[Creative] Trying to build a fantasy setting.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

I really want to build a fantasy setting for GURPS, though my tastes tend to run more fantastic/less realistic than the impression I get around here. I still think the fact that GURPS is good for lower power levels is better for what I want to do with this, though.

Ideas I've had so far:
* The setting is a combo of Very High Magic, Lower Power and High Magic, Medium Power (terminology borrowed from Uncle Figgy's Guide to Good Fantasy). It should be noted that I don't like the view of magic that thinks of it as a separate force layered on top of strict-physics reality, so if there is some kind of mana zone system it will likely be of some kind of aspected variety ("no mana zone only for fires spells", that kind of thing).
* The land is inhabited in a fashion I call "Points of Stuff": people generally cluster at certain points on the map, and outside that the landscape is "untouched" or inhabited in a "magical living in harmony with nature" fashion. Note, however, that this doesn't assume that the wilderness is by default dangerous and filled with vicious beasts waiting to pounce (as is usually popular in the "remote settlements" style).
* There is definitely at least one Lost Civilization to provide ruins. However it's wasn't a Flawless Golden Age: it probably had some kind of "-punk industrial/war machine" going on that makes pining for it the province of the deluded and Bad Guys. The current inhabitants don't necessarily think that the techno-magic or whatever the Ancient had is Evil, just something to use carefully and in a non-overbearing way.
* Humans are either rare or non-existent and don't have any special advantages. There are just too many games that provide some self-aggrandizing reason for humans to be common and on-top that I have to be contrarian about it. Plus I have an easier time imagining my fantasy peoples if they have clear differences from humans. (That's not to say I go in for non-human psychology: it's just not something that I enjoy.)


One thing I don't know about including but I think might be fun would be if there was some kind of God/Spirit Conflict between competing magical-physics systems, like a cold war between the forces of the Classic Four Elements vs elemental beings who divide along environmental lines instead.