DangerousPuhson
My my my, we just loooove to hear ourselves don't we?
We are basically talking hubs vs. nodes at this point, the basis for all RPGs, be they videogames or tabletops. Following the connections, the spokes between them, makes the campaign. Those connections are the adventure. But this is RPG 101 stuff... stone-age design.
The natural evolution of the question originally posed is "what makes one hub more user-friendly than another"? For that, I believe we have to focus more on the connections between hub and nodes, rather than the content of the hubs and nodes themselves (which is subject to just standard layout best practices, a rehashed conversation).
A hub branches into spokes by its nature - so how can we arrange these spokes so that they stay out of each other's way (from a layout perspective), while simultaneously making them easily accessible at any time (as the players choose which spoke to follow)? How can we cluster them to cut page flipping while simultaneously ensuring that unrelated information doesn't bleed in to what the DM needs to know at the time he needs to know it? What is the best way to present this information in a way that the DM can organically thread them through the hub without being too intrusive or leading the players by the nose?
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I'm of the personal opinion that the most effective way to identify the best practices of modules is to look at the failings and to learn from them, rather than seeking out what is done well and copying it. Figuring out how to fix something broken is easy; figuring out the ideal approach from the get-go is much tougher.
To use an example of bad layout design, I'd put up Princes of the Apocalypse - it's a hub world with spokes connecting dungeon nodes together, but it's a poorly done hub. We can infer a lot of good lesson from PotAs problems.
First, WotC split up the hub across the book, so you have to page-flip even when dealing with the same area. I'd say that's a no-no.
Lesson learned: don't spread out your hub.
Furthermore, the spokes are all over the place, buried in the hub and not brought to the forefront of the DMs attention. Consequently you have to give everything the highlighter treatment and do a few read-throughs to grasp what's supposed to be going on.
Lesson learned: overviews of how things connect are important - the best supplemental tool I've seen for PotA was a very basic flowchart which outlined how the overworld hub connected to the dungeon nodes by way of the spokes (rumors, geography, factions, etc.), which was immensely helpful and should have been included from the start.
Another prime problem with the campaign (which the community identified immediately) was the tendency for players to accidentally wander into way overpowered (for their level) dungeons at a whim - no spoke control.
Lesson learned: spokes need to be wrangled, separated, curated, so that players don't follow them into nodes when they shouldn't be going into those nodes.
The natural evolution of the question originally posed is "what makes one hub more user-friendly than another"? For that, I believe we have to focus more on the connections between hub and nodes, rather than the content of the hubs and nodes themselves (which is subject to just standard layout best practices, a rehashed conversation).
A hub branches into spokes by its nature - so how can we arrange these spokes so that they stay out of each other's way (from a layout perspective), while simultaneously making them easily accessible at any time (as the players choose which spoke to follow)? How can we cluster them to cut page flipping while simultaneously ensuring that unrelated information doesn't bleed in to what the DM needs to know at the time he needs to know it? What is the best way to present this information in a way that the DM can organically thread them through the hub without being too intrusive or leading the players by the nose?
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I'm of the personal opinion that the most effective way to identify the best practices of modules is to look at the failings and to learn from them, rather than seeking out what is done well and copying it. Figuring out how to fix something broken is easy; figuring out the ideal approach from the get-go is much tougher.
To use an example of bad layout design, I'd put up Princes of the Apocalypse - it's a hub world with spokes connecting dungeon nodes together, but it's a poorly done hub. We can infer a lot of good lesson from PotAs problems.
First, WotC split up the hub across the book, so you have to page-flip even when dealing with the same area. I'd say that's a no-no.
Lesson learned: don't spread out your hub.
Furthermore, the spokes are all over the place, buried in the hub and not brought to the forefront of the DMs attention. Consequently you have to give everything the highlighter treatment and do a few read-throughs to grasp what's supposed to be going on.
Lesson learned: overviews of how things connect are important - the best supplemental tool I've seen for PotA was a very basic flowchart which outlined how the overworld hub connected to the dungeon nodes by way of the spokes (rumors, geography, factions, etc.), which was immensely helpful and should have been included from the start.
Another prime problem with the campaign (which the community identified immediately) was the tendency for players to accidentally wander into way overpowered (for their level) dungeons at a whim - no spoke control.
Lesson learned: spokes need to be wrangled, separated, curated, so that players don't follow them into nodes when they shouldn't be going into those nodes.
