I've been reading the manual at work and looking forward to when I can actually play with the editor (I polished off Dear Braveheart in one sitting).

I'm planning on making a game for my friends. Naturally this will be packed with jokes. A lot of things I have to go thru the game to see if they are there, but it makes writing the layout of my game tough. I'd hate to write out an awesome scenario only to find out it can't be done. So here I am asking you all who have at least touched the screens in Editor.

Is it possible to have monsters ransack a town?
I would like at one point for a town to suddenly come under attack and the characters can easily "random encounter" the invading force.

Can you set Animal/Monsters as NPCs?
More specifically, can I have this town populated with talking racoons?

Ya see, as a joke, I want the player(s) to find a town called "Racoon City". Expecting a Resident Evil rip-off, they walk in and find just that eveyone there is a racoon. They can buy things, talk to people, and sleep at the inn.
Later on at night the Zombies attack
While the PCs make their way thru the town to get out as the NPCs are running around, they can randomly combat encounter zombies.

So is there a way to make this work, or should I just scrap this scenario?

RPG Maker 3 is a bit limited in this field. You can't directly force your characters to move to a certain part, however, you can use the Storyteller to show the story sequences in a style much like Fire Emblem cutscenes.

But, I don't think random battles are allowed in towns. Again, I don't have it in front of me.

For the second question, animals and characters can be NPCs, but monsters can not.

You should be able to do this cutscene with a little inventiveness. That's a significant part of using the RM series: getting around limitations.

Curses. So there's no way to break up the town and create terrain that looks like a town in shambles and increase the random attack factor of zombies?

If I find a way around this, I'll let you know

Next question - I know you can set up Sunny Day, rainy day, ect.
Can you set the environment of a town to be different to that of outside?
You are walking down a path on a sunny day, you approach a town and go in. Instantly it's raining in the town.

It'd make a good hook for an adventure - a town cursed with bad weather because someone angered something.

Maybe if you used the storyteller, then had a "before" town and "after" town, perhaps.

And the weather question, yes, you can!

There are no raccoons. The only animals available are a dog, gorilla, mythical beast (a rabbit-kangaroo-thingie), frog (bigger than the dog), chicken, treeman, lizard man, wolfman, and bird man.

Actually you can have zombie random attacks, but to do it you have to put an invisible event in the town, then have that even trigger a random battle. Then make a whole bunch of those all over the town.
I did that in one of my towns which had been overrun with dragons and titans.

PRECISELY! That's what I'm looking for. My plan was something the PC did that does trigger it.

How do I put this nicely?

This is for rpgmaker3 right?

If you create a town with actual buildings you can enter you'll need a good 12 buildings to make it look like a town, and since you can only have 20 events in a town you'll only be able to make a whole 8 random zombie battle events. I suppose you could work with eight giving you 12 random zombie battles people might run into.
(still won't work very well, my guess)

If it's a real small town it could work. ( use witch/woodsmen hut area )

Create 6 buildings...

You don't require all houses to be accessable. In my town of Ottawin, there are areas where there's about 6 decorative houses. Maybe hide an accessable house between them with a good item inside.

Oh, 8's too many, I'm hoping to get 3 zombie battles while the PCs try to flee. It's not the central part of the plot, but necessary for the funny part.

This is all very good to know.