The city was Yartar, which is SE of Neverwinter, its 2+ months journey from BG
I missed that then. But this thread and everyones confusion about what city it is / where we're from as a PC just shows that nobody has a clear sense of what's happening. And that's coming from someone who is prepping Descent into Avernus (so I've read the campaign a few times now).
This proves the game makes a terrible job at providing you with some context. It is just confusing as it is now. The game should tell you where the action takes place exactly / ground it into the lore. I don't want to rely on external intel dropped by the devs during an interview to learn all of this. This is bad storytelling IMO.
We don't know where we've got captured. Our PC don't provide you with anything personal (like, we don't have any choices to customize him/her through dialog). They could either implement some choices through character creation or let us customize our PC through dialog. But I think the game and the story would benefit from it. It would be more engaging.
Plus, the world needs to react more to what's happening. Your companions should too. I mean if we were all abducted, wouldn't one of our first questions whenever we meet be "what was the last thing you remember before waking up on the ship ?" or "where were you kidnapped ?". Seems like some basic info and a great way to give players something to get involved in the story, and to create a bond between characters.
Where you got captured, how does hardcoding this affect your actions in the game. If you were caught in say BG how does that affect you trying to get rid of the tadpole? If you were adducted in bed with a Mayors wife, how does that affect how your going to get rid of the tadpole?
A DM being vague about YOUR past in an RPG is allowing you to make that decision, and choice for YOURSELF. From there you can eloberate use what you've created as your backstory to solidfy how your character reacts to this, either internally, or externally through sudden voilence, always using persusion, killing a companion, letting a companion go, traveling alone, not killing anyone they don't need to.
The moment a DM/Game tells you your backstory those choices that are going to make up your character is ripped away from you. If he tells you your a nobody, born to shepards your going to act a certain way. If he tells you your a nobles spoiled brat, your going to act a certain way. If he tells you you have crabs, and were captured in a brothel, with another man your going to act a certain way.
By telling you your no longer playing a true rpg, or your character your playing Theirs. Larian stated they want you to tell YOUR story, and want to help you tell YOUR story.
Larian is letting YOU make your decisions for yourself about your backstory, where you were captured, why you were captured at that time. Your backstory may be as simple as going okay I chose hermit, so Character was grabbed picking berries. or it could be as eloberate as what they had for dinner, what they did on a daily basis. If they had a family, if that family was captured at the same time, if so are they searching for them? If they are would you really be telling your compainions any of it? None of them seem to care about anything other then their own problems, same with the druids, goblins, and others. You might not find your family, but that background and character is YOURS, it's not another pregenerated character that belongs quite literally to Larian Studios. It's yours, and thats what Larian stated they wanted to do, is let YOU tell YOUR story, not Ast, or Le, or Shadowheart, but YOURS.
do you even rp bro?
Rant over
