any setting where all Superpowered Beings are no more sentient than feral animals

[Lemmy]

I dont disagree that biologically our ancestors were built for large open areas and we are far less effective in say jungles if you take away our brain, but my point was that saying all animals are super-powered compared to humans is denying the fact that a proto man with a rock somehow found a way to get enough calories to feed that big brain of his. Those proto humans might not have dominated the world but they were a top predator within their specific biome.

IIRC, there's some debate over exactly how much of a "top predator" our ancestors really were... But, well... Anthropology isn't my specialty anyway.

Humans do a lot of things few animals do are upright bipedal-ism allows us to see very far at an angle that most animals cant, and frees are hands for carrying things we have absurd accuracy and power when it comes to throwing things a chimp literal cant throw overhand only underhand tosses. An underhand toss might be good for throwing poop but can you imagine want a half dozen major league pitcher could do to something with a baseball sized rock?

Rocks are tools too, though. But anyway... Sure, non-sapient humans could be a successful species, but they wouldn't be nearly as successful as we've become if they hadn't developed their brains.

In regards to rpgs yes d&d does tend to foster the idea that all problems can be overcome and defeated rather than simply avoided and survived but this is the media discussion thread not the d&d or even rpg section so I dont know that it matters.

True. For a moment there I kinda forgot on what forum I was... But if instead of players, it's an audience who can see a easy solution to a problem or threat, that also hurts the story, no matter the media. There are plenty of cases of immersion being broken and/or stories becoming significantly worse due to characters "holding the idiot ball" just because otherwise the story would be over too soon. Many of them are from horror movies with said non-sentient supernatural threats.

Edit
again feral animal is not mindless, humans have been competing with animals for our entire existence.
Though thinking about it many of the biggest problems like the toads or rabbits in Australia and other invasive species are kinda dumb. And that's a species without supernatural ability if those toads I dont know released emps when killed it wouldn't make them easier to get rid of.

True, but those species aren't exactly a threat to human survival... Just a pain in the ass for societal prosperity and production.

Anyway, all of this is just a long-winded way to say that if a threat is non-sentient, then the author really has to go that extra mile to convincingly portray it as an actual threat... Most likely by either adding other external factors or making the threat A LOT more powerful than whatever sentient beings it's supposed to be a threat to...

Or... He can go the other way around and simply make it so that said threat is understandably not actually the main threat, just a complicating factor.

[Squire Doodad]

I don't think any prehistoric human civilization would survive against superpowered animals.

I mean, it's not exactly a fleet of manticores, but you could call the animals that are around at the time of early humans "superpowered" in a physical sense. Not massively but a prehistoric low-superpower animal setting might loosely resemble a variant of early human history where nature gets dealt a really dang good hand...before humans get basic armor and whatnot and things start crawling towards how they are now.

That said, I agree with the Attack of the Fifty Foot Whatever read - what you're talking about is mostly a kaiju or chimerical super-animal scenario.
If you want a world where superpowers exist, but overuse of them takes an increasing toll on your mind until you become...I don't know, feral quasi-werewolf things, I'm sure there's plenty of YA dystopias with that plot simply because that seems like a YA dystopia thing to do. Perfect analogies for being afraid of the coming of age, adult/child contrasts, etc.

[awa]

IIRC, there's some debate over exactly how much of a "top predator" our ancestors really were... But, well... Anthropology isn't my specialty anyway.

We definitely weren't an apex predator, but my point is merely we were good enough with ape intelligence that saying other animals had superpowers in comparison to us is excessive.

A LOT more powerful than whatever sentient beings it's supposed to be a threat to...

I mean were talking about super powered whatever so of course they will be stronger. I think part of the problem is a difference in category I am perfectly fine with their being giant dragons in the world that humans must simply avoid. The prompt super powered non-sapient and no super-powered humans.

A setting where humans fight those creatures and are in a perpetual stale mate was not the prompt but in my opinion is not that big a deal.

True, but those species aren't exactly a threat to human survival... Just a pain in the ass for societal prosperity and production.

Yes but that is simply an example of the fact that being intelligent does not mean you will be able to solve every problem, those are normal animals if they had superpowers they may be strong enough to threaten mankind you just need to pick the right superpowers.