Let’s get one thing out of the way first: RiverCityCon, despite the name and host city, is not a successor to RiverCon. Whereas the latter con (and its shorter-lived successor, Conglomeration) was a general fantasy/SF con with a gaming track, RiverCityCon is a board game con that wedges TTRPGs into the cracks around its founders’ main focus. It’s a Louisville-based spinoff of the older Lexicon, which, as the name suggests, started in Lexington, Kentucky a few years ago.

Because it’s in our city of shared origin, the Louisville Gaming Mafia used last year’s inaugural RiverCityCon as a found-family reunion. We put it to the same use again this year, and as far as that goes, it satisfied our purposes adequately. Absent that, as a con fitting my own purposes, I’m somewhat ambivalent about it.

Venue

For 2025, RiverCityCon returned to the Holiday Inn Louisville East – Hurstbourne, just off I-64. The con itself occupied the hotel’s smallish conference center. Open board game tables were situated in the main hall, with the ballroom being a combination huckster room (that’s “vendor space” for you youngsters) and board game/CCG/miniatures play area. Tabletop RPGs were tucked away in two breakout rooms, with a third, larger breakout room reserved for Paizo organized play RPGs.

Last year, the open gaming space suffered badly from being adjacent to a set of exterior automatic doors – in January. Every time someone walked in or out, everyone in the hall received an arctic blast. This year, the con staff appeared to have worked with the hotel staff to disable the automatic doors, leaving a single set of conventional doors unlocked. Good fix.

The RPG rooms were cramped and noisy (typical of most cons’ RPG space allocation). They also were poorly ventilated, and consequently suffered badly from gamer funk. I tapped out of a game I’d intended to join on Friday night because someone with a serious weed addiction was hotboxing the whole room from their mere presence. During Saturday afternoon’s slot, another gamer seemed to have saved up a whole week of not showering prior to attending the con.

I didn’t use the on-site catering, as the menu was six sad-looking items in warming trays. This year, as with last year, the con had posted numerous signs indicating that health code forbids outside food in the venue. I have not investigated, but I suspect this is a misstatement on the part of either the con or the hotel. At any event, the collective body of attendees seemed to happily ignore this “restriction,” and I saw no sign of enforcement.

The men’s restroom in the convention center did not appear to receive service during the weekend. The level of mess and stench increased throughout the con, inversely proportional to the levels of soap and paper towels. I’m not sure if normal housekeeping processes were unable to keep up with gamer hygiene or if the hotel isn’t used to staffing housekeeping for common areas during weekend events.

Parking was adequate and free. No issues noted.

Gaming

I go to cons for the games. Conveniently, this was a con built around games.

More specifically, if I’m not involved in a World of Darkness LARP, I go to cons primarily for tabletop RPGs, with miniatures and board games as a secondary focus. I’m usually looking to try games I haven’t played before. Last year’s offerings were damned slim, but this year offered a gratifying diversity of options. I actually wasn’t able to make time in my schedule for all of the stuff I wanted to try, which has been rare over the past decade or so.

I had harbored vague thoughts about running a game session or two, but I never saw the con organizers put out an all-call for GMs.

Cryptid Hunter

P House Games was at the con to promote and sell Cryptid Hunter. Elalyr and I linked up with Apoapsis for a demo session on Friday morning and were sufficiently impressed to head directly to the booth and buy a copy for ourselves and two more as gifts.

Cryptid Hunter is a non-collectible card game whose basic rules are teachable within the first round of play. The subject matter should be obvious from the name. Each player collects hints, which enable them to collect evidence, which, in turn, leads to encounters. The first player to survive three cryptid encounters wins.

It’s a beer and pretzels game, and it appeals to my twisted, Art Bell-informed sense of whimsy. Winner.

The Bears and the Bees

While waiting for the LGM to assemble for dinner on Friday evening, Elalyr and I got in a round of The Bears and the Bees with FiannaMcD and Bad Pooka. It’s a game of hexagonal tile placement in which the objective is to be the first to run out of tiles in hand. The strategy comes from the congruency rules – which honeycomb hexes can be placed next to each others. Elalyr observed that in this, it’s vaguely reminiscent of Carcassone.

Shadowdark

I’ve been hearing good buzz about Shadowdark for a while, so I was excited to see multiple sessions of it on RiverCityCon’s gaming schedule. It did not disappoint. Elalyr, Lilavati, and I were in a two-hour quickstart session on Saturday morning which was far more fun than it had any right to be. Despite the attempts of one problem player to derail the game, we managed to somewhat break the module (Doom in the Red Wastes) and complete it within the allocated time. I was sufficiently impressed that I ordered a copy of the game as soon as we got back to our hotel that evening.

