Now Available! Level 1 Volume 5 2024 Anthology of Indie Games

A man wearing a VR headset sits at a keyboard illustrated in a green palette | Level 1 Vol 5 2024 anthology of indie RPGs from 9th Level Games

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.

The 2024 edition of Level 1 is themed around “Command Line.” This year’s designers take us to the internet, the future, and other worlds. We have abandoned Discord servers, viruses, robots, and even golems. We have hacking simulations and a simulation of hacking. You can become a god, an outer space pet, or, as predicted, a hacker.

So strap on your keyboard, and get ready to jack into the net, chummer!
Download for free Level 1 Vol 5 2024 today!

With games by Richard Kevis, Josh Feldblyum, J.D. Harlock, Null Set Tabletop, Alex Koeberl, Christian Young, Gabriel Slye, Brian Hartwig, Alex Gickler, Eden Collins, Nick Grinstead, Tim “Strato” Bailey, Glenn Dallas, Carlos Hernandez, Jon Maness, Calvin Johns, Jonathon ‘Starshine’ Greenall, Monica Valentinelli, Luckycrane, and Michael Cremisius Gibson.

New Fiction Release! Go Hard or Go Home: A Car Wars Autoduel Chronicles Anthology

Go Hard or Go Home a Car Warriors Autoduel Chronicles anthology

The big events may get most of the limelight, but that’s not where all the action happens.

This collection of fast-paced, action-packed stories highlights the road warriors who struggle to survive, without the glory of the duel. Caravan guards, gun bunnies, insurance adjusters, mechanics, reporters, scavengers, and more!

If you can’t keep up, maybe it’s time to head back to the garage…

So… what’ll it be?

Will you Go Hard or Go Home?

GO HARD OR GO HOME: A Car Warriors Autoduel Chronicles anthology includes nine high octane stories filled with betrayals, high speed chases, and so much more.

The story Monica wrote is called “Crossed for Gold,” and it’s about a desperate character named Edge who’ll do whatever it takes to save her niece, Tessa.

Here’s an excerpt about a car featured in the story:

“To cough up five grand in a day or two, I’d sell my one true love: a vintage Shelby kit car that, when assembled, was worth about 50 grand. Original or not, an ultra-rare 1965 Shelby S/C Cobra CSX Series 6000 was the kind of mid-20th century car many nouveau riche collectors would be proud to own—with or without weapons modifications. Except, kit cars were as common as algae. I needed an immediate buyer for mine.”

— from “Crossed for Gold,” a Car Wars Autoduel Chronicles story by Monica Valentinelli

If you haven’t checked out this heart-pumping anthology yet, what are you waiting for? Vrooom… VROOOOOOM!

Affiliate links will take you to Amazon. You can also pick up this collection wherever books are sold.

New Release! Guard Cards for Pinching Tarts TTRPG Now Available


"Guard Cards gold text on a green vintage book cover two crossed swords and a shield

Guard Cards is a pay-what-you-want game aid compatible with Pinching Tarts, a Wonderland-themed PocketQuest 2024 game designed by Monica Valentinelli. The cards can either be printed out and used as half-sheets or folded in half to create cards.

Guard Cards
is a digital download available from DriveThruRPG.com. The game accessory is not playable on its own without a copy of Pinching Tarts. What it does include, are rules for all the foes you’ll encounter in the Red Queen’s Castle. It includes:

* guidance to introduce the Red Queen’s Guard
* alternate rules for Teatime! affecting guards
* cards for all foes expanding and clarifying core rules
* ranks for The Watch

The half-page guard cards include customized tracks for each guard’s hearts.

This printer-friendly title is a game accessory for Pinching Tarts, a caucus game of tart-stealing nonsense inspired by Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865).

Download Guard Cards from DriveThruRPG.com!



New Releases! Pinching Tarts RPG and Creature Sheets Accessory

Pinching Tarts Cover Art | Alice in Wonderland white rabbit | PocketQuest Monica Valentinelli

Pinching Tarts is a caucus game of tart-stealing nonsense inspired by Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) that offers players multiple options to win. You and your friends play Wonderland creatures who infiltrate the Red Queen’s castle to steal Her Majesty’s tarts while protecting what you hold most dear-your heart.

