Worldbuilding

Lots of crystals and stone. Maybe some organic material

>>53515084
>no metal to industralize
they had plastic either way

>>53515084
Do a logical extension of civilizations that did not have well-developed mining industry. You could look at north american natives or bedouins for examples of nomadic cultures that have refined that lifestyle to a science. Native cultures in central and south america, by contrast, did a heck of a lot with very little metal. So did the ancient egyptians.

A few thoughts - even if useful metals are relatively scarce, they'll probably still use them for weapons, at least for the elite. A steel weapon is just too big an advantage to pass up, even if the cost is high. We didn't have really efficient mining and smelting until the relatively recent past.

>>53516761
>they had plastic either way
Out of curiosity, how? Mining petroleum products (nevermind refining them) in a metal-poor environment is potentially very tricky.

20 million years are a looong time. Because of natural catastrophes and historical changes you can be sure that ruins will be everywhere. The cycle of cultures will be an major point in your world.

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>>53516761

You need metal to produce plastic. Through the lack of metal many materials will not be achieved in this world.

"Technological advance is an inherently iterative process. One does not simply take sand from the beach and produce a Dataprobe. We use crude tools to fashion better tools, and then our better tools to fashion more precise tools, and so on. Each minor refinement is a step in the process, and all of the steps must be taken."
— Chairman Shen-Ji Yang, "Looking God in the Eye"

>>53516985
>You need metal to produce plastic.
Not necessarily, but it's definitely going to be a LOT harder, both to get there and to actually do it. Then again:

>>53516933
>20 million years are a looong time
Yeah, really. Human "civilization", in the sense of stable permanent communities, is about 10k - 15k years old. You're looking at a timeframe 2,000 times as long. You're going to be looking at the rise and fall of many more empires and civilizations than our world has seen.

Having all kinds of materials and sci-fi tech, even without metal, is completely plausible.

>>53516933
>20 million years are a looong time

yeah, to the point that how the fuck hasn't civilization eaten itself alive yet? Every permutation of civilization has to have happened, they have to have destroyed themselves with war, famine, disease, all a thousand times over again and what, did they never learn from it? Have they learned from it and are now existing without a need for war, knowing exactly what it will lead to?
If they exist without conflict now, what drives anything? At this point they have to know that the only way they'll survive is to exist as one mega-nation and strive toward utopia? Surely that didn't just now start happening when you're dropping your PC's into this story?
They've been around 20 million years, I feel like the only way to actually play a civilization that's been around that long is just to make them 300% apathetic.
No real civilization, just everyone trying to get by in one big global hippy commune because all of the other attempts at civilization ended up with someone getting greedy and starting a fucking apocalypse, so they've all collectively checked out and decided to live for comfort.

That's honestly probably the best reason that they haven't found metal, they did at one point and just cant be fucked to dig it up again

The To'ul'hs from Orion's Arm are a good example of a world that never developed a Industrial Revolution
.
http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-topic/4802a95fb92f2

http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/48f71d38d2c56

But again >>53517402 is right 20 million years are a long time and the accumulating of knowledge through the millenia may produce some version of Industrial Revolution. You need to have more than one reason why a culture has never develped an Industry.
Second Point: A Industrial revolution is not a historical necessity,

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>>53515084
Organic technology has replaced heavy machinery. The long breeding times of such technology, plus some orbital wackery requiring them to go underground and hibernate for decades or centuries at a time, slows down historical development to a crawl.

It's a stretch, but it's better than living through 20 million years of somehow little happening

>>53515084
I would advise you to read The First And The Last Man by Olaf Stapeldon to get an feel for such historical greatness.
I guess such a world would be in an eternal state of antiquity.
>>53517803
Natural catastrophes are actual the main reason why cultures were destroyed. I can imagine the world being paved in ruins because they changed their location based on climate. The probility of such a world getting destroyed by their inhabitant is not that great because they wouldn't be able to build superweapons.
And that all the population of this world cometogether is very unlikely because a culture to another culture would exists in great distance to each other. Not to say that a worldwide kingdom would be impossible but it would decay in sometime.

And your underestimating the will of people to forget.

>>53518097
well then what you're describing still sounds like the way I ended my post, with everyone just sort of tooling around innawoods and not doing much

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Massive stone structures, 80's moebious/druillet visuals. Magic or it's abscence can drastically change the setting. Social organiztion can be anything from full primitive communism to tribalism, i would go for something like ancient mesopotamian kingdoms. Make metals not inexistant, but extrmelly rare and you have a nice plot devices (evil faction finds meteriorite or something like that). play while slightly high.

Look to ancient China and the prereformation catholic church for some ideas. Two examples of powerful, enduring institutions created before the first useful steam engine. The long history of your world doesn't make any difference unless there are institutions that can maintain and build on information beyond the time scale of a human lifespan.

Surely there were lots of itty bitty kingdoms and empires before recorded history, but they never got far without some way of passing information and values on (or imposing their culture on their neighbors).

Parts of your world could have very refined agriculture, politics, and humanities. Other parts could be backwaters that have been living basically the same way for all that time (like lost tribes in our world, that probably live similarly to people tens of thousands of years ago).

The lack of communication technology might mean that networks of riders like the pony express are the primary means of transferring information quickly and projecting centralized power.

Perhaps there are areas that are so finely cultivated that food and fresh water are about as easily available as a walk to the refrigerator.

It's possible they'd have glassworking, which could mean microscopes and germ theory. They might have refined ceramics and other materials to the point that things like typewriters, printing presses, or simple cameras are a possibility.

It seems doubtful that organisms would stay the same for twenty million years because of evolution, but maybe it's possible that civilizations could maintain at least a very rough outline of that deep history.

Expanding on this--
>>53522510

Somebody in the span of all that time might figure out eugenics, and given the lack of better materials, breed special castes of humans to serve specialized roles. If the civilization that starts the program collapses, you could have subspecies of people with odd skills and specialties... like a slave caste bred with a doubled over hunch for picking fruit, or a caste of scholars with savant like abilities for memorizing and recalling information.

>>53515084
I remember reading the story of these little guys on Deviantart a couple of years ago. Comfy.

>>53515084
How the fuck there is no metal to industrialize? Copper? Cobalt? Nothing? Do they fight with toxins and counter-toxins? Use tortoise tables and desks?
>civilization already exists for 20 million years
Did they consume everything in the first 5 million years?
>never had a Industrial Revolution.
Are we talking about some gas giant here? You can have diamonds and plastics on those, you know?

If that's not the case, how about ceramics? Carbon fiber? Mining Californium-254? No?

How would a world like this one look like?
The best example of metal-poor society I can think of are the inuit. Wood, bone, leather, sinew and ice are fair game instead. One can include vegetal fiber, stone, shells and ingenious stuff like armor made of fishglue. Its chemical technologies would be highly advanced, I guess.