I've got my greedy hands on a VERY dog-eared (and slobbered) copy of one of the yea-olde publications, "Sprawl Sites" and there was an interesting collection of random encounters a lazy GM could throw in.

Since I am THE lazy Gm, was there a stand-alone program for the encounters, somewhere?

I sort of started on an Excel spreadsheet, but I forgot that I re-formatted the box and the version I loaded on is retarded. (Damn scratched disks!)

So, to save me the effort of trying to figure out a way around several nested IF functions, is there something out there?

-Tir.

I have a program I have been idly working on for the past year or so (putting like five minutes here, ten there) that takes a text file with percentages to generate a random crowd and then allow you to generate a personality (using something similar to D&D 1E's personality generator).

Give me about a week or so, I can program the random encounters from Sprawl Sites into a simple program for you seeing as I get home from work at 3:30 AM.

I haven't seen a specific program for it, but there are also the old D&D sort of random encounter programs that could be played with by mucking around with the data files.

Also, doesn't Mr. Johnson's LBB aso have some Random Encounter tables as well?

Great to know.

Actually, I really like the "Old skool Flavr" of the Old Sprawl Sites. Sadly, no Triad or SepRing encounters and a trifle...shall we say..Hopeful? Depiction of the Elves from "up north".

Laughed myself sick reading one of the "other" encounters - the Griffin in the back seat of the van. I swear I'm going to use that one.

-Tir.

Main thing with the random encounter list is that it's good so long as its just general. Like the way this talks about it. But then, that's the idea I suppose. Random encounters were never really meant to be followed for the letter, or how would one explain Ninjas in the Medieval D&D. Order of the Stick had a good discussion on that in their first book as one of the bonus strips.

Here's something that really helps with the random gang encounters:

Random Gang & Insect Spirit Generators

That's nice. The only problem is it's SR3, not SR4.

How is that a problem?

Used copies of Sprawl Sites pop up from time to time at used book stores, on ebay, and of course at the Friendly Local Game Store.

Knowing my runners, things would happen that would result in this:

"So, uh, you wanna come up?"
"Sure" <Giggles>
<Trooping upstairs>
"Uh, opp, just wait a sec, my pet might be a little excited if I bring you in right away." <Whistles> "Beaky, Beaky!"
<Strange growling noises, the love interest looks either intrigued or frightened>
"Ok, come on in. Hey Beaky, It's good to see ya - how are you doing, boy?!"
<Love interest> "Aaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrgggggghhhhhhhhh!"
"Don't, don't scream! He doesn't like loud noises! Beaky, NO! Bad Beaky!"


The horror...

-Tir.

After reading this thread, I decided to start writing a Random Encounter Generator based on the Sprawl Sites book. When it's finished I'll post a link to it, so ya all can have a look!

However reading through the encounters of the electronic copy I have (I bought it a month ago so I can print off maps when required) has shown me a rather serious editing mistake.

In the "Corp Police Encounters 1" section, encounter 6 it says:

Under what I really hope are coffee stains...

"A contact managed to get Ares Macro's Alpha Strike Blue keycodes, which govern physical and Martix access. Alpha Strike Blue is a high-level executive passcode that would make...
With Mullholland Points' hard storage in their hands, the runners could blackmail Ares for all it's worth"

Uh, crap. It's unfinished too...This copy is Copyrighted 1990. Was there any errata?

-Tir. Hell, finish the damn thing. Like we care;)

My copy says the runners trip security when they try to use it at Mullholland and Ares is alerted.