#melsonia

Happy Silksong day!

🐛 Guess whose TTRPG anthropomorphic bug adventure is DIY Crowdfunding right now?!

🪳 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 me, 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.

🕷️ That's right, I've been the reason Silksong was delayed all these years because this book has been in development literally as long as Silksong has and I wanted to be sure I didn't steal its thunder!

🪲 Unlike Team Cherry, we're a tiny indie team who would rather not keep up with the ruckus of kickstarter, so Melsonia are running a DIY crowfund/preorder through their Shopify store!

🪱 We are going to print the book either way (the benefit of the DIY crowdfunding experiment is you can drop all the kayfabe) but if we hit the funding goal I wanted to pay back to the community that helped me be able to do this at all:

🐌 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) from some of the wonderful folks from TTRPG Tumblr that we know & love who have inspired and supported me on my journey!

🦋 Please go buy a copy, I wrote & illustrated the entire thing (there are 36 colour illustrations) and layout is being done by Shuyi Zhang, who is the reason that everything Melsonia publishes reads like magic.

🪰 It has been a labour of love and I put so much care and attention into prioritising both reference use at the table and playful reading (as well as making it really easy to pick up and run with your game of preference) and I guarantee you'll know it was worth it when you feel the quality of the paper in your hands.

P.S. If somebody gets this project to pop off on the Silksong reddit I'll owe you a life debt & post you a copy with a custom bug drawing! Dead serious.

🐞 Preorder by Oct 7, 18:00 GMT (or wait until Spring and hope you don't forget).

🦋 Shrink to size & explore a labyrinthine world of bug factions inside a sapient pear tree, racing against the clock to shape the future of a dungeon that was never yours to delve & escape before you grow to full size!

Silksong costs less than The Perilous Pear & Plum Pies of Pudwick (£18 + shipping at preorder).

I think that's fun to think about.

Both are games (one analog, one digital) about carefully crafted hand illustrated bug worlds made by a tiny team of artists (in my case just me) in which players dive into the politics of colourful insect kingdoms and encounter their threats on a perilous labyrinthine adventure.

They both have deep world building & lore to unravel and balance tones from cute & comedic to horrifying & melancholy.

Silksong was in development a couple years longer, but the seeds for both games grew from Hollow Knight and both were delayed again and again for many years.

In the end, after many years predicting Silksong's release, they were somehow both made available to buy on the same day and cost almost the same amount.

I think the part of Silksong's audience that plays D&D or is interested in tabletop roleplaying games would really enjoy The Perilous Pear & Plum Pies of Pudwick, we all know they're ravenous for exactly this type of story & world.

The quality is there, but getting them to discover it is another matter.

Over the next year or so I hope TPAPPOP gets the attention it deserves from that crowd, I know there are people who would love it and I know those people are either playing Silksong right now or will be as soon as they find the opportunity.

My book has 22 days left to hit its funding goal of selling 1000 preorder copies (weve sold 400 so far!!!) for bonus bug NPCs to flesh out the world with voices from other artists & writers, but the print run will be produced either way.

It costs £18 plus shipping from the UK, making it prohibitively expensive outside of the UK, but I believe a chunk of those 400 orders has already come from distributors: you should be able to buy it from anywhere that stocks Melsonia books in Spring 2026 either way.

In the mean time, I think I've earned the right to play Silksong, and if my book finds its audience I will be grateful and hope to hear they enjoy it.

It was worth the work either way.

The Perilous Pear & Plum Pies of Pudwick, pg. 36

release date: TBC

publisher: Melsonia (The Undercroft special full-colour 48 page fully-illustrated issue)

format: oldschool-style weird fantasy hexcrawl adventure compatible with all oldschool systems

genre: shrink to insectoid size and adventure into the uncanny world that exists inside a sapient, talking pear tree

Tunnel-Sealer Quapplin addressing young grubs gathered at the edge of the great grass sea - sunset, the First Day.