I'd also like to see David Eddings' Elenium and Tamuli (the Sparhawk books) translated to games. Yeah, I know they're not the best literature, but they're fun and I think a good potential campaign setting.
No need to apologize; they're among some of my favorite novels, too. Yes, I acknowledge that they have flaws, but--as you say--they're a lot of fun. Sort of the fantasy literature equivalent of an exciting and reasonably well-written summer popcorn movie. I actually prefer them to the Belgariad (and Mallorean) series, even though I read those first.
I'm not 100% certain that there's enough unique about the setting (as opposed to the characters) to make for a full-fledged campaign setting, but I'd love to see someone try it and prove me wrong.
I wouldn't necessarily make the various knight order paladins, since that doesn't quite fit, I'd probably go with prestige classes in 3e or some kind of paragon path or whatever in 4e.
I did come up with some ideas for doing the Belgariad and Mallorean under the 3e rules, though. Nothing really deep, just a bunch of notes I scribbled on a piece of paper (didn't develop it because I probably wouldn't ever play it anyway), and a partial write up of the Alorns as a PC race. If anyone's really interested, I could fork a new thread. Even though the stuff was 3e, there's probably stuff that an be worked into 4e, or the people sticking with 3.x might find it interesting too.
There's a licensed treatment for the Fudge system. Not very good for 4e, the Deryni universe is far too realistic. Main characters probably wouldn't rate above 2nd level in the 4e universe in terms of survivability.I think Katherine Kurtz's Deryni series of books would make for a good setting, esp if we get some good 4e psionics. Even so, I think most of the powers the books present could be represented pretty well within the ruleset, psi specific rules or no.
Well, you could model the knights as fighters (or heck, even rangers or rogues with the right builds and feats), and give them all Ritual Casting and/or multiclass feats for cleric or paladin powers.
But I think you could go with paladin. Since the various knightly orders are all religious orders, and paladins no longer have to be lawful good or even honorable, I think they could be made to fit, at least for some of them. (Knights that don't use much magic, like Kalten, notwithstanding.) Heck, I think some knights could even be clerics.
Obviously, you'd have to tweak some of the magics for flavor, but that's going to be the case with almost any literary setting translated to D&D.
Could you please fork it? I would be interested in attaining this information.