Large maps

Just checking in on design choices for large maps.

My WIP has a large map. In game, there’s about 130 sq km/50 sq miles, with only a few areas technically inaccessible.

There’s two things in tension here: there’s a mechanical need for large numbers of locations, but the PC will spend a fair amount of time moving around, and I would prefer that she not have to troop through a dozen rooms every time.

The way I’ve got things set up is a map consisting of fairly location-dense regions - a forest that may have 25 rooms, say. The regions are bisected by location-sparse roads and paths, so that it might only take 4 moves to travel 3 miles on a road, but 25-40 if the PC cuts through a dense area. I’m hoping to add a “go to road” feature that will automatically get the PC to a road/path. (He can already “go home”, of course.)

Does this seem like a rational way to go about things?

That seems pretty reasonable, and spiritually in keeping with the rest of what we’ve heard about your game.

I just had the thought that something like the following could also work:
“>go north
Do you wish to go all the way through the woods? y/n”

Sure, as long as you make it clear what’s happening so the player doesn’t think that going one room up the road is the same as going one room up the woods.