Hello Bludgeoneers!

A little over a week ago now, we celebrated 1 year of being live on Itch! 

I still remember the mix of excitement & trepidation I felt leading up to the launch of the page. In some ways, it reminded me of the days before & after I launched the first video game I ever worked on.

It's been quite a journey with Bludgeon so far.

We conducted our first ever public playtest in Nov. '21.

We began talking about ourselves on Twitter around the same time.

We spent an year running playtests for smaller groups in the interim. '22 was also the year that most of our team procured jobs outside of India that necessitated a sojourn from Bludgeon.

A year ago marks when we all started to get back into the swing of things!

Let's take a look back and then a look forward:

Feb. '23 - Feb '24

We started off with a bang! Our home away from home discord group - The Pigeon Killers - teamed up with us to play a 4 part Bludgeon game! This kicked off with a session 0 where the group & I went through character creation. This was my (Tejas O.) first time DM'ing on camera, but it wouldn't be the last.

Shortly after this, we were invited by the enigmatic Chaotic Wholesome Presents to talk about the game & our journey to making it.

We worked with The Pigeon Killers yet again for a follow up 4 part game that got very wild, very quickly! The session titles and thumbnails were an inspired touch, for which the TPK team deserve credit!

Finally, towards the end of the year, we spoke with the fine folks at Asians Represent!

I've been conducting regular playtests throughout the year with expected scheduling mishaps.

In between all of this, Bludgeon's rulebook was updated as regularly as we could manage between our day jobs.

This last year saw 4 major updates that saw the introduction of the Chakra Classes &, as recently as this Jan., the Divine Classes! Both of these having been updated post playtests with them in their older forms.

These updates included major balance changes that have thankfully become less frequent with time and some rules additions that add more flavour to different parts of the game. 

For example, Martial Classes received Disciplines, the Yantra-Log gained Glitches, and a slowly expanding Lore & Enemies section were added.

All in all, it's been a good year for Bludgeon!

Getting the Word Out There

Apart from learning how to overcome camera shyness & general awkwardness in front of a camera, I've also been learning some lessons in marketing.

Naively, I did rely on word of mouth during the initial phases of this year long campaign to get the word of Bludgeon out there. I slowly realized that I needed to get the word out there in more ways. 

I tried a few things with mixed results:

I worked on rebranding our comms. That resulted in improvements in how I talk about Bludgeon. This encapsulates an elevator pitch, what I post online, and even how I teach the game to new playtesters. For that last point, I'm quite happy with the fact that I can get a new group of 4 through character creation in under 30 minutes more often than not.

I reached out to a number of figures in the TTRPG, targeting reviewers and public figures that use the 'desi' self descriptor. This wasn't as successful a venture. I got a few responses from reviewers, mostly to let me know that they didn't have the time. The latter cohort showed initial interest, but after following up a few times, I let matters lie.

The last thing I did was attempt to be more social. This sounds like it ought to be a given, but between a work life, a dog, and just being very introverted, this one took effort. I'm not inclined to social settings or to trying out new social experiences - online or offline. But, I'm trying. I try and speak up a bit more. I've posted on Reddit, one post of which got quite some attention but also got me told off for self promotion. 

Which goes to show, how little I can understand of certain online etiquette.

In total, since we launched, we've had over 4.5k people visit the page and ~1.8k downloads, which we consider a win!

But we soldier on!

The Path Ahead

We're not done with Bludgeon. Not by a long shot.

Just last month my wife & I went home. I mention this because while home, we took tens of reference images of various textile prints & designs. For those of you familiar with Bludgeon over its last few updates, you'll have seen fabric motifs cropping up more and more. The year is off to a strong start because quite a few of those references got added to the book as soon as we got back!

That updates, in fact, is live now with BludgeonBasics_4-1!

We're still working on rounding out the rulebook. The Primal classes were one of my favourites back in the day, but we've found some short comings with the core mechanic that we're hoping to rectify, much like we did with Divine. This revamp is in progress and will take some time, but we hope to have the Primals out and ready to play sometime this year. 

With that, the core rules for Bludgeon will be complete.

After that, we want to expand on our lore and enemy offerings.

I've joined a new discord server or two and starting up a new round of playtests (though, at this point, I should just call them introductory sessions) with brand new players! One of these groups has already graced us with some lovely fanart of their character!

There are also plans for a new mini-campaign (or two) in the first half of the year, which should be exciting!

A few of the creators & I are discussing the possibility of a podcast to talk through our process (or ramble, if the mood takes us). But we're going to have to wrangle work lives and time zones, so this one is a strong 'maybe'.

For the longest time, the team & I have also discussed making short video explainers of how Bludgeon plays. This is another possibility I've been putting off citing a lack of time. I can't promise I'll stop putting it off, but I figure its worth mentioning.

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And with that... I believe this update is complete!

I hope you're looking forward to this next year as much as I am!