Existing methods to automate initial placement of obstacles / bad guys?

Just curious if something already exists or if I need to write some Python code for this: I’d like to automate the initial placement of an array of game objects in either 1D (curve/path), 2D (mesh) or 3D (volume). I saw a technique using particle systems that looked promising but it doesn’t work in the game engine (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCEN0qQOsIA starting at about 27:25) and wasn’t sure what other methods might already be available for the game engine. Any ability to randomize things a bit or add some ‘jitter’ to the coordinates are a plus.