I found this on Wikipedia about Nentir Vale:
Nentir Vale
Nentir Vale is the sample community provided as a default setting in the 4th edition Dungeon Master's Guide. Most sourcebooks refer to the cosmology this community exists in as simply "the D&D world" though this appears to be an informal term. The overall setting is one in which great empires of various races, including tieflings and dragonborn, have long ago or recently fallen.
Towns and other civilization centers are described as "points of light" in an otherwise dark age, with the DM encouraged by the guidebook to leave the rest of the world largely unplanned, vague and unpredictable. The deities presented in the 4th edition Dungeon Master's Guide are a combination of Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms and newly created gods. What cultural uniformity exists beyond the Nentir Vale, other than the Material Plane-wide worship of some or all of these figures, is little
This "points of light" bit (part of 4E) makes me think that setting a home campaign in the Shadowed Age between the fall of the 1st Imperium and the Time of Terror/Rise of the Coryani Empire might be a good time setting for a home campaign. A lot less back story for new players to absorb and they learn about the world by exploring what lay beyond their home village or city.
The only downside would it would be hard to include Ss'Ressen and Dark-kin, and I imagine gnomes would be rare to non-existent. Still it might be fun to give it a try.