Hi all,

Been plugging away on some tools for my upcoming SotB campaigns. One of the things I noticed in the sourcebook was the potential need for structured encounters for runners (Pages 125-140)

Studying the rules and the recommendations on encounter design, I liked the idea of building a web-based tool that could generate those for me. I'm sharing it with broader community and looking for a highly select number of testers (GMs who have active SotB campaigns with runners in them) to be part of the alpha phase. Here is a video of it in action: https://i.imgur.com/pfr0pMJ.mp4

The tool is intended to create encounters and give the GM a jumping off point. It is not scoped to run or manage encounters at the table or online.

Right now the tool is already in testing and I'm open for applications from GMs who want to test drive this in their own games and provide feedback. We're also looking for players to join some specific play-test sessions I'm organizing (see below) as they don't require access to the tool

Alpha Features:

• Generate a Structured Network encounter at a click of a button via Desktop/Mobile browser
• Select Difficulty (based on the check to access the system) - that impacts the amount of ICE and how isolated each sub-system is from the others
• Utilizes the full design ruleset from page 139 for both regular and advanced runners (150+ XP)
• Identify target/goal sub-systems for your encounter to ensure they're included and have some of the stronger defenses
• Include a number of additional optional systems that may or may not be protected by ICE
• Fully programmatic, every server is different. Includes a series of fuzzy algorithms to simulate good and bad system design
• Includes NPC SysOp generator that has randomly generated name, picture, stat block, personalities and how attentive they are being in protecting the server
• Randomly generate a name for the server based on difficulty. If you have ideas/suggestions please post them the our discord server
• Optionally include 52 custom ice, based on Android: Netrunner cards, when generating servers. Sourcebook only has 15.
  • 17 of each type of ice (Barrier, Code Gate and Sentry) and 2 "mythic" ice
  • 32 designed for regular play with 20 designed for 150+ XP runners
  • Revised card art to allow for physical printing when the deck is released later
  • Thematic and unique game design for every card, inspired by their Netrunner counterparts

GMs I'm accepting requests to join the testing program via this form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeN0G9fVGK2tgGiH5GlKMHoAK8wvE-I-aOc6h2T3P23ER48sA/viewform

What about players/runners?

After creating 52 new pieces of ice we need to run some play tests. I'm looking to organize a number of one-shot style session called "Gone in 60 microseconds" where a band of runners have to infiltrate and steal data from 50 servers within 72 hours (sound familiar?), looking for players to bring their existing characters (all XP levels welcome) or characters specifically for the event.

If you're interested in taking part join the discord server here: https://discord.gg/NRSDFfc

I wanted to announce that v4 just went live and for a limited time I'm conducting an open beta. You can access the web app from www.serversofthe.net and join our discord via https://discord.gg/NRSDFfc , I also have a trello board for capturing ideas/feedback from the testers on discord: https://trello.com/b/khJn2fNo/run-generator

New features in v4:

• Headline feature is the ability to generate up to 10,000 servers into a single collection. This is the first version and it awaits your feedback. This is a great tool for sandbox/west march games in particular and will be used as a tool for future playtesting of ice.
• You can now specify a maximum number of times a particular piece of ice shows up in a single server or have it unlimited. Due to the special rules with Great Wall, that will ignore these limits if there are too many sub-systems grouped by the random generator
• Based on testing feedback servers that have 2 or 3 layers of ice now have more variety in their configuration. Before Barriers tended to be the innermost piece of ice.

I just pushed v5 of my Network Encounter Generator over on http://www.serversofthe.net

Patch notes:

• [New] 53 Brand new ice from our Netrunner conversion project. Adding 17 Barriers, 17 Code Gates and 17 Sentries, with a couple of rare surprises. That increases the total of custom ice to 72 normal play cards and 34 advanced play cards.
• [New] To support all the new Ice you can now select which sources of ice you want the generator to use, Raw, Wave 1 or Wave 2
• [New] The card list page has had a visual update. Now will help identify which source a card is from and make it easier to find which cards are available to the generator. http://www.serversofthe.net/cardlist.php
• [Balance/Update] After our first test run for Gone is 60ms (see http://www.serversofthe.net/playtest.php) Great Wall was appearing too often, its chance to appear has been lowered in the generator
• [Bugfix] An issue was caught and fixed where ice would appear more often than the "Maximum of the same ice" value. This has an impact on the generator seed and could change server configurations based on the same seed.

Wow, your generator seems to be exactly what I was looking for - I always thouht Shadow of the Beanstalk was lacking some more predefined Network layouts.

I'll have to toy around with it more to get a better feel for it, but so far it looks really useful. Thanks for the work you put into it!

You're very welcome, don't forget to join our Discord if you have any questions/feedback