This upcoming adventure book for the tabletop RPG Troika! tasks PCs with shrinking down to miniature size and exploring a sapient pear tree filled with insect factions. The Perilous Pear & Plum Pies of Pudwick is apparently “bookended with a culinary inciting incident” but inside there are far more creepy-crawlies than that title implies.
Listing Hollow Knight as inspiration, as well as Bug Fables and Honey I Shrunk the Kids, The Perilous Pear & Plum Pies of Pudwick (which I’m going to abbreviate to ‘The 5 Ps’ because it pleases me) is a 52-page pointcrawl adventure full of bugs that have been cursed with sentience.
It’s crowdfunding now, but publisher Melsonia has opted to eschew the usual route of heading through Kickstarter or Backerkit, instead raising the funds through its own website. It says this means “we can spend less time and money on looking and sounding fancy and more on doing what you and I are here for: make more games!”
Melsonia says it’s “no longer entertaining the illusion of them being plucky dreams being made possible by generous strangers and returning to the cold reality of the pre-order.” Seems like an interesting experiment. I wonder if the advantages will make up for missing out on the extra foot traffic from Kickstarter.
The crowdfunding page gives a few details on the factions, which include an empire of ants, congregation of caterpillars, and a ravenous Red Legion of ladybugs. We normally see these black-spotted little guys as cute (for bugs) but it’s worth remembering they’re actually voracious predators. Just ask an aphid!
Within its pages, The 5 Ps includes a bug name generator, worldly possessions table, and an ‘insectuary’ with 23 enemies. There are also backer rewards. Support the project in the first 30 days and you’ll unlock extra NPC cards to populate this arthropod environment.
The adventure uses Melsonia’s own Troika! System, a science-fantasy rules-light RPG inspired by the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks of old. It’s expected to launch in January 2026, and costs $24/£18. You can check it out for yourself here.
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