Game Design III - Starting Out
Once you've got a character, you need a name. I'm picturing a list of common names for your chosen race, with some brief discussion of how to create new ones if the options presented don't appeal. I'm also picturing a GM who vets names--maybe they do other things, too, but names people are trying to use pop up and they give them a quick once-over for "is this name stupid". This latter is probably too much to ask, though.
Anyway, the way I'm picturing the starting set up is as follows: there are some number of large cities on the world map. Maybe one of them is "the human city" and one of them is "the dwarf city" and so forth, or maybe there's a large dwarven enclave in the capitol of the human empire, or whatever; there are a number of cities you can be assigned to, based on your chosen species (or maybe you get to choose which large city you want to start near, either way works). Anyway, it's kind of silly for all humans to be from one little village and all gnomes to be from another and so forth, so the way it works is kind of different from the traditional.
There are villages close to the big city that are relatively safe--the big dangerous critters have been killed or driven off, it's far from the border with the goblins, whatever. Each of these villages has a couple of things: a blacksmith, someone who can teach the basics of magic, maybe an herbalist or a hedge-witch, a couple of merchants, that kind of thing. When you create your character, the system looks around at the various little villages and picks one that hasn't had a hero from it recently. You start there. This means, of course, that not everyone's going to have the same quests, but quests are another post entirely.
You should be able to spend at least your first few hours of gameplay in and around this little village, but eventually you're going to hit a point where you need to make your first trek, to the big city. Fun awaits!