Mostly Harmless Meetings
Mostly Harmless Meetings is a collection of 100 fantasy vignettes inspired by English folklore, wildlife, and the quiet strangeness of the countryside.
Designed for roleplaying games, but just as enjoyable to read, these encounters offer non-violent, story-rich moments featuring everything from gossiping fleas and portentous magpies to eerie hawthorn trees studded with ancient coins. There are no orcs, no treasure chests, no battle fodder – only strange creatures, curious landscapes, and encounters that invite improvisation, mystery, and wonder.
Each entry is a fragment of a tale, a puzzle, or a moment of uncanny beauty:
🦉 A lovelorn owl hunts for her feather-caped soulmate.
🐸 Frog aristocrats feud over their singing voices.
🐟 A pike buried head-first in the ground raises more questions than it answers.
🪱 A hidden trove of glow-worms flickers in the dark.
🐇 A hare bleeds more than it should.
🐦 A nightingale sings with a siren’s voice.
System-agnostic and rich in folklore, nature, and quiet oddity, this book is perfect for GMs looking to breathe life into their worlds, offering encounters that lead to stories rather than swordfights.
Key Features
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System-neutral – No stats, just storytelling prompts adaptable to any RPG.
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Inspired by folklore & nature – Talking animals, old superstitions, and landscapes full of secrets.
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Encourages curiosity over combat – More likely to gain a talking pet mouse than a +1 sword.
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Designed for improvisation – Use as written, tweak to fit your game, or roll again for something new.
For those who love the eerie, the poetic, and the peculiar, Mostly Harmless Meetings offers a countryside that never quite existed—but always felt like it might.
“Borgesian” – James Burt
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.
