Interviewing Tejas Oza

Tejas is in on the journey of bringing his home game to a wider market, with a feel unlike any other. Would you believe platypus people?

Please tell me a bit about yourself

Hello! My name is Tejas Oza and I've been a video game designer for just under 15 years now. The rest of the Bludgeon team are Nilesh, Vivek, Jithin, and Panchami - All of us met and work in video games.

Vivek was our first GM and shortly afterwards, I took up those duties. I mean, we all know the history between tabletop and CRPG's, so it was only natural that we'd gravitate towards the hobby. But as gamedevs, we also started to design parts of what we played to suit what our playtstyles and how we thought things could be improved.

Some time over the pandemic, I realized that I had the makings of a full fledged game and have since been on the journey that most ttrpg indies are on!

What do you like best about designing games?

For me, its the simplicity of it. Design is about solving problems and I have a knack of noticing things that could be fixed or improved. After that, its just a matter of finding the easiest and most elegant way to get from point A to B - and that's where I get my design kicks from!

What are you working on at the moment, and what excites you about it?

I'm working on a d20 system called Bludgeon. It was been built, unintentionally almost, over the last decade as a hobby for my home games. Now, my team and I are hoping to share what we loved playing with more people!

We're excited about Bludgeon because our internal sessions are all about marrying mechanics to theme. So, a lot of Bludgeon was built to make sure your actions, especially those in combat, made you feel like and intuitively play like you were a mage, or a rogue, or a warrior. Add to that our love for modular design and we have a game that let's you express yourself in tons of different ways.

Tell me more about how you marry mechanics to theme!

One of the ways we achieve that thematic feel for each character archetype is by having asynchronous mechanics. We've divided different classes into groupings we're calling: Arcane, Primal, Divine, Martial, and Chakra.

Each of these provides the player with different ways to approach combat and how they would want to play their character. Additionally, each category has its own subclasses that interact with its core mechanic in a unique way, ensuring that a Warlock and a Wizard don't play the same or approach problems the same way.

What experience(s) are you trying to give to players?

Every player has a certain character in mind and that fantasy comes with certain expectations. With the way we use stats to our asynchronous combat mechanics - we want to empower as many different player fantasies as possible. We don't want anyone to have to change their roleplay to match a rule. I'd rather the rule support and even build upon roleplay moments... especially with combat. To that end, if you appreciate deep character customization, fun mechanical twists, and punchy, crunchy combat - Bludgeon is most definitely for you.

Is there anything you would like to promote right now?

Honestly, just the game. We'd love for more people to give it a go. Hell, we love hearing back from you all about how your sessions went and if you have feedback about certain rulings!

So, get yourself a copy of Bludgeon and see how your group feels about it.

https://tacticsnchai.itch.io/bludgeon-the-ttrpg

Where should people go to follow you, and to find your products?

• Itch https://tacticsnchai.itch.io/bludgeon-the-ttrpg
• Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/tacticsnchai.bsky.social