New Arrivals, or Old Home Folks?

[thegamemistress]

When starting a new game, do you prefer to have the characters be native to the game's locale, or new arrivals

Comments

[aetherspoon]

I let my PCs choose where they are from before telling them where the campaign is.

If some happen to be from that area, then good for them. If not, well, oh well.
Then again, in the RPing system I use, your homeland gives you what languages you start with along with a free skill. My primary campaign world's nations are also vastly different places, to the point of having a modern technology country bordering a medieval one, so the selection of where they come from has great significance to the players.

[aetherspoon]

Ah, the benefits of never using a premade campaign world. :)

Yes, I do tell them where they're at campaign universe wise.

[sodzilla]

I tend to do a bit of both, chiefly depending on the players. For ex, in my current game all the players but one have zero interest in bonding with NPCs (yes, I know I need new players, can't get 'em, sucks to be me). So I've set things up so that they'll be transitory, rarely staying long enough in one locale to form any deep friendships, and with few family members still alive.

On the other hand, if I had players who actually wanted to do the whole socializing bit, I'd at least give them the option of staying in/being from one place. I tend to handle the questions of what they "should" know by having a skill called Area Knowledge or similar, where default level means you know the neighborhood(s) you grew up in and the public personas of local notables, and higher skill levels mean you have a bit more detail...

[syntaxerror37]

Generally speaking, this is a decision I leave up to the PCs. Then again when making their PCs, they don't always know where in the world the game is starting.

[blackpaladin]

It also depends on the type of story you're trying to tell, and how much prep work you as the GM are willing to do beforehand. If you're willing to sit down and type up several pages of backstory about the setting, important history tidbits and well-known NPCs, then a "hometown heroes" story can work quite well. (This can also work well through frequent in-game flashbacks where such history gets established on the fly, but that puts an added responsibility on the GM to make sure that the history that gets invented doesn't screw up your present storyline.)

[paladin92]

I prefer starting the game with a small town of some such and haveing most of the PCs local to it. In a small town its fairly easy to inform the players about its history and current events.
Normally, however, I make sure this small town is near a larger city or in a modern setting I have the PCs be from a nearby suburb. This makes travel easier along with a quick change of enviroment and all their materials needs can be met easily before or until they travel abroad.