Starting at the Fringe

Rather than start in a big city, the party will be from the village instead. This does a few things. First, it prevents the campaign from becoming de-facto urban. We've done that and we want to avoid that. Second, starting in a small town sets the characters up to be the potential heroes. Rather than have all the heavy hitters busy with more important stuff, YOU are the heavy hitter and THIS is the important stuff. Third, a more rural setting should allow some racial mixing, absent the political ramifications of the large city state. We can have generations of tieflings and dragonborn living in this small village, likely ancient refugees from their homelands. The idea behind using Lebanon as a model is that you have all these different peoples living in harmony, while their peoples from outside the country are hostile to each other. A rural setting is where this should work best.