Do your PCs begin their campaign in their first settlement as visitors and wanderers, or as its citizens?

When you begin a new campaign, do you prefer the PCs to be visitors in their very first settlement, or do you prefer them to have been born and raised there? Are they the wandering heroes who stumbled upon a city and witness its troubles, or are they longtime citizens who finally decide to make a name for themselves in this city/village/kingdom?

Generally I allow the players to choose for themselves. Though the campaign setting influences their choice.

I've done both, each time to bring a different feel to the game. More often than not however, one or two PCs are from the starting town (for lack of better name), and one or two PCs are from abroad.

Preparing a game for visitor PCs and local PCs require significantly different approach however. Doing both is always a bit of a headache.

'findel

I’ve done both, but usually I go with visitors, unless I have a compelling reason for them to be local citizens.

Depends on the game I am setting up.

My current campaign is Paizo's Carrion Crown and I had the player's come up with a backstory relation to the late archaeologist professor Lorrimor Jones and why he would have them as a pallbearer at his funeral. They could start out as residents of the town with his estate or from farther off like the city he was a professor at, or a professional rival of his expeditions from outside of Ustalav. The PCs chose a variety of insider/outsider roles to the starting town.

Nickolaidas said:

When you begin a new campaign, do you prefer the PCs to be visitors in their very first settlement, or do you prefer them to have been born and raised there? Are they the wandering heroes who stumbled upon a city and witness its troubles, or are they longtime citizens who finally decide to make a name for themselves in this city/village/kingdom?

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In most of my games, that's really up to the player and not me. It is highly useful if one or more members of the party have a natural connection to each other, and so I encourage players to weave their backgrounds together somewhat, but basically any background that fits the setting and ensures the PC has a motive to participate is going to get approved. Generally, when I try to put a constraint on a background, I try to keep it very minimal. For example, I might set a constraint where every player has to explain how they know and are on friendly relations with a particular NPC, but this would never constrain things as tightly as you do here. Occasionally I have run themed campaigns where everyone has to be an elf, or everyone has to be an evil demihuman, but even then you probably could wiggle out of tight constraints on where you were from.

For my ongoing campaign, the following briefly explains the situation of the PC's at beginning of the game:

PC #1: Officially a laybrother in the temple of the goddess of arts and beauty, the PC was actually a member of a heretical order of assassins within that temple tracking down a notorious necromancer.
PC #2: A cleric sent to encourage the worship of the goddess of the sun and tend the neglected shrine of that goddess. He was originally from a distant region where sun goddess worship was more prevalent, but was casually acquainted with PC #1 from their time in school together in a different city.
PC #3: A laybrother of the temple of the god of death and travelers who had been pledged to the temple as a three year old child. He was just returning to the city after two years spent guarding pilgrims on their journeys.
PC #4: A prostitute and member of the inner circle of the Guild of the Painted Lady, the thieves guild that ruled criminal interests in this region.
PC #5: A sailor and sometime pirate who had recently escaped marooning. He was friend and customer of PC #4, as well as a close childhood friend of PC #2.
PC #6: A brutish sailor from a distant barbaric region. He was at the start of the campaign just arriving in the city on shore leave.

So of the six, only three were natives of the city, and only one wasn't newly come to the city since two of the natives had been absent elsewhere for years. The party split somewhat into two groups by interests and motivation, but PC's #2 and #5 bridged the two groups, and they were united initially by the need to just survive.

This would also be a good example of why metagaming isn't always bad. While there was enough going on here to give a color of why this group formed, ultimately there is no reason that this group would have to be together beyond the fact that they are all PC's. Yet, if a player in the group acted as if he didn't realize the other PC's were PC's and so special - something that the player knows that the PC could not possibly know - this would have been bad roleplaying. Instead, the proper thing to do is assume temporarily Author Stance based on the knowledge that if the cooperative game is to continue, the party must form a fast and lasting alliance. To assume Actor Stance here to the extent that you decided your character just wouldn't continue with this group because it wasn't in character, instead of finding some color of character that excused the choice would not be IMO mature RPing. That said, it's up to everyone to cooperate with that and not immediately try to offend the morals and ethics of the rest of the PCs, but instead maturely find some color that lets you both express the character in a way that is true to the character, but which also lets the game continue.

