So...I'm play testing my game and a weird WEIRD thing is occurring.

See, when I preview my map from the editor, when I walk up to a mountain side, I have gone to great lengths to ensure that they are untraversable.
The sides are steep and the peaks jagged so that any body silly enough to try and hike up there will be unable to. But when I play test, I start in a town-not the world map, and as you know, and I have just discovered, when you exit a town, it spits you a certain distance away from it. Well I placed the opening of my town facing one of those steep hills, just because i liked the look of having a town where you have to kind of walk around behind it to enter, and well, the game spits me out the same distance no matter what. To the extent that it FORCES the game to place me on a tile I NORMALY would not be able to walk up. Instead of getting stuck and not being able to move, which WOULD MAKE SENSE, the game seems to solve this little conundrum by simply IGNOREING ITS RULES ABOUT WHAT IS WALKABLE.

...

Hold on... I need to chuck this town next to a lake...

Next to the lake you should just float in the air. If you're in playtest mode then you can walk over any terrain regardless of hight. Except water. In the actual play mode you will get stuck like you said it should. That's why it seemed to fix itself.

OHHHH...Ok.

And Now I see that even with the character modles I chose the game is FORCEING me to use the character Archetypes for battle.

Keep this in mind while placing your towns and dungeons on the fields. When you exit a town or dungeon, yes, it does indeed place you at a decent distance from the object.

Now if you enter a town or dungeon and don't spend much time there, it'll place you exactly where you were when you entered it (but facing the opposite direction because you're leaving). If you're inside for a long time, it seems to forget the place where you were on the field when you entered; in that case it places you in the default location, standing several paces away from the object. I don't know what exactly causes it to forget your location on the field, but it seems to happen when I spend a lot of time in town. If I just go into town to do one thing and then exit, it usually doesn't forget where I was when I entered.

I think "Raiders" may suffer a bit from this problem because the Lava Cave is a bit too close to a drop-off ledge that you can't walk down. I haven't tested it yet to see what will happen. If you're playing "Raiders", do not go into the Lava Cave, save at the save point, and then turn off the console. I have a feeling it'll forget where you were when you entered and perhaps place you out too far and you'll get stuck on the mountain side.

All other dungeons have sufficient clearance that there shouldn't be any problems exiting them. And in my current project I've made sure everything has sufficient clearance.

Personally, I prefer to have quite a bit of breathing room when exiting onto a field. I don't like to be right at a cliff edge or facing a mountain or a hill at point blank. I think the vista you get from exiting a town or dungeon is important, especially if the game starts in a town. That vista will be the first thing the player sees of the field.

Yeah, I agree with Xix. A game that spits me against a cliff will lose points, 'cause it'll feel like I got spit out on the wrong side of the town and now I have to contend with the town being an obstacle to get around, when I should've been put where I can easily access my next route.

Yeah, that's a good point, Dray. All of my towns are in centralized locations because you'll be coming back to town after you're finished in a nearby dungeon. I place towns on patches of dirt terrain with some dirt in front of the town and dirt roads leading off toward places of interest (castles, other towns, etc). I figure the place in front of the town will be worn down to dirt because of heavy travel via horse and carriage, and on foot. So when you exit the town, you're standing on a patch of dirt in front of it, and there are roads extending away.

If you have to come back to the town that's facing a mountain, players will probably just walk up to the back of the town, where it lets you enter (you can enter an object from any direction; in "Raiders" you can get behind some of the caves and go inside, a problem I've fixed in my newer project). If the game forgets your location where you entered, you'll leave and be facing the mountain. If it doesn't forget, you'll be placed wherever you were when you entered. It's better to have the town facing a direction that the player will approach it from.

Towns are usually centers of commerce. If it's a town you don't have to go back to, then sure, place it inside a maze of mountains. But a town the player has to come back to frequently should be centralized and accessible.