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I'm fairly new to Forbidden Lands. I only ran three sessions so far, using a mix of locations from the Gamemaster's Guide and homebrewed. My players like the system and the feel but are not keen on the setting. I was wondering how much of the default setting is "baked-in" into the system (e.g. racial bonuses, spells, etc.), and how easy would it be to homebrew a completely new setting using the Forbidden Lands system. Has anyone done this before and how easy was it? Thanks in advance!

Pretty much just the races and some of the monsters (Bloodlings).

The books even specifically tell you to play in your own or other worlds with the rules.

That being said, Forbidden Lands is the first campaign that I actually want to play in for a fantasy RPG. It does so much so right.

I'd also advise to give it a chance. The lore of the world and the different kins are very evocative and interesting, makes it easy to find plots and neat bits of lore to explore pretty much every session.
On the other hand, I don't find it very hard to make up your own world but if you want new monsters, you might need to put in a few hours to come up with new and interesting monster attacks and features. Or, just re- skin what's already in there...

Someone did a darksun setting, serch on reddit

I'm mostly happy with the lore and the feel of the setting (a few confusing or bizarre bits aside) but my players aren't, hence the reason for potentially homebrewing a different one. I was considering adapting "Into the Borderlands" (by Goodman Games) as a hexcrawl and dungeon crawl using Forbidden Lands rules, or taking a cue from Morrowind and putting the players on an island prison colony and having them explore it and build a better life from there.

I'll try to look for the Dark Sun adaptation, see how they handled it. Thanks for the tip!

This is the bit that I think is most important and should be carried into any other setting you decide to make.

There is a bit in the book "Name of the Wind" where the main character is in the woods with a tracker/hunter. They come across a plant that wilts when it comes in contact with people. The Hunter says "We are off the edge of the map." which confuses the main character because he's like.... "but this forest is on every map?"

The hunter explains that there are all kinds of edges of the map. Just because people have walked around the edge of the forest doesn't mean they know anything about whats in it.

These edges of the map and the spaces off of them are the places where monsters live. And in order for a setting to have them populations needs to be low enough and scarce enough that the edges can exist. That the monsters can exist and not trigger such massive man hunts that they are driven to extinction.

DnD's settings for the most part have no edges of the map. Forgotten Realms is purely mapped. The population of places like Neverwinter, Balders Gate, and such... The world is drowned out in mapped spaces and people who would squash everything and anything that could rear it's head. This goes for Greyhawk, DragonLance, etc etc... (Dark Sun is an exception to this rule).

Forbidden Lands is entirely off the edge of the map. You are given a map, yeah. But it's been cut off for hundreds of years. And the population levels are such that the biggest population centers on the map (of which there are only a couple). have hundreds of people. Not thousands or tens of thousands. There might only be a million people in the entire forbidden lands. But I doubt it. Far more likely to be even less than 500k. That off the edge of the map means that monsters can be anywhere and everything is waiting to be discovered.

Whatever you decide to do with your own setting, don't forget the edges of your map and the spaces that exist off of them. The more of them you have the more there is for your players to do.