I do think it would be interesting for a character to be able to get lost in a forest or on a dark moonless night.
What’s posted does seem to be very complex (though reasonably well thought out in my opinion). A simpler system may work a little better though. We already have survival skill, and wilderness navigation often falls into that area.
(for an example I recall a Mythbusters episode where Adam And Jamie both tried to get to a destination separately through a forest. Jamie, who actually has a small amount of wilderness survival knowledge for the most part managed to keep the correct heading. Adam on the other hand spiraled around uselessly, I roughly recall Adam ended up even farther from his destination than he started.)
Could we simply have survival skill be the determining factor for how well you know where you are when in a forest or at night in unknown territory. And simply keep track of how often the player has visited the area for the knowing the terrain side?
May be able to simplify the map as well. Instead of having two seperate map modes. How about when the player could be considered to be lost instead of showing the player symbol on the map it just shows another symbol repeated over an area to indicate that yes, you are lost, but you know (based on your survival skill, ambient light, and how many times you’ve been to the area) you are somewhere within this area indicated by the symbols.
After all if I jumped over my backyard fence and started wandering around in the florida jungle back there (no easy feat). I would know that A) I’m somewhere west of my house. B) I’m north of [street name redacted] because I didn’t cross it, and C) I’m east of the highway, because again, I didn’t cross it.
That could still be an area a few dozen square miles. Especially since I don’t know exactly what’s north out there (there’s another road of course, but it’s some distance away.)
That kind of system still allows for navigation items as well. If you choose to make a map when in an area you could have the game consider you to always fully familiar with an area a few maptiles from where you drew the map, as long as you have the map in your inventory. As well as a big bonus to familiarity even without the map. Writing something down is great for memory, even if you don’t keep the writing.
Something like a compass could just give a large bonus to survival skill when it comes to navigation checks (since we inherently know where north is), binos could similarly give a smaller bonus to that check (you can use those to identify distant landmarks better), and a functioning gps system simply removes the check altogether, as long as it’s powered.
EDIT: I just realized I may have completely rewrote the idea. Sorry about that, I tend to get a bit overzealous when I see a good idea and have thoughts on how it could work.
