Melsonia
Crowdfunding: The Perilous Pear & Plum Pies of Pudwick
Crowdfunding: The Perilous Pear & Plum Pies of Pudwick
185 sold of 1000
If we reach our goal before October 07, 2025 18:00 we will produce a set of drop-in bug NPC cards and give them to everyone who supports us before then
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PLEASE NOTE: This is a crowdfunding campaign for an upcoming book which we plan to deliver no earlier than January 2026. The crowdfunding will run for 30 days. Please see the bottom of this description for more details on how crowdfunding works.
FRIENDS OF MELSONIA: If you are a member of the Friends of Melsonia you will be getting this book as part of your subscription, any purchase of this campaign will get you a second copy with the retail release cover design along with your Friends edition cover.
The Perilous Pear & Plum Pies of Pudwick
Shrink to insectoid size and adventure into the uncanny world that exists inside a sapient pear tree in this weird fantasy pointcrawl.
52 page full-colour, fully illustrated adventure for TROIKA! written and illustrated by Josh Blincow. This book owes much inspiration to HOLLOW KNIGHT | BUG FABLES | THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: THE MINISH CAP | HONEY I SHRUNK THE KIDS | A BUGS LIFE.
Miniature misadventure
An outsider brings reckless magic into a small community on the eve of the local bake off and consequences follow on a thousand scuttling limbs. Enter a sapient pear tree filled with insect factions, conflicts, and (relatively) ancient secrets. YOUR actions will determine the destiny of a fledgling world. Will you save the people of Pudwick? Can you unravel the mystery of the tree?
The Perilous Pear & Plum Pies of Pudwick is both a creepy-crawly micro-setting and labyrinthine pointcrawl dungeon that simulates a spacial and narrative web of inter-faction intrigue as you play. The contents are constant, but no two stories of The Perilous Pear & Plum Pies of Pudwick are the same.
An all ages tabletop roleplaying adventure for beginner and veteran tables with easily adjustable thematic elements and complexity to suit all players.
The Adventure
- a self-contained adventure bookended with a culinary inciting incident
- a perilous ticking clock
- carefully interweaved pointcrawl map with 17 locations, 6 vignette tables, 5 rumour tables and 2 encounter tables with location specific encounters
- worldly possessions table
- random encounters table
- bug name generator
- unique treasures
- insectuary with 23 enemies
- faction reference matrix
The Book
- 39 mischievous & menacing tritone illustrastions
- vivid writing that animates a rich interconnected world
- evocative pointcrawl-&-table adventure design
- approachable, colour-coded information design that comfortably facilitates both table reference and playful reading.
The LORE
The Formic Empire
For Queen. For Empire. The dialect of ants makes no distinction between the two. They annexed the aphids before daybreak, and once the savage hordes are dispatched the Outsider and his ilk will fall in line. For Empire. For Queen.
The Red Legion
Deep in their wretched nest, the ladybirds chitter and twitch in fitful unison. Long gone are the days of mindless satisfaction. Now there is only the Hunger – and the ants are keeping all the aphids for themselves.
The Caterpillar Congregation
First came celebration, when the Elder entered stasis. Then came despair, when her cocoon was dragged off in the dark. Leaderless and vulnerable, the caterpillars soon put their great minds to work, harnessing the fey power of the Green into miracles. The Red Legion assures that the ants hold their Elder captive in the aphid farms – perhaps an alliance could see freedom for them all?
The Pear Republic
All manner of furtive creatures gather under the greedy shadow of the Stinking Bishop. For protection, for profit, for peace of mind. A cabal of shining zealots are said to venerate the great Outsider, but everyone else is just trying to get by.
A Different Kind of Crowdfunder
Thanks for reading about (and hopefully supporting) our upcoming book. We have been making books like this for over 10 years, and across 18 crowdfunding campaigns we have never failed to deliver. This one is unique, however, in not being hosted on Kickstarter or Backerkit. What does this mean? Well for starters we can spend less time and money on looking and sounding fancy and more on doing what you and me are here for: make more games! In a way this is the natural evolution of crowdfunding, breaking the kayfabe, 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. In the modern crowdfunding landscape no one turns up with anything short of a mostly finished idea that is well beyond being abandoned if it doesn't make funding, so we thought "hey, let's not waste people's time and just come out and say it!". So here it is. We will absolutely still make this book if we don't hit out finding goal, we're a publisher, that's what we do, however we do have some incentives because it's fun.
So why should I support this project?
Three reasons.
- Pre-ordered books are cheaper! See the crossed out price? It goes up when it comes out.
- If the project funds in the first 30 days then we'll commission some drop-in NPC cards for everyone who supported in those first 30 days. Picture on one side, description on the other. They're great, we've made things like these before and everyone loves them, including us!
- I said we won't cancel the book if it fails to fund, and that's true, but a crazy niche publishing house like us runs on good vibes. If the project does well we can get down to making more books without wasting time worrying about the bills.
How does this work?
You buy this book like any other book on our shop (you can buy other books with it if you like), pay for it up front, and we ship it to you once it's done. If for whatever reason the book doesn't get made we will refund you, because that would be stealing if we didn't, right? Unlike on crowdfunding platforms where we have layers of plausible deniability and you have no guarantee or protections, on here we're a shop and we are implicitly (and explicitly) promising you a book or a refund.
So when do I get the book?
We think the book will be ready to ship out around January 2026. This could be wrong! It could be longer, it could be sooner, but this is our educated guess.
How do I stay updated on progress?
We talk about what we're doing in our newsletter (scroll down to the bottom of the page to sign up). Feel free to reply to it by the way, we are happy to chat.
Is that it?
Yup. Things don't have to be so complicated.
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