How to Design Maps for a Sandbox Campaign Part III - Hub Maps
This is the third article on How to Design Maps for Sandbox Campaigns.
I highly recommend starting from the beginning by reading:
How to Design Maps for a Sandbox Campaign Part I - World Maps
How to Design Maps for a Sandbox Campaign Part II - Region Maps
to better understand how to make and design maps for your sandbox campaigns before jumping into this one.
However, this article will encompass everything needed to create a Hub Map for your Sandbox Campaigns. So let's begin!
3.Hub Maps
Hub Maps are Village, Town, or City maps containing the most important NPCs, Quest hooks, and a place for players to relax after intense combat or exchange loot found in dungeons.
As in other articles in this series, World and Hub Maps are more beneficial for the DM better to understand their world and the quests DMs craft. Meanwhile, the Region and Dungeon maps are used more as tools for your players to engage and experience the world you make.
So why is it important for us as DMs to have Hub Maps? Hub Maps are mainly used to organize your NPCs, stories, and plot hooks in one place that would lead to your quests or other locations. Hubs might also be an excellent avenue to add some side quest content for your players to invest more into the NPCs and add a layer of story for the quests connected to a hub.
For example, you have a quest about the orcs who pillaged a village, but meeting the NPCs affected by it in a town would give a personal touch to your quest and how it affects the world you are building.
So, let's begin with how to design and create our hub locations for your sandbox campaign. At the end of this article, we will look into the step-by-step creation of Hub Maps and different approaches to creating a map for your sandbox campaign.
3.1 What is essential to have in a Hub map?
It's important to note that Hubs are the most useful when they lead your players toward main quests and encounters for your Region Map. The following Hub design principles should focus on trying to achieve that.
Besides that, the Hub should hold most NPCs connected with your Quests. The Hub should also provide your players with opportunities for downtime and opportunities to understand better the world they are in.
Finally, the players should have a way to spend their gold on new equipment, rest, have some roleplay opportunities, or have some activity that would provide a different experience than the main quest they are engaging in to keep things fresh.
3.1.1 Quests
All of the quests connected with this Hub should directly influence the town. For example, if you're running a haunted mansion adventure, maybe there's a possessed NPC with some information about the mansion.
If you are running an Orc encounter with an exploding poison orcs encounter, perhaps the town has a poisoned river that they can't use because it makes somebody sick.
Maybe a villager was poisoned by the river and needs help, and the cure is a flower growing in the haunted mansion garden.
The Hub directs the players toward the quests and lets the Quests be intertwined into one another through sidequests if you spend some time on how these quests and encounters influence the Hub itself.
3.1.2 NPCs
NPCs are the stakeholders in your player's adventures because they will be the ones who will feel the player's results. If the bandits visited and trashed the tavern, the players would also understand that this might happen again if they did not intervene. So whenever you're making a quest, remember that quest givers are the ones who suffer the most from your villains or encounters. And they will be the biggest fans when the threats are eliminated or solved.
When making NPCs, think deeply about what additional element the NPCs will add to the quest or what NPC would need to be created to communicate the ideas for your adventure.
3.1.3 Leading to Story, Encounters, Quests
While NPCs are one of the ways to lead the players toward a quest, there are other ways to entice your players into specific areas of your region map. McGuffins might unlock certain areas in the Hub, or a completed quest can lead to another quest in another Hub.
NPCs in the Hub could provide lore and information on the following hubs where your story could progress. Be mindful when introducing these types of characters because they could spark your player's attention too much and cause them to leave the current location.
It's also a good note to have such quests as a treasure hunt-type series of quests, which could encourage your players to analyze the maps and go towards places near the main quests' locations. Hubs could have these additional hooks that promote specific gameplay or a subtle way to suggest to your players what path to take.
3.1.4 Reward Exchange
Adventuring should have a place to spend their gold on equipment or roleplay opportunities. But when creating merchants, think about how you can use them to lead the players into quests or side quests.
For example, an alchemist might need a troll heart found next to the main quest area.
Merchants and guilds in your hubs could be much more than simple vendors with their goals and aspirations that might help you drive your story. I've already written an article on How to incorporate economy into the game. If that's the thing that might interest you, have a look.
3.1.5 Downtime Encounters
Sidequests or activities your players can participate in are good breathers after a long and intense dungeon encounter. This also helps to bring more variety to your campaign and keep the players engaged.
With all of these points in mind, we can start with creating our hub map, but these points mostly mention what we should add to your Hub. If you're interested in learning more about how to create villages and towns, read these two articles:
So let's begin with creating a hub map.
3.2 Hub Map Tools and Design
There are a couple of approaches I suggest taking. All of them are valid, but the difference between them is how much time you have to spare to create these types of maps.
Now, if you're running an online campaign - It's quite good to invest some time into it, but IRL sessions might not benefit as much since they serve the Dungeon Master more than the players.
Watabou Town Generator (Basic)
Watabou + Inkarnate (Intermediate approach if you want some time to spare)
Watabou + Inkarnate + ChatGPT & CustomGPT (Advanced approach for additional quality of life additions, but not necessary)
3.2.1 - Watabou town generator
It is quite easy to use, pretty fast and does the job. However, this generator can't be modified to every creative whim you might have. Sure, it can, for instance, create district names or rename the town name, but if you want something extra, we will need to proceed with the next step.
3.2.2 - Watabou town generator + Inkarnate
The Watabou town generator works very well by giving you the town shapes of different sizes or landscapes, which you could improve and modify using Inkarnate. Similarly, how we create Region Maps, using Inkarnate stamps and opacity, we can populate the map with beautiful Inkarnate stamps to make every town or village look unique and fresh. This approach also becomes crucial when making some hub puzzles that would use the map or if you want to add some flavorful details to your town, which Watabou is incapable of.
3.2.3 Watabou + Inkarnate + ChatGPT & CustomGPT
This step is for those who want to do something extra for their players. For this, we would need to use ChatGPT & CustomGPT. In this article, "Powerful ways to use AI for your D&D campaigns," I delve deep into how we can create our CustomGPTs that would improve our DnD games and provide some AI generators on how to use them for this step.
However, for this article, let's take one of my generators to add details for my Hub. Dungeon Goblin Generators - Environments
I mainly use AI to save time searching for images depicting my created characters. Maybe it's not for you, but I like to do that. Also, it would help me tremendously if I ran an online campaign.
Writing every small character in the village could be a pain since it will take me away from creating the main quest. But when I have a tool that could help me create a fully realized NPC with a single prompt, it could help me inspire me when creating side quests or giving more details about the main campaign itself.
With a CustomGPT, I need a couple of sentences of the idea that sparks in my head to make the character and its locations. It helps if I want to create a town with a unique style and that the subsequent location buildings images would share those similarities. Every instance I have in the Hub could represented using AI in a detailed way.
Now that we know how to create Hub towns and connect them with our sandbox campaign quests, it's time to look into the last part of How we can create Dungeon maps in Part IV and how to bring it all together using LegendKeeper.
Read Next:
How to Design Maps for a Sandbox Campaign Part IV - Dungeon Maps
How to Design Maps for a Sandbox Campaign Part I - World Maps
How to Design Maps for a Sandbox Campaign Part II - Region Maps
