Halflings and the Hive, by Weird Realms, is a little system neutral FRPG adventure zine that was part of Exalted Funeral’s Free RPG 2 event last year. This is a great, nasty little bit of fun to drop into your homebrew. It is pretty gross.

Basically, the town of Cerwin has been softly invaded by a hive of bees from another dimension. The bees eat fingernails (ew) and make a honey that is both magically powerful and eventually debilitating. The local halflings have recently lost their inborn good luck (perhaps because of the bees?) and the local humans have picked it up instead (and are generally being shitty about it). There’s a blood cult working against the bees, a cult of humanoid drones dominated by the bees working against the blood cult and a whole lot of bears of all types (from koala to owl) looking to get their paws on some of that sweet, sweet honey.

The focus here is on setting up the faction dominos, then letting the players come in and knock them all down. This sort of emergent story is always a good time, particularly if your group is like mine and never does what you expect (and tends to make a mess of solvable situations). There are some fun tools for tracking the local population and their relationships, too, which is always a draw for me.

The art is a standout, too: a nice mix of cartoonish and yucky that kind of remind me of Garbage Pail Kids or Bid Daddy Roth.