Lanefan
Victoria Rules
I was thinking of LotR when I posted what you quoted.A thought on this: in LotR the principal characters are from different places - Mirkwood, the Iron Hills, the Shire, Gondor, etc - but most of the time are in situations that are grounded or connected to them in some fashion: the Hobbits were friends before they started journeying together, and they meet Bilbo at Rivendell; Gimli re-enters Khazad-Dum; Legolas meets Elves in Lorien; Aragorn is on a quest to his ancestral homeland, through lands that he has travelled before (and he see the Argonath, the statues of his ancestors, for the first time); when Gandalf arrives at Edoras, and at Minas Tirith, he is not a stranger to his hosts. Etc.
So it seems to me that the idea that @Hussar and I are trying to convey isn't just about geography - although that may sometimes be an aspect of it. It's about all the different ways in which PCs can be connected to a setting: location, kin, history and legacy, etc.
The Fellowship hail from all over the place, and while several get to touch their homeland (present or past) during their travels, never more than one of them is at or near home at any given time.
For most of the piece Strider/Aragorn doesn't have a home; and Gandalf never does. Boromir does have a home but dies before anyone gets there. The Hobbits are away from home the entire time, though we do get to see them leave and return. Legolas (at least in the movies) is one of the Mirkwood Elves, who don't figure into LotR.
Sure these people are (or become) well known to many, and have pre-existing associations in some cases. But those pre-existing associations are generally only with key important people rather than commoners or relatives.