Short answer. Yes, for a personal action. Rule 4, Section 2 lets you file where you reside or where the defendant or any of the principal defendants resides, at your election as plaintiff. If several defendants live in different places, you may choose to file where any one of the principal defendants resides.
What the law says
All other actions may be commenced and tried where the plaintiff or any of the principal plaintiffs resides, or where the defendant or any of the principal defendants resides, or in the case of a nonresident defendant where he may be found, at the election of the plaintiff.
Rule 4, Section 2 — Venue of personal actions. Read the full provision →
The venue options this rule gives you
Rule 4, Section 2 sets out where personal actions, meaning actions covered by this general venue rule rather than actions specifically tied to real property, may be filed: where the plaintiff or any of the principal plaintiffs resides, or where the defendant or any of the principal defendants resides, or in the case of a nonresident defendant where he may be found. This gives you more than one option, and the text is explicit that the choice belongs to you: it operates at the election of the plaintiff.
Why 'any of the principal defendants' answers your question
The phrase any of the principal defendants is written specifically for a case with more than one defendant. It does not require you to identify a single defendant whose residence controls, nor does it require every defendant to reside in the same place before you can sue there. As long as one of the principal defendants resides in a particular location, that location qualifies as proper venue under this rule, which is exactly the situation of suing several people who live in different places.
What 'principal' defendants means for you
The rule refers to principal defendants, not every defendant regardless of role. Where a case includes defendants who are only nominally or incidentally involved alongside others who are the real parties the claim is directed against, it is the residence of a principal defendant that counts for this purpose. Practically, this means your venue choice among several defendants' places of residence should track wherever your genuinely principal defendants are found, rather than any minor party added to the case.
The nonresident-defendant alternative, briefly
The same section also covers a defendant who is not a resident of the Philippines at all, allowing the action to be filed wherever that nonresident defendant may be found. That alternative sits alongside the residence-based options rather than replacing them, so if your case includes a mix of resident and nonresident defendants, you still have the full range of choices the rule provides: your own residence, any principal defendant's residence, or, for a nonresident defendant specifically, wherever that person can be found.