We saw it done by Lovecraft and Howard, but there are many ways to handle this sort of thing.

One version I particularly loved was Continuum, the time-travel RPG where most of the time-travelling wasn't to the distant future, but to the distant past; a past where there were great primitive cultures and societies that have been buried, under the sahara desert, under the black sea, the coast of the americas; a setting created in a way that there is a logical reason why these great cultures are unknown today.

Are there other instances you can think of in games where this is done really well?
How would you do it, if you had to create a secret prehistory? Would it be magical/fantasy, or would you try to make it plausible? In either case, how?

RPGPundit

First thing we do is: we kill the heroin-peeing dinosaurs.

Well, I see no big point in traveling to a distant past, if everything there once was left absolutely no traces at all. Yes, it shows that time conquers all, yadda yadda, but in the end I might as well start a campaign where this happens on another planet or the distant future after the big cataclysm.

So such a past would need to have some elements that remind the characters of legends and mythology. If you discover the old civilisation, you should be able to piece together how this could've created the belief in the Greek gods -- even if it's just a remote connection.

And I won't play anything in our timeline that goes against evolution. No problem in a fantasy world, but if it's our planet, our solar system then no-no to "seeding" or creationism...

Nephilim had an exciting pre-history, in which the spiritual ancestors of the PCs were responsible for killing the dinosaurs, creating humanity, and briefly imposing a vampire-ruled Empire to control rebellious mankind...

Quote from: SosthenesNo problem in a fantasy world, but if it's our planet, our solar system then no-no to "seeding" or creationism...

Not necessarily, if the "seeding" was done really well.  Check out Terry Pratchett's "Strata"

Quote from: SosthenesWell, I see no big point in traveling to a distant past, if everything there once was left absolutely no traces at all. Yes, it shows that time conquers all, yadda yadda, but in the end I might as well start a campaign where this happens on another planet or the distant future after the big cataclysm.

So such a past would need to have some elements that remind the characters of legends and mythology. If you discover the old civilisation, you should be able to piece together how this could've created the belief in the Greek gods -- even if it's just a remote connection.

Well, there must certainly be many cultures/societies that existed that left no trace. There are certainly tons that left almost no trace, about which we only know very little about from other societies that ran into them.

And of course, one thing that is always entertaining in the context of an RPG is the idea of a society that "explains" psuedohistorically some of the quirks of other, later societies. The "Atlantis syndrome".  There certainly could have been some kind of vast ur-civilization that lived long in the past that were advanced enough to cross the ocean to the americas, and was the seed of both the mesoamerican cultures and ancient egypt; never discovered today because what little is left of their ruins is buried under the sahara (said civilization having existed more than 10 000 years ago, when the Sahara was green).

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPunditAnd of course, one thing that is always entertaining in the context of an RPG is the idea of a society that "explains" psuedohistorically some of the quirks of other, later societies. The "Atlantis syndrome".

That's what I was talking about. Without such explanations and seeds for our distant _known_ past, time travel into the past wouldn't be much worth. I might as well travel into other dimensions or just start in some freaky cvilization. Whether that's the earth's past or future won't matter much, unless you tie past and present together.