Gespenwald
Gespenwald is a freeform adventure set in a spectral forest, a landscape of shifting shadows and decayed memories, sustained by an undead mycelium that pulses beneath the forest floor.
The Gespenwald only manifests for a single night each year—a fleeting, otherworldly place where lost souls and strange creatures drift between the trees. As dawn approaches, players must unravel its mysteries, navigate its dangers, and find their way out before the forest vanishes, or risk becoming part of it forever.
Written for the Cairn TTRPG, Gespenwald is also easily adaptable for Into the Odd, other OSR games, or any system favoring eerie exploration and light mechanics. Like Mostly Harmless Meetings, it can also be enjoyed as a work of Oulipian fiction, a fragmented story unfolding through glimpses of strange encounters, half-told myths, and the whispers of a place that should not exist.
Published as a trifold A4 booklet, Gespenwald is compact, atmospheric, and ready to drop into any game night… but only if you dare to step into the forest before dawn arrives.
Daniel Sumption
Daniel Sumption is a writer, artist, and explorer of strange landscapes, both real and imagined. His work meanders through folklore, psychogeography, poetry, and roleplaying games, always seeking the peculiar edges of storytelling.
His bibliography is as eclectic as his interests. In King Arthur vs Devil Kitty (illustrated by Maximillian Hartley), he resurrects a medieval French tale in the style of a 1970s picture book, complete with Monty Python-esque absurdity. Mostly Harmless Meetings offers 100 folkloric encounters for roleplaying games, where gossiping fleas and aristocratic frogs replace the usual combat fodder. Gespenwald is an adventure set in a ghostly forest of undead mycelium, appearing for only one night each year.
Beyond the realm of games, Daniel’s curiosity leads him into artistic and poetic experiments. Learning to Draw Trees is a year-long journey of sketching trees, culminating in a book that blends art, introspection, and even a tree-based roleplaying game. His poetry collection, Accidental Poetry Roadie, maps the intersections of land, loss, and language, while Working Nights is a photographic tribute to the nocturnal party-life of Sheffield and London in the early 2000s.
Daniel’s work celebrates the liminal and the overlooked: the places between night and day, past and present, fiction and folklore. Whether through words, drawings, or game mechanics, he invites readers to step off the path, to listen to the trees, and to embrace the mysteries that lie just beyond the everyday.
