Humans as Precursors/Progenitors

What's your stance on humans as the precursors in scifi settings? Would you play a setting where humanity was the first to reach the stars, uplifted aliens stuck on the stone age or even animals with potential for intelligence, engineered synthetic species, and generally populated the galaxy with dozens or even thousands of species? What if the uplifted aliens do uplifting on their own? What such setting would look like? How far into the future should such setting be?

Far too likely and unpleasant.
I don't want to have to be the precursors, but goddamnit, it's looking like we're going to have to be.

Let's just hope we don't fuck up too bad.

I don't think it's really any different to any precursor species.

Are you fucking kidding?
As the precursors, it is not only our job but our SACRED DUTY to fuck up too bad, repeatedly, and often. We are to leave skeletal arcologies, half formed sentient war machines, ancient galaxy cleansing weapons, superterror biomonsters, and more.

If we fail to do this, we have failed as precursors.

Said the xeno.

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.

There are literally no problems with this.

Anyone who comes up with bullshit is a /v/ermin or /a/nimal.

This precursor stuff comes from our own experience with the remains of the roman empire, but although they certainly did lose power they left no shortage of succesors claiming to be their descendants.
Humanity would probably leave behind not just uplifted aliens and engineered species but also colonies of post-humans, digitized intelligences and cultural copycats, all claiming to be the human race and denying it ever fell.

Only if humans are long gone until, cue the drum roll, returning ancient threat that will endanger entire galaxy are, in fact, humans coming back to claim what's theirs. Also all the ruins you get to explore are human in origin.

Oftentimes, pre-cursor races in Sci-Fi are criticized for being irresponsible and unconcerned with how their works and experiments would affect other species and future generations. I've always wanted to take this to an extreme with Humans, turning them into a precursor race of Handsome Jacks who were not only completely unconcerned with the effects their actions would have on others, but quite purposefully and gleefully trolled the future with all the dangerous shit they left behind.

Players are the first space crew to leave Sol system. They are intercepted by the Alien Alliance. Leaving the Sol system they entered a time rift, going million of years in the future. Humanity is long extinct, and are the precursor of all the alien races
That's why most have humanoid forms
That's why the female aliens are so fuckable and engineered to crave human dick

It doesn't need to be even the whole species. Given the potential billions or even trillions of future people, the ever increasingly powerful tools that can be run by fewer and fewer people, and the long distances of space, it seems very likely that Mankind will diverge and fragment. Some fragments will inevitably be less benevolent than others.

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This can go a few ways... it can go into HFY territory if you kinda go the Halo route. If you spend most of the time just focusing on the humans.

On the other hand, if humans are out of the picture or play from the shadows you could have something interesting. Focusing on how all that remains are ancient ruins and a quest to find out what happened to humanity? What happened to the race that lifted others. You could have them find the ruined cradle of humanity and it could be wonderful.

Unironically this is a common theme in lots of furry sci-fi, Albedo and Hc Svnt Dracones are the two I can think of off the top of my head I recommend Albedo though, Hc Svnt Dracones is just !NotEclipse Phase with the really bad writing on how the humans all died out so it could be a 'post human' role-playing game.

>aliens make a museum dedicated to ancient humans
>it's full of memes

Ivan only hope that some day in the far, far, FAR distant future the Ayylmao people, after decades, perhaps centuries of searching through hundreds of bizarre, ancient human sites, they'll finally find the answer to why the precursor humans did all this:
"To make space more interesting"

>Young alien species stumbles onto precursor human doomsday device
>It's the only thing that can save their people from the intergalactic war with their enemies
>After much deliberation and questioning of their faith, they decide it's the only way to survive
>Upon pressing the big red "ACTIVATE" button, a boxing glove springs out of the console right into the face of the alien
>A video of it is immediately uploaded to Spaceyoutube
>In another dimension of their own making, Hyper-Humanity briefly chuckles at the video and then goes back to shitposting waifus

I think this is a likely real life thing, assuming we don't kill ourselves or permanently cripple our ability to mobilize before we get off planet. Considering the age of the universe, we're insignificantly young. Compared to the lifespan of the universe, we showed up pretty early. Lots of room for growth.

Here's another furry setting that does that. 'In our shadow'. (bit on the snout about it if you ask me)

Also 'squarriors' does humans as the precursor race as well.

