The Fall

The lights in an office click off, dry hum giving way to dim quiet as the toymaker walks out with a sigh. Where had the color gone in creation? Where is the joy? But the office does not lack motion. Little toys spring to action in secret, desperate for clues as to what torments their Big Friend.

The forest grows cold, and dangerous. The children that once came to play with you and craft your chestnut kin appear less and less, and your numbers dwindle. A fear of apocalypse grips your people. Which will end us first: the growing winter or the distance of the children?

Sometimes change is slow and we have the chance to grow and integrate it. But sometimes it is quick, and foundational, and life is different after. The Fall explores this latter case, those times we were depending on the unchanging and the traditional, and found ourselves thrust into either adaptation or ruin.

The tone of this game is often tragic and heavy, told through the lens of the creations or toys affected when the lives of the people those creations depended on are shaken. That doesn’t mean that the game should be humorless or joyless; comedy is encouraged! But while animated toys might be magical, they are not superheroes, and the world is not built for them. Character failure and death are relatively common.

The Fall is generally intended for short-form campaigns and one-shots.

Also, as a mild disclaimer, this game was built for the PIGSquad Tabletop Jam 2024, in about two weeks. We hope you enjoy it, but it’s very likely the system has warts in places. We encourage GMs running the game to override any rules or guidelines that get in the way of telling the story their table wants to tell.