Hi! - Thanks for your comment and question :D - to be honest, I suspect yea it did, though potentially subliminally rather than intentionally. I remember watching a video on Tokaido and enjoying the journey/roadtrip vibe very much, though that was ages before Stories was written so maybe the vibes stuck around.
Amusingly, Stories was initially intended as a hex-crawl until I found Ultraviolet Grasslands and realised the pointcrawl style was more fitting.
I really appreciated the experience, and I shared a leg of that journey to my blog in two parts. It was part of highlighting to Malaysian flood relief bundle with a few other games, so people could see what you contributed, both to the relief and to gaming in general.
The simplicity of taking beautiful art and turning it into a map still blows me away. It's right there, and it never even occurred to me, but it helped ground the experience and made it that much richer. Do ping me if you ever do an expansion and put together more maps and tables.
If you want to read the short journey I shared with my audience, here's the two parts:
https://themaddestsailor.wordpress.com/2022/02/08/stories-to-astonish-the-world-...
https://themaddestsailor.wordpress.com/2022/02/10/stories-to-astonish-the-world-...
Thank you very much for sharing your experiences with the game - it was really great to read through your blog posts :D and I am glad that you like the map idea and that it enriched the experience. One of things I was pondering a lot while writing the game was how to convey the intended atmosphere and vibes so am happy that the paintings were helpful with that
Also, thanks for your interest in future content - I will definitely keep you in the loop regarding expansions or new maps
