I fully agree that the depth of setting in Simon's Lemuria is perfect - a strong framework with enough blank space to slot in your own creations. The 200 plus pages of setting information that some commercial games put out there seems dull and uninspiring to me. Everything is so nailed down that it's hard to find your own space within the published setting.

Your desire of doing 25 or so adventures in a rough sandbox is just right for a BoL campaign. I generally run shortish episodic campaigns with a recurring cast of NPCs and some overarching themes/arcs. Often the arcs are more personal to the PCs than about the world/nation/settlement.

Wow! That sounds like a great campaign - just my sort of thing.

I find that semi-historical is a great style of game to run and play. History is often so much better as a setting (with or without tweaks) than novels or films. Also history provides ideas for totally fictional settings. My Bronze Age 'Two River Land' campaign of demons and spies in a fictional fantasy world based on a map and setting by Finn Cullen took it's political crisis that was the backdrop to the PC's story from the succession of the English crown in the latter part of the 17th century (Charles II, James Duke of York/James II, and the illegitimate Duke of Monmouth). 

JiminyQ wrote:

Out of curiosity, what game system/s do either of you use for your heavily historical campaigns?

For my All For One campaign I'm using the All For One RPG published by Triple Ace Games. The system is based on Ubiquity which powers the Hollow Earth Expedition RPG. TAG produced a lot of products to support Ubiquity, and I was heavily involved in editing most of the support material for AFO. It's a good system and AFO has a very freeform system of magic which can be a blessing and a curse at the same time. I have had to make tweaks to NPCs and enemies over the years; running a campaign from 2012 tends to make the PCs a little overpowered, but the system throws up surprises and the players always feel vulnerable. We've had a lot of fun with the campaign, but I do think the end of the campaign is getting very close. I am actually concerned that, after all these years, the enemy may actually take the victory, but I genuinely hope the players figure out my nasty plan before I get to put it into action.
 

JiminyQ wrote:

Out of curiosity, what game system/s do either of you use for your heavily historical campaigns?

When it comes to ‘historical settings’ it varies on what rules I use. I always play games that are a bit pulpy, which is why I like BoL engine games. So rather than strictly historical simulations they are more like an action/adventure film. So really it depends on how you define what is an ‘historical’ game.
 
Probably the most historically accurate game I’ve run is Captain Treville’s Daughter, set in 1620s/30s France. However, this is more Three Musketeers  than a history lesson. But although the game is a swashbuckling romp, I’ve used the real political situations and real historical incidents and people as background and jumping off points to the spy adventure scenarios in the campaign. I run it with Everywhen but using standard BoL stats for animals, as detailed in Dicey Tales. I also used the duelling rules from Pulse Pounding Pulp (now included in the Sword & Sorcery Codex) for sword fights with major villains. Character careers were taken from Honor + Intrigue and some of H+I’s boons were adapted to standard BoL/EW.
 
Talking of spies, I ran a Man From UNCLE game which used the setting implied in the Guy Richie Man From UNCLE film – which was nothing like the 60s tv show but more like Connery era Bond. For this I used Everywhen+Dogs of WAR with a few house rules, but the setting features real historical characters and setting, alongside a secret island lair and 1960 limitations to real tech.
 
In the Two River Land game I referred to up thread; this was a standard BoL game plus the Resolve rules taken from Everywhen (now also included in the Sword & Sorcery Codex as optional rules). The historical input was in the Mesopotamian clothing and architecture I described, the 17th century English political situation I used as the situation in the royal court, and the Bronze Age way of fighting I described. The game was pure S&S fantasy, but the real historical trappings were very important in shaping the game.

My Ancient Egyptian campaign was set in the first years of the reign of Tutankhamun, and I ran two ‘series’. The first was 30% real history, 30% Hollywood Ancient Egypt, 30% gangbusting police work, and 10% Lovecraftian horror. The second series was 30% espionage instead of gangbusting. It was a standard BoL game but featured real people and real political problems faced by the state at the time (as far as we can tell).
 
So, I use real history for plots, background and some of the NPCs, but none of the games I run are strictly historical, or even alt-history as such. They are too pulpy for that.
 

One final thing regarding game systems. I use a lot of different systems depending on what I want to run, rather than try to shoehorn the same system for every setting. I love games such as WEG D6 Star Wars, Victory Games James Bond 007 RPG, Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu (still my favourite Cthulhu system), TAB Creations Shadows Over Sol, etc etc. I used to run loads of Savage Worlds games as well but, since the latest SWADE version has come out I've kind of fallen out of love with the system. I'll still use Savage Worlds Deluxe if I want to run something like Seven Worlds rather than change to SWADE. I also recently backed the Outgunned KS by Two Little Mice and love the game.
You can never have too many games