Changing Navigation Mechanics - Devlog #5

Hey y'all! So far, most of my updates to the game have been focused on tweaking the balance between the Wandering Party and the various Beasts they encounter as well as enhancing the presence of magick in the day-to-day experience of gameplay. Today's update aims to (slightly) rework an as-of-yet untouched aspect of the game's design: Navigation. How Players move through the world, and how the world changes to reflect their movement, is fundamental to Journeys Weird and Winding as I've always imagined it. The changes included in today's update are aimed at bringing that fundamental pillar of the game's design closer to ideal. 

My hope is to keep the same feeling of exploring a strange and changing world while making the actual player experience more cohesive and fit more cleanly into the central fiction of the world. In some ways, this has meant making navigation easier, allowing Players to initiate a Navigation Turn in more circumstances and lower difficulty for moving through a Clearing, and in others it's meant adding the challenge of resource management i.e. asking Players to use Curse Resin in order to begin a Navigation Turn.  

I've included a brief summary of all the major changes to the game for this new version (v1.1.5-beta): 

• Updated Dungeon Hazard table to increase it to a D10 roll. 
• Updated “Strange Compass” travel incantation to fit new Hex rules.
• Updated Travel Hazard table to change the hazard where a Point of Interest is suddenly changed to read that the Environment of one Hex is suddenly changed instead. 
• Changed Hex travel Weird test difficulties so it’s easier to travel from one Hex inside a Clearing to another inside the same Clearing.
• Changed rules for Navigation Turns:
  • Players can now initiate a Navigation Turn whenever they’re at the edge of their Clearing and near the Cursed Fog, but the Weird test becomes easier the more of their current Clearing they’ve explored i.e. if you’ve only explored 1 out of 4 Hexes the Test is very difficult.
  • To initiate a Navigation Turn, the Wayfinder must use Curse Resin to access the magick needed to complete the action. 
• Changed Environment rules when rolling a new Clearing, so that the D12 Environment rolled applies to the entire Clearing, except for certain cases like Oceans and Coasts. 

As always, though, the best way to get a handle of these changes is to download the new version and try it out! Either way, thanks again for playing and I hope you stay weird.