Earth: The Ultimate Campaign Setting

[The Lemon Merchant]

1. "That's not how it happened!" A player might be a expert in the time/region you've chosen to run your campagin. But that's simple, just remind the player that you're the DM and you can take some "creative alteration" as you see fit.

I'm the other DM TerraDave spoke about. It is possible that you could run into a player that is an expert on the area you have chosen, but in my experience I've taken the time to become pretty familiar with the area I'm using. Currently I run a campaign in the Principalities of Rus (Russia) and while I'm no expert, I know considerably more about the region that I did when I started. I have never run into an expert contesting my "creative license" after all Terra Viejo isn't the real Earth, it's a somewhat familiar alternate.

2. Religion. Yes its a sensitive topic. Just remind the players that its just a game and not meant to be religious commentary.

Never been a problem. In fact real world religion has been an advantage. Religious or not, players are at least passingly familiar with the world's great religions (Christianity, Judiasim, Islam, etc.) They contain concepts/stereotypes that players can grab on to and develop in thier characters. In my experience those that were familiar with a particular religion had an even greater time with it.

3. Too much information out there! Well, we're experiencing the d20 glut as we speak. Only get the stuff you're actually gonna use.

That's the great thing about it. Honestly can you ever really have too much information? You just have to know what you are going to need. Right now Terra Viejo only has Europe, the Middle East and Northern Africa developed and most of that TerraDave and I have never used. Some areas are more developed than others simply because our campaigns have been based in the regions. However, it is nice to know that the "glut" of "sourcebook" material for the campaign world I use is out there and often available for free.

Has anybody run a historical earth campaign?
How did it go?

Yep, well sort of historical. I'm actually on my 2nd now and developing a 3rd. They are both Play by Post, you can find them on Terra Viejo's forums. I've had nothing but good things said about the campaigns and I've enjoyed running them and plan on running them for a long time.

If you want to know more about the campaign world, click the links in the above, or the one in the sig. Soon I'll actually have the SRD completely integrated with the "Players Guide to Terra Viejo"

 

[BluSponge]

Well if that's the way you want to go, there are already a number of options tailor made for you:

Dangerous Journeys: Epic of Aerth -- world setting for Gygax's Dangerous Journeys game, it's relatively system free and offers a version of Earth that is easily compatible with DnD's tropes.

Ars Magica Mythic Europe -- might be a bit more difficult to use, but offers you a very gritty dark ages setting that encompasses most of Europe and a bit of North Africa.

Tom

 

[eris404]

I run a D&D game set in Victorian England - more alternate history than historical of course.
It's a very easy campaign to run; the players have an excellent handle on their characters and often use real world idioms, accents, etc., when speaking in character. They do a lot of research and create really detailed backgrounds - it's truly amazing how creative they've gotten with it. Historical events are a great source of adventure ideas, too (I mean, who doesn't want to catch Jack the Ripper?).