I’m embarrassed to say that I have encountered this, this particular type of story on multiple occasions… So I got curious, is there a name to this trope?
I wonder who did this first? Didn’t ultima have a storyline like this, or am I misremembering a game from before I was born
i think pops up in early computer rpgs like ultima a lot because the original Dungeons and Dragons was full of that kind of anachronistic stuff. TSR probably didn’t intentionally make it post-apocalypse though. they were just cramming whatever they thought was cool at the moment into their game, which is why you’re just as likely to find a downed spaceship as a dinosaur in Blackmoore. the post-apocalypse angle probably game to be when early crpgs wanted to ape that but wanted give it a proper story justification
i’ve also heard people say that the silmarillion has scifi elements, but i’m not sure how much of that is what tolkien intended versus what people read into it. i’ve also heard that the trope originates from medieval people coming across ruins of ancient roman architecture, but no examples were given- although it’s funny to think we have robots in The Legend of Zelda because aquaducts
Now that you mention it, I seem to remember Xenophon stumbling across giant ruins that perplexed him while out on campaign. I think they were Persian? It very much could be drawing on the experiences of people seeing the ruins of fallen empires.
Edit: AI is telling me that Xenophon traveled through the impressive ruins of Assyrian cities, he was fighting the Persians.
