u/Blithium4

I've been running a D&D campaign for the last five years or so with my closest friends. I'm moving to Europe at the end of August, so we've needed to start wrapping it up, since playing online with that kind of time difference while I'm doing a Master's program seems like it isn't the best idea. Problem is, my ADHD has gotten completely out of hand over the last year or so. Sitting down to prep D&D has started giving me mini panic attacks. I can't imagine NPC's for the party to interact with. I can't plan combats. I can't think of puzzles. And most of all, I can't think of ways for the story to progress naturally. I locked myself in our game room for seven hours yesterday trying to plan today's session and never started. I have three hours before the session starts today, and I have nothing.

I used to thrive on doing last-minute sessions. It was such a fun challenge to put something together that would really dazzle my players, then throw out a casual "Yeah, I planned that this morning. Hope it was okay." Now, just opening up my notebook feels like I'm stabbing myself. I don't have time to take a break, and I don't think it would help, anyway. I just don't know what to do anymore.

I don't know what to do anymore. I finally had my ADHD under control and felt completely normal while I was taking Adderall. I was productive and happy and finally able to live the way I wanted. It was incredible. My heart couldn't take it, though, and I had to switch to a milder stimulant that didn't work as well. Over time, it stopped working entirely. No other stimulants have worked at all. Nonstimulants make the problem worse. The only thing that's been making life barely tolerable has been insane amounts of coffee, but lately, my blood pressure has been crazy, so I've had to cut back. And I've had to cut back more and more. Today, I had a single cup of coffee and got tunnel vision, my toes went numb, and my blood pressure spiked to 150/90. I can't do this. If I can't even have coffee to help, I don't know what I'm supposed to do.

What they want is for you to constantly be eager to have them around, so that they can call on you whenever they like, but to never want them to be part of your life when it's inconvenient for them. The second you start missing someone or feeling like you would like to see or talk to them more than you actually do, that's too much, and they'll decide you're more trouble than you're worth.

A while back, I developed a spread of tarot cards to help with creating backstories for players and NPC's, and it's one of the most useful things I've ever done for prep. Now that I've fully incorporated that into my workflow, I've been thinking about rune stones. Casting them onto a blank hex map has been great for inspiring exploration locations, but every time I do it, I can't help but think about how cool it would be to use it for random encounters at the table! Drawing some stones out of a bag, using their positions on a cloth to determine enemy disposition or distance or number of enemies. Using the rune, itself, to determine what the actual encounter is. The only problem is, I don't know how to set it up.

If the rune in this case corresponds to a die roll on a normal table, that kind of locks me into tables that have exactly twenty-eight equally likely options. Maybe position on the cloth could determine what the encounter is, instead? That way, it could be divided into any number of sections that don't necessarily have to be the same size, and the meaning of the rune could affect the encounter in some way?

Mostly just looking for ideas from other people who think the idea is cool! Anyone getting any inspiration?