Villages, Part 2

I want to thank Phil Hatfield for pointing out some things I had neglected when I had written the original article about villages. His points were excellent and as such, inspired this sequel.

A Glimpse of A Town

As stated in my previous article, villages are like road stops on the post-apocalyptic road trip that Twilight: 2000 often is. And every village has a certain look, in fact, a village can have many kinds of looks depending on who's running the place, as well as the materials and skill base available, this is especially true when it comes to the defenses of the village, which is the thing that interests most miniature wargamers the most.

As stated in my article on buildings, the look of Twilight: 2000 buildings are a mix of pre-war buildings held together with contemporary materials (and most of them not having been cleaned recently), or post-apocalyptic shanty towns and tent cities to accommodate the hordes of refugees that have shown up to seek any sort of "lifeboat in a storm."

The village defenses will range from amateurish to deadly professional and will be as much a mix of materials as one can find. Everything from scavenged explosives, punji pits, cheaveu-de-frix, abatis, to simple walls made up of earth, rubble or both can and will be seen as part of a village's defenses. Entering a town is an experience in Twilight: 2000, as many towns have become wary of well-armed strangers. Most of the time, any strangers will be asked to disarm before they are allowed entry and the doors into a village wall are usually some of the best guarded and fortified in town.

All roads into town will be blocked by whatever is handy, from 18-wheelers, to (if you want to borrow a neat idea from the movie Stake Land), functioning railroad locomotives. The interior of town will be shabby and crowded, with trash pickup a memory, though how shabby will depend on how serious the town is to avoiding disease and vermin infestation.

Any and all gas stations or stores that sold propane are long since empty, probably with boarded-up windows, their snack bars long since looted. The town might be using the place for the municipal still(s) now, but there are other places they might be using as well.

Other than the outer walls, the town hall and the police stations are both heavily guarded, if your nation had permissive gun laws before the war, the sporting goods and gun stores have either been likewise looted, or the guns and ammunition seized to help form the local militia.

Any grocery stores likewise either stand empty, or are now the town municipal larder, and are as well guarded as the town hall or the police station, though this will depend upon the construction of the store in question.

Most villages in Twilight : 2000 do not have any sort of real electrical power. The ones that are often generated either by water, wind, or a surviving nuclear power plant. In any of these cases, the village will take great pains to disguise the fact that it does, in fact, have electricity. Nothing will attract marauders to a town like unshielded light in the distance.

Every square inch of land, including former parks, play fields, and playgrounds will be cultivated to grow food, and most farm animals will be breeding stock. Meat will be somewhat rare in the average villager's diet unless they go hunt for it.

Any roads in town will be in poor repair, and nobody should be using any road bonuses on a table.

Scenario Ideas

• A typical Marauder attack on a fortified town, numbers and defenses should be carefully balanced to make for a challenging game, but keep in mind that both sides are fighting for their lives. The villagers cannot afford to give up the amount of food the marauders want, and the marauders need the village's larder to get through the winter to come. A neat twist is to have a small band of infiltrators loyal to the marauders available to sabotage the town's defenses.

• A riot breaks out in a town occupied by government forces when the government brings in refugees and forcibly resettles them in the confines of the town. The militia, of course, sides with the village. The refugees should be a large number, but unarmed for the most part, while there should only be a small, but well-armed force of government troops.

• A small force of villagers have hired some American mercenaries to help them retake their town (or what's left of it) from a band of marauders. The marauders have left little standing and few survivors, but the villagers won't know that till they get into town. After that, they might not bother with a thing called prisoners...