Other Magics RPG

One Year In

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Luke and James (L to R), PAXU 2025

Picture it - November 23, 2025. You’ve just had your first PAX Unplugged experience and are taking the train back to New York City from Philadelphia. You spent the weekend commuting, playing TTRPGs, and hanging out with your best friend. You’re talking about the games you played at PAX and how you’re going to have so much time next year once you’ve wrapped up that 3 year Pathfinder 1e campaign.

The natural next step is, obviously, to design a game with your best friend.

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Well, really it was around 2016 (IC).

That’s us… and one year later, we are returning to PAX Unplugged 2026. “We” are Luke (who you might know from his NSR/OSR blog Atmospheric Underworld) and James, co-designers of Other Magics, a game born somewhere on an Amtrak in New Jersey last November. Other Magics is our wizard-only, creativity-first, problem-solving RPG, and we’re bringing it to PAXU in 2026 (schedule below).

Last year, we spent only two days at PAX Unplugged. It was our first time, so we showed up Saturday, bright-eyed and bushy tailed, 5 minutes before a panel to see Matt Mercer with no other plans. We learned a lot that Saturday - that 5 minutes was way too close to time to see Matt and the Daggerheart crew, and later, luckily, about the existence of Games on Demand. Sunday, with stars in our eyes, we followed up a Pirate Borg session with two games hosted at GoD: a session of Tuesday Knight Games’s Mothership and another of Michael DM’s Twilight Country.

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You too could experience the joy present in this picture. Come to the GoD booth at PAXU! (IC)

Michael, in running his own game, generated a conversation between Luke and James that eventually became Other Magics. Inspired to design a game ourselves, throughout this last year we have met weekly in place of our usual, alternating weekly-GM slot to design a game, one we’ve become quite proud of. We’ve engaged with friends and family over the last year for feedback and playtesting, throughout discussing PAXU with the hope of sharing our game there too. Enter Games on Demand, again! We’ve been beyond grateful to Brian Liberge and the GoD team for their hard work at setting up a place for indie game designers, like us, to get exposure and find a community. And this year at PAXU, we are participating! Other Magics will be featured as an option at both of our tables; get in line early and request Other Magics as your game if you want to see it in action! On Saturday, co-designer James will also be a part of Games on Demand’s RPG Designer Meet and Greet, and finally, we hope to meet some fellow creators and designers at Exeunt Press’s Indie TTRPG Self-Publishers Meetup.

For our second PAXU experience, we’re hoping to meet more people, talk about designing our own TTRPG, and play some other amazing games. We will be there all 3 days; hope to see you there!

P.S. - If you'd be interested in playtesting in the future, let us know on the interest form!

Other Magics PAX Unplugged Schedule:

Luke @ Games on Demand:

James @ Games on Demand:

Other Magics Designers Together:

#announcements #paxu