How to Destroy a Town

Sure, towns can be changed by time, but often you may want a certain event
to wreck a town or dungeon, or to bring a sleeping fort back to life. This
is especially useful when you have quickfire ravage a town and then you
return to explore its ruins. Such a case was sulfras's lair in Exile 2.
However there is no command to make a player go to a different town when
the step on a space if a certain flag is active. But there are several ways
to make a copy of a town on the same space which you can then ruin or bring
back to life. Each have their own advantages and disadvantages, and this is
the subject of this paper.
(Editor's note: While some of these solutions are interesting, the Set
Variable Town Entry feature was included to do just this. This window is
reached using the Scenario window. However, these methods are also
intriguing and worth mentioning.)

1) Just move the town: the easiest way is to have the special hide the town
and then reveal a second town right next to it. If you want, the second
town to be exactly like the first, except it is ruined then just import the
first town into the second and make the necessary changes. The great thing
about this method is that the two towns can be exact duplicates and you can
ruin one already knowing that what you haven't changed is a duplicate of
the other. But it is hard to explain how your town moved on the outside
map. I have had a cave dissipear, turn to rubble, and reveal a cave behind
it. Then I say that the front of the second cave was blown away and make
the party start much farther forward in the second cave then they noramlly
would to account for the new entrance. This method is the easiest for
creating a duplicate but you will have to think up of a good reason for the
movement, else it will look wierd.

2) Use a special to change the town. This special would occur everytime a
party entered the town and it could then change the landscape, activate
other nodes, and then activate special town encounters. Thus instead of
wandering monsters (unfortinitly specials can't affect the occurance of
wandering mosnters) you could place several bucnhes of monsters in the town
when the party entered each time. Or with a certain encounter all the town
folk could come back to life. The problem with using a special is that it
is very labor intensive to change the landscape since you must change the
terrian one box at a time. However this way works well since it doesn't
disrupt the outdoor location of a town. But the lack of wandering monsters
might make a dungeon a bit too easy. This is a good way to change a town if
you want a town destroyed, but not much terrian changed and not to many
monsters, mostly just new specials and perhaps a entrance to a now revealed
new town/dungeon.

3) Use the stairway command. Perhaps the best way to change a town is to
use the stairway command. Using a special set on the party's entrance space
you can have them activate a stairway (use stairway #8 which won't give
them any dialog box) to another town which is an exact duplicate but is
different. The only problem with this method (I haven't tested it yet) is
that there is a noticable delay with the stairway command as the new town
loads and there might be a visual notice. If you can get it to work well
though, it could be the easiest of the three.

Using these three methods, having the outdoor location moved, having a
special make the changed, or using a stairway you can easily ruin a town
(right after the party returns from a big quest, for example) or have the
party bring a town back to life (sleeping beauty?). The former has many
uses, a town could be destroyed, and tower pillaged, or a evil fort
destroyed by the PCs who return to explore the ruins. Destroying a town
gives a scenario many more possibilities and adds to the fun when the PCs
find their main base not quite the way it used to be. I hope that my
explination of different ways to destroy a town has made this process
clearer and easier for the everyday scenario creator.
-Asa Swain (eswain@tiac.net) 