Pinching Tarts is a GM-less game that uses 10 six-sided dice in two colors (five of each). It includes:

  • standard rules, tips, and rule summaries
  • character rules, characters, and character creation
  • rules for Teatime, “Eat Me” cakes, and “Drink Me” potions
  • optional rules to stash and eat tarts
  • sample rooms in the Red Queen’s castle
  • rules for antagonists including the Knave of Hearts, the Cook, and the Red King and Queen
  • a recipe for fruit-a-licious mini-tarts
  • …and more!

Your mission? Pinch tarts. Drink tea. Escape… With your heads tarts!

Suitable for two or more players, childlike adults and children, this tartacular game from veteran game designer Monica Valentinelli is her PocketQuest debut. Whether you play a duck, a dodo, or a dormouse it matters not, for each creature has their own talents, specialty, and heart. Gathered together, you form “les pièces de résistance,” a ragtag band of thieves who have targeted none other than the head-chopping Red Queen.

“I had a lot of fun designing ‘Pinching Tarts’ for my first PocketQuest, so much so I devised a fun origin story for the game’s development and layout,” writes Monica. “I pretended I ‘found’ this vintage game in a secondhand book store, but several pages were torn, missing, and scribbled on in crayon. So, I reconstructed the original game and now present it you as a found artifact full of sticky notes, parchment, scrap paper, etc.”

This title includes a full color and printer-friendly greyscale version. The printer-friendly version of Pinching Tarts has a full color cover, but the interior has been modified to be less art-intensive.

For more about Monica’s process designing Pinching Tarts, you can read:

Pinching Tarts is available exclusively on DriveThruRPG.com.

Also Available on DriveThruRPG


Creature Sheets is a pay-what-you-want game aid compatible with Pinching Tarts, a Wonderland-themed PocketQuest game designed by Monica Valentinelli. The creature sheet is not form-fillable by design for two reasons: some of the fields are subject to change during gameplay, and there’s a rule in the game that gives players the ability to swap character sheets. For this reason, it is strongly recommended that you use pencil to fill out the sheets.

Creature Sheets is a digital download that includes:

  • creature sheet instructions
  • guidance for descriptive Wonderland-appropriate traits
  • sample creature sheet for a puppy
  • blank, printer-friendly creature sheets

The two-page creature sheets include tracks for hearts as well as optional tracks for tarts stolen, eaten, and foes defeated.



New Release The Dagon Collection Available for Pre-Order

The Dagon Collection | Cover Art

The Dagon Collection is a unique anthology edited by Nate Pedersen that debuts early this year from PS Publishing.

The Dagon Collection is a companion book to “The Starry Wisdom Library. Once again, the new anthology is presented as a fake auction catalogue, however this time it is 1929, shortly after the events in “The Shadow Over Innsmouth.” The feds have just raided the Esoteric Order of Dagon Lodge. Now they’ve contracted with Pent & Serenade, Occult Auctioneers, to sell the items secured in the raid.

In addition to books, this auction also features weaponry, art, jewelry, nautical items, textiles, and objects both strange and prosaic once owned by the Dagon cult. The design skills of Andrew Leman of H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society have brought the catalogue to life in all its 1920s period glory.

Rebecca Baumann of the University of Indiana provided the cataloging of the objects. Liv Rainey-Smith and Eduardo Valdes-Hevia contributed illustrations. Leading voices in horror and Lovecraftian fiction again contributed stories, including F. Paul Wilson, Jesse Bullington, John Langan, Gemma Files, Livia Llewellyn, Michael Cisco, Nick Mamatas, Ramsey Campbell, Selena Chambers, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Monica Valentinelli and, in a bittersweet note, Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. (to whom the book is dedicated), in what may be his final unpublished story.

Pre-orders for The Dagon Collection are now available. Visit PS Publishing to learn more!



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Looking for Monica’s books and games that are still in print? Visit Monica Valentinelli on Amazon’s Author Central or a bookstore near you.

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