from a cartographic point of view:
pros
- leader lines to locations is more useful than numbers and a legend
- title is easily noticeable, but doesn't hog space
- aesthetically pleasing, nice artwork
- scale bar present
cons
- north arrow unnecessary(though unobtrusive and pretty)
- scale bar uses bold unnecessary pattern, 20 ft scale not necessary
- leader lines and labels create clutter
- performs poorly at main objective(assuming that is navigation, and not analysis since it is not a thematic map)
- labels buildings but there is no way to direct the pcs to those buildings, easy way to solve would be to label roads.(pc: let's go to the inn; gm: ok you reach the stonehill inn. or with street labels- gm: before you is a large hill crowned with a small village, on the roadside there is a sign which reads "welcome to phandalin" just past that is a sign post reading "mainstreet" ; pc: ok we go down mainstreet gm: as you walk into town, you see a large building on your right. from the awning a sign hangs which reads "miner's exhange") with road labels pcs can actually explore the town, instead of just finding the inn because they want to, they have to make the right choices and stumble across it.
- what do the colors of the buildings represent? are they building material? what small underprivileged village will have blue roofs?- does blue mean stone, red mean adobe, and brown mean wood?- that would actually be extremely helpful for description, but if not, and the colors are just to make the map pretty then they are unnecessary, and unrealistic(assuming this is what the village actually looks like from the air).
overall the map is pretty and nice to have but not really useful as a tool. the only useful bit is the building labels, which could be replicated elsewhere as a list of text(it probably is, as most of those places should have a description of some sort- which goes back to the issue with the legend and flipping back and forth).
