I know I have seen this topic on here before, but my search fu is lame... I never had much of a problem with Dragons popping up here and there, so I could get enough souls to cherry pick the shouts I wanted to fill out as I found word walls.

Well, lately-- the last two weeks, the only dragons I have ever found are ones from specific dragon roosts. None are just randomly appearing anymore and I really really need those souls. I get attacked by the occasional vampire or hound, couriers find me, thieves find me... even one of Boethiah's nutjobs managed to find me in the middle of nowhere. But a girl can't get a dragon.

I have tried frequent fast traveling. I have tried running around in areas where I've seen them spawn before, loitering, exploring... nada. I even went back to a previously discovered dragon roost but the bug where those re-spawned dragons won't give you a soul is still present.

Any other ideas? Is there a console cheat to get a soul or two... am getting desparate.

Odd. With patch 1.8, random dragon encounters have become much more frequent for me.

I don't know if there's a command to give you more souls but if you just want to unlock words of power, you can do that in the console.

unlock [word]

Each shout has a refID but I think you have to use the one for the specific word you want to unlock.

A full list of the shouts can be found http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Dragon_Shouts#Available_Dragon_Shouts, for the individual words' codes you can click on the link to a shout's individual page.

Where are you in the MQ? My understanding is that if you have started Blade in the Dark (i.e. talked to Delphine) but have not yet gone to Kynsesgrove, you won't get any dragons. After finishing Blade in the Dark you can go to Broken Fang Cave and see Alduin raising a named dragon. After Diplomatic Immunity you can go to Rorikstead and see Alduin raising another named dragon. And after Throat of the World you can go to Forsaken cave and see Alduin raising yet another named dragon.

Other than that, there are some areas that seem to have more frequent spawns: Haafingar Stormcloak Camp; Pale Imperial Camp; Whitewatch Tower. All of these seem to be associated with nearby dragon burial mounds.

Added: Oh, one other area where I always seem to get a dragon is Kolskegger Mine. Makes for an interesting encounter since you have to fight 3 Foresworn at the same time.

I've been having the same problem recently as well and I beat the MQ and am up to date on patches but i'm in xbox

Derp, me. I forgot I had not progressed the main quest to past Kynesgrove... I've been wandering and adventuring, I basically completely forgot about the MQ. So of course, right after I posted this and went back to the game, that occurred to me. I went to meet Delphine, went to Kynesgrove, went to High Hrothgar to be named Dragonborn... so about a half hour ago, near Fellglow, I finally got attacked by a random dragon (not the one from Shearpoint.) So maybe that was it. At least I managed to get two souls.

This game is just so wide open... I've been enjoying uncovering the map and occasionally getting my butt kicked but still finding random stuff. Went to Ironbound (or whatever the name was and had fun with that little story, so many random adventures. )