Cycles:
Eevee (with Ambient Occlusion, Bloom, and Screen Space Reflections):
Cycles may have taken longer to render, but man, Eevee managed to crash Blender LOL; had to try rendering it again after closing some apps. I played with the lighting quite a bit, and I liked how it turned out. There are still some artifacts in the curved shadows in Eevee, but the cube size was already set to as high as it could be (4096 px), and soft shadows don’t really work with the scene.
The foot of your pin is too round, Pin can not stand on it’s own.
Eevee has several option to manage shadows.
But is starts with the light source, like with the size of the point light (tiny = sharp shadows).
Also the Eevee sample size, have also an effect of the shadow sharpness.
More samples, means better softness. But more render time … looks like Cycles … 
Thanks for the info!
This was rendered before the animation part of the section. Right now, the bottoms are flat (completely aligns with the x axis), although for some reason they fall over on their own anyway.
Also, if I may ask, where can I modify the Eevee sample size? I see “Sampling” in the Render Properties, but does sample size refer to “Render” or “Viewport”? I modified them (Render and Viewport) a few times, but the artifacts are still there.
The fall because they are to close to the floor. You can not have two object (physics), sharing the same space!. Or even a vertex point. If two physical objects share a coordinate like 0,0,0. These will immediately repel each other. Thus falling over. Place the pin slightly above the floor.
Yes, that is the one. And with artifacts you mean shadows?
It’s all connected, lamp size, shadow map size. different shadows maps for different lamps (sun).
But in a nimations, I don’t think this will be a problem. Because the scene is dynamic, so less visible.
As you suggested, I moved all of the pins up a little bit. When I play the animation, as expected, the fall onto the plane. However, they still fall over almost immediately upon hitting the plane’s surface. Is there perhaps a problem with my pins’ properties? Or is it maybe because their origin points are not on their bottoms? Their origin points are set to their Center of Mass (Volume).
By artifacts I mean these jagged parts of the shadows.
Once again, thank you for the helpful info.
That the pins drop is to be expected, so lower the distance a bit. I remember this as a try and fail step.
Maybe the pins are also close together? And will repel each other.
When I did the ( old ) course, we use a trick to switch on the physics at the moment we needed it.
Using two scenes. But for me it’s to long ago to remember the physics of Blender.
So activate pin physics at the moment the bal hits the first pin.
The origin needs to be the center of mass, otherwise the pins behave badly.
Here’s what my pins look like from above:
Interesting; the current version also has us switch on the physics right before the ball hits the first pin. I was just curious as to why they fall over no matter what; it’s like there’s a strike every time 
I decided to see what would happen if I dropped a cube on the plane (not from very high up) since I know it would be totally flat. Interestingly, it would wobble a bit from side to side. I guess it’s just how the physics work by default.
I’ll keep their origin as is then.
Thanks again!
