GURPS "fantasy" page
Fantastic Role Playing and Chimerical Realms
I have a nice article to put up, but I can't Cut and Paste right now (and would rather do that than take the time to type the whole thing up again). But you probably came here expecting something.
I'll just take a little time to explain that the phrase "fantasy role-playing" has the connotation, the inheirent thought association, of "knights, dragons, gold points, and kidnapped princesses by evil wizards that you have to rescue and save the day." This really should not be the basis, but it is. Mostly due to the fact that one of the best "fantasy" novels which inspires so many fantasy role playing games is the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, but J. R. R. Tolkein.
This is not to say that Tolkein's "Middle Earth" is not an excellent world with great role playing potential, it is just done too often and has become expectated to have snobby Elves, greedy Dwarves, and fat Hobbits running around. My thought is that if you plan on running a "fantasy" role playing game, make it something memorable.
If you have Dwarves, make them all insane... and maybe they're the only ones who know of gunpowder. Create your own fantasy races, or just have a single race, whether all characters are Humans, Hobbits, or Urkluks. Think about technology and what the stars might look like and if there are any moon(s) or sun(s) near the world. What about culter, holidays/festivals, and historical events.
And design your scenarios around something, anything, that can be of interest other than another rehashed version of a kidnapping or dungeon crawl. I've found that the players can get more interested into doing the most common of things inside the game world as long as you entice them into it. I've had a player doing the dishes with enthusiasm simply because his party guests were very slovenly and very drunk and he was very tidy.
Just remember, in a fantasy world anything fantastic can happen. Just take reality and twist it in any interesting way you can think of, and more interesting events are sure to follow.