After doing the crash site quests I went to shrouded Hills and did the quests there. Then I went on to Tarant and feel a little overwhelmed at all the stuff happening there! I did the dungeon at Schuylers and sold a couple things. I have Magnus in my party now with Virgil. Wondering if the normal game progression is in Tarant or maybe I should be cutting my teeth in a smaller town first? Thanks

The main quest after your time in Tarant takes you somewhere else, not a city. But, you do probably want to explore a bit more before you go there (as it is hard if you're low level). Ashbury is cool, as is Blackroot, and Dernholm. All good cities to at least see and find out about, even if they don't have the number of quests that Tarant does.

The side quests in Tarant tends to be the easier once (except for certain in the slum etc) some of them will also take you outside the town to certain dungeons and/or cities etc
Id advice you to continue doing the tarant bit before going to ashbury, but be warned that some of the tarant stuff is RLY easy and some is rather hard.

1)Crash site area (kill all enemies)
2)Arbalah's quest
3)Shrouded Hill's (do all the quests that are available to finish w/o leaving this location)
4)go to Tarant (random encounters are easier on the road to Tarant), do all of the "peaceful" quests there first (DO NOT enter slums yet) - it requires a lot of exploration which may seem to be exhausting at the beginning but after a while you'll know exactly what's where
IMPORTANT PART:
- once you'll be around lvl 11 or 12 it's time to go for some treasure hunting => Tarant sewers should be a main resource of xp for you at this point ; if you're playing a magic user it should be rather easy - for technologist, it requires a decent set of weapons (fine revolver and katana are minimum I'd say - balanced sword that Magnus can fix for you is better)
- after clearing about half of Tarant Sewers you should be around lvl 16 or 17 ; at this point you can go&visit Dernholm (just a few quests there, but one of them requires a return to Tarant) and after that - Black Root (there's a Melee and Firearms Master there!)

Voyage to Dernholm and Blackroot can be connected with clearing Wolves Lair (pretty nice stuff there and dynamite!) and (IMPORTANT no 2) Liam's Workshop area as reward for quest connected with it is very valuable for technomancer (Chapeau of Magnetic Inversion that works w/o a charges if you've UAP patch installed - I think it doesn't work at all w/o UAP)

Once you'll be back in Tarant, you should be around lvl 18 or 19. Clearing Tarant sewers + doing all of the quests available at this point in the city (except for slums part) + doing the same thing with Shrouded Hills, Dernholm and Blackroot should leave you with lvl 21, decent equipment and around 10,000 - 12,000 gold pieces of assets after usual expenses.

you can also check Steve's guide or game banshee guide