Either one of those sounds good to me. I think with fewer initial choices it's easier to keep the story thematically tied together, rather than just a rambling ball of nonsense. A lot of times fantasy founders at the outset because people have an idea set in their minds of some direction the story should take and create characters with non-setting attributes or histories, and are then obdurate when you ask them to change. :D

But Advanced is where the players are supposed to be able to cooperatively form a living story, right? So, you do what you feel is best.