Possible Campaign Settings

[Othesemo]

So, I'm going to DM a group soon, and they've expressed an interest in playing in the real, historical earth, at some point in the 1,000 BCE - 1,800 CE area. I've got a while, and with so many options, I figured I'd ask the playground for advice. If you could play D&D in any place at any time (within that time frame), were/when would you choose?

[Salbazier]

Wait, how magic is going to be handled?

My favorite period, end of 19th century Britain, isn't there. So, maybe America during its early colonization? Not the subject I most knowledgeable about but there's a figuratively and literally a new continent of possibilities there. Politics & exploration are possible. If you are willing to distort the new world, you can even put monsters, ancient ruins, lost empires, actual magic ect there. Other explorable issues: conflict with natives, pirates, homeland or colony politics and war ect.

[Yora]

1,000 BCE - 1,800 CE area.
That sounds very good. Actually, I am working on such a setting for some years. :smallbiggrin:

[Eldan]

Ever since Europa Barbarorum, I have a certain love for the Diadochoi, Alexander's successor-empires at around 270 BC. The crumbling Seleukeia, rising smaller states around the black sea and in the steppes, powerful Egypt, squabbling Greeks in the Koinon Hellenon, the Gaul fighting what is basically a civil war, and the city of Rome just starting to rise to a real power. Tons of things going on everywhere, and untold opportunities for mercenaries or warlords.

[Deepbluediver]

There's one time period/place that I've never seen a campaign run in, and tends to get ignored for a local-counterpart in most fantasy settings: South/Central American circa the Inca/Mayan/Aztec cultures.

It's mythology and people never seem to show up anywhere.

[Salbazier]

There's one time period/place that I've never seen a campaign run in, and tends to get ignored for a local-counterpart in most fantasy settings: South/Central American circa the Inca/Mayan/Aztec cultures.

It's mythology and people never seem to show up anywhere.

There is Maztica.

[Eldan]

As for a few other ideas in that very broad timespan: after the fall of the Roman Empire, under the Germanic kings of Rome. Warring States China is used quite often in movies, but I don't know a lot of fantasy takes on it. The wars between the Turks and Eastern Europe. I've never seen a fantasy version of the hundred years war either.

Edit: Oh, I know. The fantastic voyages of Zheng He and his adventures amidst pretty much every mythology around the pacific. His war against the Raksha kings of Kotte, or the battles against the war-automatons of the eastern roman empire. His long and dedicated campaign against the Naga pirates of Malay. His seven trials at the court of the Iffrit sultan of Arabia.

I mean, just read this:

We have traversed more than 100,000 li (50,000 kilometers or 30,000 miles) of immense water spaces and have beheld in the ocean huge waves like mountains rising in the sky, and we have set eyes on barbarian regions far away hidden in a blue transparency of light vapors, while our sails, loftily unfurled like clouds day and night, continued their course [as rapidly] as a star, traversing those savage waves as if we were treading a public thoroughfare… — Tablet erected by Zheng He, Changle, Fujian, 1432. Louise Levathes