Other fantasy games that would be good for ideas

[mrswing]

I'll second Talislanta. I used to play in a FH Talislanta campaign a long time ago and in general the game archetypes were perfectly transferable. The campaign unfortunately ground to a halt when our party was attack by shadow-like wraiths and the only PC with a magic weapon capable of harming them decided to do a 'Predator-Schwarzenegger' (i.e. burying himself in mud and leaves to camouflage himself from the monsters) while we were already under attack. By the time he had unburied himself all of the other characters were dead...

There are a lot of pretty good settings out for D&D right now as well. Dark Sun was excellent in conception, and nowadays Scarred Lands, Arcanis, Bluffside, Kalamar have a lot of different but good material to offer. Also, check out the new Midnight setting which seems very promising and actually takes another step closer to HERO by making wizards almost extinct as a single class but allows every character to take magic as a skill...

And if you can find it, the old Bard Games The Lexicon (a fantasy version of Earth at the time of Atlantis and Cimmeria) is extremely intriguing stuff. Since it's not geared towards any single game system using it would be fairly simple.