Play Report – Fallscon 2024

Fallscon 2023 had the honor of being my very first TTRPG related convention, and even though it was a bit nerve-wracking I still had a blast. So I was excited to return this year with a few more conventions under my belt and proper lodgings secured. Thankfully the wonderful people at FWD RPG were there running most of the games again this year, which guaranteed a minimum baseline of enjoyment. The convention was also quite a bit bigger with many more vendors on the show floor, which made for a more enjoyable time between games.

I learned my lesson about overbooking games last year at NTRPGCon so my schedule was a bit light at only three games, but they were each a blast in their own way.

Dungeon Crawl Classics – GM Jud

DCC is always a blast at conventions and this game was no exception. We ran through the Frozen in Time module, which pits neolithic adventurers against an array of alien technology that was crashed into a glacier. I ran a Dwarf and our party smashed and grunted our way through the frozen dungeon.

Part of the module’s charm is that the Judge is not permitted to explain things to us in common, modern terms. So arrays of buttons and metallic panels become mysterious lights and strange, flat walls. It’s a schtick that Expedition to the Barrier Peaks did way back in 1980, but it’s still a fun idea to return to. We ended up healing and befriending a wounded yeti and eventually had our final confrontation with the legally distinct Bobby the Robot, who we successfully de-armed and de-activated.

I’ve had a complicated relationship with DCC since running my campaign with it last year. The cracks started to show in weekly campaign play, but as a system it remains very, very strong in a time-limited convention setting. I might not like massive walls of spell effects and GM box text in my weekly games, but it does create a minimum baseline of enjoyment in a four hour block. Jud was very open that he felt ill-prepared, but other than him telling us that we would have never known.

CY_BORG – GM Eric

Mork Borg has become one of my absolute favorite systems to run as a one-shot, and it’s now the gold standard in my weekly group when we need to do a side adventure due to lack of attendance. As such, I’ve enjoyed most of its clones, but CY_BORG ended up being especially fun.

As is tradition for Borg-likes Eric was prepared with a pile of pre-generated characters, but we also rolled our own to kick the tires on the rules. I started as Yann and lasted for over half our session before exploding in some sort of violent manner. The adventure was a high-stakes pursuit by offbrand Terminators as we fled our most recent job. Our mission was simply to escape the city with the information we grabbed, but our pursuers weren’t going to make it easy.

Every step of the way was fraught with peril and death, with my friend I attended the convention with going through no less than five characters. Like with all Borg-likes death was met with smiles and encouragement, and before long many of us were even forgoing using the game’s re-roll system (called Glitches here) to careen into increasingly spectacular death scenes. It all culminated in a hot air balloon tank vs terminator biplane showdown high above the city, with us just barely scraping by on the last pregen character to safety. Eric kept the pressure on us from start to finish, resulting in a ridiculous thrill-ride.

Savage Worlds – GM Joseph

This was kind of the unknown of the convention for me. I signed up simply because it was listed as the “official” module of Fallscon, despite not having played Savage Worlds in several years at this point. The pitch was interesting: we would be playing the villains in an Isekai story, tasked with rebuffing the constant barrage of “chosen ones” coming across dimensional barriers to defeat our Demon King. I played as Cludd, who was essentially a big, slow-witted troll man.

Joseph built some great atmosphere and then began trickling in the “chosen” humans to the game, which is where the twist comes in: these “chosen ones” are essentially cartoon caricatures of dweebs and cosplayers sent here with plastic swords and the most nightmarishly cringy attitudes imaginable. We faced off against wannabe Gokus with Buster Swords, Great Value brand Power Rangers, and even trench-coat-clad fedora-wearing turbo nerds.

After a chance meeting with Fallsenia (the mascot of Fallscon), we learned that these humans were being brought to this world by a sinister Elven sorceress who discovered that humans prone to white knight power fantasies were great fodder for waylaying our world. All we had to do was throw as many of them back into her portal as we could to destabilize the link between the two worlds. Our final showdown (against the aforementioned Not Power Rangers) was a blast, and we all spent our bennies (the game’s meta currency) to ensure the Demon King’s safety. The final twist of the game was that not only were these humans being brought from our world, but they were being dragged in straight from Fallscon itself. It was a great, unexpected time and will probably win out as the most memorable game of the weekend for me simply due to how creative and silly it was.

Conclusion

It was great to see how the convention grew since last year, and that so many more vendors took an interest. I’m excited to see how it continues to grow, and it will continue to be my traditional first convention of the year going into 2025 (at least until the year I finally make my way out to Gary-Con).

Having done a few conventions of varying sizes now has given me an appreciation for these (comparatively) smaller cons. Things feel more personal, and you get to see old friends and comrades from games long past. If you’re ever in the area, don’t miss out on this one.