Paizo Brings 13 Omens to UK Games Expo for First Public Demos

Paizo will bring 13 Omens to UK Games Expo for the first public hands-on look at its new horror RPG, and the demo is already telegraphing the kind of game this is meant to be: rules-lite, playable in a single evening, and dangerous enough that character death is described as extremely likely. The sessions will be sponsored by Paizo and run by Erik Mona in the Hilton Hotel roleplaying area, with content warnings and safety tools discussed at the start.

The UKGE listing says the demo will be a full three-hour adventure, which matters because Paizo is not treating this like a teaser slot or a quick showroom skirmish. It is setting up 13 Omens as something players can actually test at the table, with a shared bag of communal dice and an escalating pile of Omen Dice that adds danger as the story advances. For Pathfinder groups used to tight action economy and crunchy tactical play, that is the first big signal that Paizo wants this to feel faster, leaner, and far more lethal than its fantasy flagship.

UK Games Expo, which calls itself the UK’s largest tabletop games convention, will run from Friday 29 May to Sunday 31 May 2026 at the NEC in Birmingham and the Hilton Metropole Hotel. The Hilton Hotel roleplaying area will be open Friday from 9:00 a.m. to midnight, Saturday from 9:00 a.m. to midnight, and Sunday from 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., which explains why Paizo picked the weekend slots for the first public demos. For anyone trying to get an early read on the game, those are the sessions that matter.

Paizo’s teaser pitch says 13 Omens is a narrative-driven, rules-lite horror TTRPG written by Jason Bulmahn and Joe Pasini, set in a world not unlike our own, just darker and more supernatural. That is a sharper break from Pathfinder than a lot of Paizo fans may expect. Bulmahn is listed by Paizo as Director of Games, and the company’s own biographies say he joined in 2004 and was lead designer on the original Pathfinder RPG. Pasini is a former Starfinder lead designer. This is not a side project from outsiders. It is an in-house swing by two of the company’s most recognizable names.

The wider implication is that 13 Omens looks like Paizo’s third official tabletop RPG line after Pathfinder and Starfinder, and it appears to sit outside Pathfinder and Starfinder 2E rules. Paizo has not posted a public release date yet, and its teaser says there is more news, and more horror, to come. That makes the UKGE demo the key checkpoint: watch how quickly the communal dice bag turns, how often Omen Dice stack up, and whether Paizo can make horror feel immediate without losing the table control that Pathfinder players expect from a well-built system.