems to be a common idea.
>highly technologically advanced species that's on the verge of dying out
wow so original
>So how would I, realistically, be able to make a high tech species be dying out?
Radiation: High tech energy generation lead to their race becoming increasingly sterile. The alternative is resetting their civilization to the late industrial age, which no one wants to do.
Cloning sickness: They stopped having natural babies so their society could be populated by the clones of the best and brightest. However, after generations of clones cloning clones cloning clones; the genetic material is degrading and no longer suitable to be cloned.
Mental breakdown: Their minds have been engineered to see into multiple dimensions. However, this has left them vulnerable to an interstellar meme virus that exists in a realm of pure thought (the akashic record) and that infects their minds and turns them into raving lunatics. There is no possible cure, though it is not transmissable to other races.
Hunted: Their advanced drive tech tore open a rift to another dimension and they are being hunted by super-powerful energy beings that are attracted to their ship's warp signatures.
Etc.
More ideas:
Rome Syndrome: Their government has existed in its current form for millions of years and the amount of laws, bureaucracies and red tape is absolutely paralyzing. Politics are incredibly divided, corrupt and cutthroat, nobody has the power to make any changes, so the only thing the government aims to do is maintain the status quo and dole out largess to their base of power. Because it's been like this so long, nobody really has the desire to change it, and most of the populace don't even see it as a problem.
Devolution: Being removed from natural selectiom for millenia, they are devolving on a fundamental level. Their vision, gone, hearing, gone, limbs, atrophied. They are turning into a race of retarded slug-like creatures. They used technology to compensate, but there is only so much you can do to elevate a creature that is fundamentally flawed.