Meet GREG

 Meet GREG: the Guided Random Encounter Generator.

GREG is a project I started in 2020 but kicked back into gear last spring with a friend designed to do two things: to keep up to speed on the changes in a web framework I wasn't getting to use enough at work to remain competitive on my resume with but also to provide an avenue to generate random encounters, dungeons, and lairs using data provided, configured, or provided by the user.

Got custom monsters? Got a custom encounter list - or modified treasure types for your home game? In the past, having all of the above, I had never been able to do it automatically. And friends - I have friends who have made tools like this customized to do exactly this: but it's always hard coded - so when something changes, they go back into the java script... or the python... or the whatever the framework of the week was to make those changes, hoping the thing stays together. So - not having that resource, or not knowing about it at the time - this was my way to try to create an easy-to-use, easy-to-configure, will-always-work local or hosted mechanism to do exactly that.

Like I mentioned, I had been working on it last spring - and I had some folks testing it with me last summer. And I was using it to help generate Ash Coast dungeon restocking quickly! But knowing that, there are a few problems currently with it. As of this writing:

• There is an issue with some of the "men" entries - Berserkers, in particular, will not generate super-normals (heroes, superheroes) as they should based on the size of the group: data issue.
• It claims it supports B/X - technically, it only supports B: again, data issue.
• Some accompanying units - evil Wizards for Bandits, etc. - may generate too frequently: that is, I did not code flexibly enough to handle some of OD&D's unique randomization rules.
• There is literally nothing in terms of a "help" button or user manual.
  

I do have deviations or issues documented in GitHub - and folks who are savvy enough to care about GitHub will likely be able to find the source - as of this writing, it's public, as I had originally intended to open-source the code before realizing I was going to be entirely too painful to work with as a repo owner (I wouldn't subject you, kind readers, to me in that regard!) - and I do intend to take this back up and keep working on the fixes, changes, and updates necessary to address them.

So keep an eye out - try it out: see how it handles, if you're interested - and I will make a point to post updates to the blog (and a permalink, for folks interested, to the app from the blog) when fixes or improvements are applied.

Delve on, readers! Thank you for reading.