[Fantasy] Standard Fantasy Setting

[simply Nathan]

I'm collaborating with a fellow GURPS-user (who will be the GM in our playtests) to try to make as bland and generic of a fantasy setting as possible. What we want to do is make a GURPS setting that is just a generic, no-frills fantasy world so that such a baseline is actually defined somewhere. Part of the intent is to allow other GMs to tweak to their liking, drop in elements from other genres, and things of that nature.

What we have:

• Playable races are human, elf, dwarf, and gnome.
• - These are the very same gnomes I brought up in the thread on finding weight from ST; more on this further down. A race of little people felt necessary, but hobbits feel too Tolkien-specific and PC goblins would blur the line between "good guy" and "monster".
• - Elves are a few inches taller than humans. They probably have slightly darker skin, just as dwarves are probably paler (and they won't be the same shade; if one goes one way, the other reverses to match).
• Monsters; goblins/orcs/ogres, zombies/skeletons/mummies, lizardmen/troglodytes, vodniks("Bullywug" was copyrighted, so I looked up frog-based mythological creatures and this seemed to be the best match and best name; some of them have seaweed-looking beards), giants, and four unique bosses. The bosses are a human lich, a giant bandit with gigantism, a giant mouth-and-tentacle creature, and a dragon.
• Magic; the spells from GURPS Magic, though the idea of putting Syntactic Magic cantrips in has been tossed around. Sound generic enough?
• TL3 for all game-relevant purposes, despite the presence of magic. If brought up, the religion is Christian because Medieval Europe wouldn't be Medieval Europe without Christianity, so a Medieval European Fantasy would seem odd with any other religious practice in the majority; we don't plan on going into detail on this but may have to and definitely will if vampires get introduced to the setting.
• Templates for a fighter, thief, and wizard (FTW).
• No guns, not even in No-Mana areas.
• No exceptions to stated racial alignment; goblins are always evil, elves are always good. Play a human if you want anything untrustworthy.
• Four civilized settlements(village, town, city, and castle); four wilderness regions(swamp, plains, forest, and mountain); four PC races; four bosses; it started as an accident, but we basically wound up with an Arc Number here.

I have no doubts about the genericness of our elf and dwarf templates, but I'm opening the gnome up for suggestions.

GNOME [20]
Attributes:		ST-2[-20]; DX+1[20]; IQ+1[20]
Characteristics:	HP-2[-4]; SM-3
Advantages:		Honest Face[1]; Huge Weapons(SM) 3[3]; Magery 0[5]
Disadvantages:		Curious(12)[-5]

Avg. Height: 2'0"
Avg. Weight: 32 lbs

We don't want tinker gnomes. They skew the TL expectations and were mostly made up because D&D gnomes were redundant between their similarities to dwarves and the presence of halflings.

One thing I considered was raising HP by one, dropping Honest Face, and adding the Cannot Float quirk due to density.

I'm open to reducing weight even further, but not to reducing ST (8 is the recommended minimum for adventurers, and PC templates shouldn't fall below that) or increasing height (they're already talked up from 1'). Whatever is done, their template must cost 20 points.

So far, all races have roughly equal disposition toward the fighter, thief, and wizard roles.

• Humans have 20 unspent character points.
• Dwarves have good HT, resistance to Poison, tough skin, and Lifting ST 2. (Fighter)
• Elves have Move +1, and DX+1, which is good for little apart from weapon skills. (Fighter)
• Gnomes are smaller than humans, but use the same sized weapons, have near the same ST, and their size gives them bonuses to hit/penalties to be hit. (Fighter)
• Dwarves have racial Greed, which may tempt them to gain money illicitly. (Thief)
• Elves, again, have Move +1 (for running away) and DX+1. (Thief)
• Gnomes have +1 each to DX and IQ, giving bonuses to almost every skill in the system. Their Honest Faces keep them generally below suspicion, though this may be dropped. Small characters can fit into quite tighter areas while burgling. Curiosity encourages them to explore places even when this is dangerous. (Thief)
• Dwarves have a total of 14 FP and Eidetic Memory - while the latter is not directly beneficial, it is still useful for the archetype. (Wizard)
• Elves have Magery 0 and ST-1, cutting points where a wizard normally would anyway. (Wizard)
• Gnomes have ST-2, IQ+1, and Magery 0. Again, dump stat treatment similar to the elves. (Wizard)

You might even say dwarves are pushed toward fighter/thieves, elves are pushed toward fighter/wizards, and gnomes are pushed toward thief/wizards.


After hammering out most of the details (we already have shopping lists and stat blocks/templates done) we'll probably release the results for free on the Internet. Maybe even in this thread.
Is there anything we're missing?
Does anyone have suggestions on how to make this stuff more generic?
Will anyone else be interested when we're done?