Area Knowledge is a great idea in principle but I don't know how to make it work in practice. If we can loosely say there are three common kinds of campaign:
- Those where the world is irrelevant, because it all happens in a labyrinth. Area Knowledge is essentially useless.
- Those where the PCs are based in a particular location, and the immediate surrounds are important to them. Area Knowledge of the area where the game happens is very useful. But as the campaign proceeds everyone has a fair bit of time in the area and Area Knowledge stops being distinctive. The best solution here might be to make Area Knowledge more specific.
- Those where the PCs hexcrawl all over the place, and no particular location is especially important. Area Knowledge can be briefly useful but not often. To some extent it can be made more general.
I don't feel Area Knowledge is really helping to make any of these games more fun. Which is sad because I appreciate it's trying to represent something real and important.
Maybe a game between 2 and 3, where some areas get visited a lot, would be where Area Knowledge shone. Like a city campaign where you go into the rough part of town sometimes, the noble part sometimes, etc.