As I’ve remarked elsenet, I don’t see Shadowdark as a viable replacement for D&D 5e or Pathfinder 2e. What it is, for me, is the fantasy equivalent of Feng Shui. With minimal time required for character creation or session prep, it’s something I can grab for a low-effort one-shot. I also appreciate many of its design touches, like slot-based encumbrance, real-time timers for light sources (discouraging both tangents and overplanning), and random character advancement bonuses (neatly quelling any tendency toward obsessive theorycrafting).

This session also enabled one of my two perfectly-timed natural 20 moments from the weekend, more about which will follow in a War Story Wednesday post.

Dungeon Crawl Classics

Saturday afternoon saw me and Elalyr in one of Tracker7’s Dungeon Crawl Classics sessions. I’ve been gaming with Tracker7 since about 1994, and I usually seek out his games, but DCC just doesn’t align with my personal preferences. Mechanically, it worked fine, but the module had an assumption about the table’s willingness to engage in PvP that I and Elalyr didn’t share. I wound up going sideways for a “solution,” and Tracker7 was gracious enough to lean into it.

I’ve owned a copy of the DCC core for a while, and, to be honest, it may wind up on the Half-Price Books sell stack after this. That’s not an aspersion on Tracker7 as a friend or GM, but my impression is that DCC comes from the OSR school of thought in which the game has an adversarial relationship with its players.

Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu

Elalyr and I were unable to score seats at a Starfinder 2e playtest on Saturday night, so we began to head back to our hotel, but were waylaid by Wookiee, his girlfriend, and Driiquar. They had a copy of Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu. As the name implies, this board game merges the escalating clusterfuck of Pandemic with the Mythos elements and setting of Arkham Horror. Instead of disease outbreaks, you’re scampering around the board trying to stamp out cultist infestations.

Also like its parent Pandemic, Reign of Cthulhu can generate some swift death spirals. We had five players on a board that’s designed to max out at four, and I think we managed to lose in four rounds.

RiverCityCon’s Board Game Library

One element of the con deserves special mention. I don’t know the source of the material, but RiverCityCon offers an absolutely massive board game library. Con members can check out anything in the library to try it out. It’s a great “first taste is free” drug deal and I rather regret that Elalyr and I didn’t carve out time to explore Wyrmspan or one of the other titles that jumped out at us.

Vendors

Like most recent cons, the hucksters’ room was dominated by vendors selling geek culture stuff rather than, you know, games and other “primary” products. One of the downsides of the 3D printing explosion is the corresponding metastasis of vendors selling 3D-printed desk debris. I suppose it’s the modern con equivalent of airbrushed T-shirts at the county fair.

I will note one particularly worthy exception to this, though. Tucked away in the hallway leading to one of the RPG spaces was a vendor selling a variety of 3D-printed scatter terrain. I’m not ashamed to admit that Elalyr and I threw a good sum of money at him for small items to enhance the tabletops of our current Five Parsecs from Home campaign. This is the kind of relevant, practical 3D-printed merchandise I’d like to see.

On a note of further disappointment, there weren’t actually that many games for sale. Several designers or publishers were present, including the aforementioned P House Games, and I hope all of them pulled in enough sales to turn a profit and make the weekend worthwhile. However, somewhat unforgivably for a board game-focused convention, only one vendor was selling board games and their selection was kind of sparse.

Lodging

The con had a room block at the host hotel. As is our practice, though, Elalyr stayed at our usual Louisville hotel for reward points, an acceptable in-house breakfast, and privacy. I haven’t heard any complaints from the members of the LGM who stayed on-site.

Surrounding Area

Hurstbourne Lane is a well-developed commercial strip with ample offerings for food and other lodging. Being a Louisville native linking up with other Louisville natives, I ventured a bit farther afield for dinner on Friday night. Apoapsis recommended Coals Artisan Pizza and absolutely hit it out of the park. On Saturday night, a group of us went to our long-time Indian staple, Shalimar.

As RiverCityCon is a small con, there wasn’t much local merchant support. The con did have a sponsorship from the local Boombozz, but we didn’t avail ourselves of their fare. I’m uncertain how the con squared that with the alleged health code prohibitions on outside food.

Verdict

RiverCityCon has definitely improved since last year. While it’s still nowhere near the densely-packed enjoyment of CharCon or the full-spectrum convention experience of Archon, it is more comfortable than it was in 2024, albeit with some rough edges that continue to annoy. It also feels lacking in the core social aspect of a full-up media/SF/fantasy con. For my purposes, its main virtue is convenience as a venue for a geek family reunion.

Having said that, I acknowledge that my fun is not everyone’s fun. If you’re looking for a small convention where you can try out a number of new games and not be burdened by other programming tracks, it may be perfect for you.