The relationship between Roy and Belkar Bitterleaf in OotS is exemplary in this regard, and should be used as a model for both staying true to a character and yet finding a way to keep the group together.

That may seem a bit of a tangent, but it is I find very central to any discussion of what makes a good background or character.

A interesting followup question would be what effect being born in that village has on the PCs, especially in a feudal society.

Nickolaidas said:

When you begin a new campaign, do you prefer the PCs to be visitors in their very first settlement, or do you prefer them to have been born and raised there?

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I've done both over the years.

The former seems like the standard assumption. It leaves each player free to create his character and give it backstory independent of the others.

I find the latter quite intriguing, but you need to have players into the idea of having history with eachother in the characters' backstories. I like it for starting campaigns with that right kind of player - or for creating pregens for a one-off. Examples from actual game's I've run or played in:

• PCs were born & raised in the same town, on the fringe of an Empire that feels quite distant, with orcs and elves as neighbors. The town is poor, the climate arid (except for the inexplicably green deep forest where the elves live), the nearest neighbor is a mysterious order of black-robed monks. The culture is heavily influenced by Mystery Cults of various deities, with initiation into a cult marking adulthood, and the PCs all start on the cusp of that, having one last 'grand adventure' out in the woods.
• Four of the PCs, though from different (social)classes - one daughter of impoverished aristocrat, one the son of a politically ambitious wealthy freeman, one mischievous lower-class halfling boy, and one dignified Eladrin retainer of the wealthy family - are childhood friends (well, the Eladrin is older, more of a mentor, really). The obvious possibility of an alliance between the two families has two of them ready to take up the adventuring life, ironically together, to avoid an arranged marriage (they like eachother, but not /that/ way, ew), the halfling's more than up for it, and the Eladrin goes along in hopes of keeping them alive long enough to come to their senses. (The other two PCs are collected later, both wanderers.)
• The PCs are all 'characters' from the same town (the ones I remember were a parson, sheriff, and the town's crazy cat lady, actually a sorceress), and have had some dealings with a rich/eccentric old man who lives in a mansion just outside of town. When he goes missing and strange lights and noises come from his house, they investigate.
• The PCs are (almost) all citizens of Mellorca, a sort of fantasy-Athens in decline, including an aspiring gangster, a foundling raised in the clergy, a noble's illegitimate son consigned to the arena, and (I said almost) a 'sea elf' who just shows up and starts killing people, which jump-starts the party's story. (also had outsiders recruited into the party, later, though)
• The PCs are all goblins of the same community (The Mighty Green Goblin Gang, yeah, we bad), that has just gone through a major societal shift, they found religion - LG religion. Yeah, it's taking some getting used to. One of the PCs is a Paladin of the new religion (wow, smiting is FUN! - lets go find some more evil-doers!). Three of them are siblings, each of whom claims to be the oldest and therefore in charge of the other two.

It totally depends on the game. I've had them all start off as strangers forced together in a strange place, I've had them all the same race and related with interlinking backgrounds. Normally the key for me is whether I plan for the game to be tied around a particular location.

It varies based on the campaign/adventure to be played & the exact characters the players made.
Sometimes one or the other will make the most sense, sometimes a mix.

I guess you'd say that in our new campaign (3rd session tonight 5/23) the characters would all be visitors. They've all come to this inn that hosts an insane Mardi Gras type all night party on the summer equinox.
From there, once they've recovered from the debauchery, they'll be free to form an actual party & follow up on any # of adventure hooks they've learned of.