Level 1 Anthology 2025

How the West Was Lost

The 2025 edition of Level 1 is themed around “How the West Was Lost”. We’ve got cowboys, the lost island of Atlantis, aliens, and dinosaurs. We have precious flowers, time travel, pony tricks, horses, and more! If you, like us, are worried about the fall of the West we hope these games provide a relaxing distraction.

Level 1

The indie RPG scene is a diverse, fascinating, and vibrant part of the TTRPG community. With Level 1: The Indie RPG Anthology, 9th Level Games brings together choice games from the world of indie RPGs in an annual collection published in time for Free RPG Day.

Every year 9th Level Games releases this series of officially endorsed featuring new role-playing games, RPG standalone adventures, 200 word RPGs, and more!

FREE RPG DAY 

Free RPG Day occurs annually in June and with over 500 stores participating worldwide. They provide consumers with free exclusive printed content for a wide variety of tabletop roleplaying games. New RPG adventures, quick-start guides, accessories and more are to be had at your local participating retailer, with publishing partners changing yearly.

"How the West Was Lost" includes 15 games from diverse, unique voices: 

• The FINAL Frontier (A Game About Retired Pioneers Who Didn't Tame the West) By Vincent Colantuoni (Arcane Endeavors)
• Pony Hawk's Pro Canter 3 by Ty Oden
• The Question of Who, When, and Where by Steph Campbell
• Cowboys, Aliens, Dinosaurs, Oh My! by Brian Burruss
• Pretenders of Istea by Alex Kingsley
• A Last Stand at Twilight's Crossing by J.D. Harlock
• Escaping Lost Atlantis by Helena Real
• Last Hurrah at the Ol' Kaiju Corral by Glenn Dallas
• A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Batcave by Matt Fantastic with help from Andrea Pincumbe
• Saving Ruacinth by K/J/ Montgomery
• Where Was I When The West Fell? by Tim "Strato" Bailey
• Clankslayer by Xander Hinners 
• Amalgamation by Tommy Bozzelli 
• To be Honest, When I Found Out the Patriarchy Wasn't Just  About Horses, I Lost Interest by Heather O'Neill

LevelUp Fund

Our goal for Level 1 is always to feature unique and underrepresented voices. We look for games that shine a new light on an old idea or bring something new to the table. This has lead us to creating the LevelUp Fund.

Proceeds from polymorph™ system licensing fees, donations for previous volumes of Level 1 on our website, DriveThru RPG, and itch.io, as well as any sponsor dollars remaining after the production of Level 1 will all go into the LevelUp Fund.

The LevelUp Fund allows us to grant designers free use of the polymorph™ system!

We will be expanding information on the LevelUp Fund soon, so keep an eye out for more news!