Sounds legit.

>the Sol System itself is the catalyst of a massive war across several galaxies for its ancient but powerful lost technology, every alien power involved wants Sol and its planets
>across the galaxies, there's aliens who frequently speculate on how Terran lives were like back in the time when they still existed as a thriving species

I like this idea. Just imagine xenos freaking the fuck out when they realize that they're talking with actual humans.

I think it works out pretty well.

>you will never troll ayys on the galactic imageboard

>Erma has head hair because of her genetics
I liked that bit.
Been hunting down the comics and so far have only found the first book.
I think Gallacci has been uploading the comics, but I'd prefer the physical copies.

I have humans as basically aliens in my setting.

>"To make space more interesting"

I had an imagine spot of a precursor humanity version of Your Welcome.

Makes sense.

Remind me to leave a lovingly written "you're welcome" note on it when I make the marker and leave it in a hole.

>all claiming to be the human race and denying it ever fell.
now that's the good stuff right there

Does anyone have that image that makes the case for Finland being the current heirs of Rome?

>humans as the precursors
It's fine. It doesn't add much flavour, but it's a good justification for humanoid aliens.
Just don't go down the All Tomorrows path.

>Just don't go down the All Tomorrows path.

?

>No humanity, YOU are the aliens
>And then humanity was a gravital

Seems interesting

from what game is this race?
I remeber I've seen it somewhere

stellaris

...

>The future uplifted species and alien races that call the Milky Way and neighboring galaxies home know the Humans as kind and benevolent progenitors that left them all they needed to succeed in their long absence.

>Those inhabiting the Sombrero Galaxy curse Humans as the assholes (or equivalents) that left behind millions of reckless, dangerous and obnoxious science projects, super-weapons and spiteful "pranks" for future generations.

I like how everything is made in one font except for some for Finalnd part made by some fag.

Fugg :_DDD

What if the human race doesn't go extinct? how would our child races view us? would they share the same goals we do?
I don't want them to worship us as gods but a healthy love would be nice.

Really?

The transition froém roman to postroman era always seemed pretty smoooth process of gradual decline of the empire, with no massive loss of knowledge beyond what would occur even should the empire somehow survive to thsi day. People always knew who romans were and never gazed in amazement at roman ruins not knowing what purpose they were supposed to serve.

Well from what I know a lot of stuff was lost with the collapse of the Empire, mostly engineering knowledge. They forgot how to build sewers and aqueducts, for one example. They also lost the knowledge of how to make concrete.

Knowledge of concrete manufacturing is worthless without access to the raw materials romans used.

A lot of knowledge was not much as lost, the church keep it, as it fell into disuse as there was no longer the population or society necessary to support it. You don't build an aqueduct to support a town. You don't build sewers for a meager village.

Consensus seem to be positive for humans as precursors in sci fi but what about in fantasy?
How does the idea of elven and orcish adventurers exploring human ruins for powerful magical artifacts beyond their understanding?

If you're using "elves" and "orcs" trying to do something original is a losing game. Those exist as a shorthand for specific roles. They're basically human but with something added so there's no question to what purpose they serve in the story. Humans as precursors to elves is contradictory, elves are elves because they're the wise ancient ones.

But if it's in the far future and humans are an ancient race then they could be subspecies or offshoots of humanity

It's quite novel, even if it has been done a few times: Humans being the progenitors of the other races by experimenting with magic, or they are a race of alien invaders chosen by the gods, Atlanteans or something of the style. They don't even need to be the first to appear in the scene, just the ones who invaded or something and made the legendary kingdoms.

Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura did something of the style by describing humans/dwarves as the baseline of evolution, with every other races being magical offsprings of the two. The elves advanced quickly thanks to magic and myths were created that they were the firsts. There's also an old technologically advanced city in the Age of Legends.

That's fine, but don't make it tolkien-esque if its incongruent with the premise.
Elves are defined by their relationship with mankind, any offshoot you can come up with is not going to fit very well to the "elf" label.

What about the precursors who conquered older precursors such as the Romans who conquered the Greeks and the Egyptians?

Elves may as well just be humans with pointy ears, orcs just humans with green skin, nothing about them coming after humanity is contradictory.