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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 28/09/2026

You are astonishing and we remain grateful for your work. One of the defining characteristics of a wizard ought to be recognition, appreciation, and support of the Wise among them. Alas, even wizards make mistakes. Here's to better days and soon.

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 25/09/2026

"... for there were no more worlds to conquer."

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 08/09/2026

That said, I'm sorry I distracted and interrupted.

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 08/09/2026

"It is not necessarily the duty of any artist, designer, or maker of things to advance or expand their medium with everything they make." That's my impulse. It's okay to make stuff. Using the cutting edge to laugh at makers is a bad excuse for a bad practice. Sorry for my "design" typo. *designers

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 08/09/2026

Regardless, I apologize for intruding on the conversation here.

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 08/09/2026

I don't believe that. Anyway, I think your comment demeans the designers. (I see my typo in that post, sorry about that.) Many of the designers I work with are in conversation with lots of games and media. If that's not been your experience, fair enough. I don't know most designers. I guess you do.

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 08/09/2026

Possible! You just added High Art snobbery to my post, as well. I'll presume I've misread Radmad, too. For the record, I think you're otherwise correct in this thread. It's why I took issue with Radmad's comments as I read them.

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 08/09/2026

Understood. I agree with you, Levi, in many ways. I take issue with the reply above that finds TTRPG designers laughable wrt whatever the cutting edge is. I think games are art. I don't categorize art as High or otherwise. Judging a designer by the cutting edge strikes me as snobbish, too.

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 08/09/2026

It's kind of weird, tho? Why "improving?" Progressing, changing, developing, sure. Do you measure other art forms this way? Why judge TTRPGs *this* way? An imagined "cutting edge" doesn't seem relevant to whether progress is occurring. Why use that to demean TTRPG design? Bummer.

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 07/09/2026

(Ask me sometime about when I tried to do this as part of a new initiative at a known game studio.)

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 04/09/2026

I cannot speak to how it was received at the time, however.

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 04/09/2026

Oh, the fire, ire, and vitriol given unto nWoD at the turn of the century for making the attack roll be the damage roll. Times a-changing.

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 28/08/2026

This is a favorite, recurring mantra for us and our GMs, too!

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 22/08/2026

(Genuinely, thanks for what you do. Your work—your voice and what you say with it—inspires and confounds, delights me as a player of games and ignites the imagination in me as a maker. Go birds.)

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 22/08/2026

I think maybe the most resonant, profound thing I can offer is to recommend to you this show I admire—a phenomenal undertaking of play and celebration, imaginative camaraderie and thoughtful creativity. It shapes authors, artists, designers, thinkers, shit-posting zanies and yuksters, alike: Party o

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 01/07/2026

We did a few single-session APs as part of our fundraising campaign for WLPN back when, live on air.

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 24/06/2026

The fate and future of our long-running adventure series hangs in the balance now. The cadence and the stakes of our campaign have changed. Our next epic event is October 24, 2026 in Chicago. See the teaser video at leveleater.com now. #leveleater #ttrpg

leveleater.com

Home - Level Eater Adventures

Celebrated game-powered fundraising events. Be heroic. Fight evil. Play TTRPGs.

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 14/06/2026

We remember that you are amazing and great, specifically.

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 10/06/2026

I think "the dungeon" is a fine starting place to work from and refer to when teaching how a "playable" "social map" (or whatever!) functions in play—but names often stick, so be wary. E.g., the SMALLVILLE game's relationship maps, many larp character webs, etc., also explore these notions.

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 10/06/2026

Yeah. E.g. "social combat" was a term in the 2000s and it brought unneeded baggage. While, sure, a dungeon is in part a spatial flowchart of play, simply modifying "dungeon" keeps a lot of assumptions around the term, while relegating the vital sociability to a mere adjustment of those expectations.

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 09/06/2026

Portraying and reflecting interpersonal and social dynamics into playable spaces is something we've worked on a bunch, too! I love that stuff. But please please let's find happier, compelling terms to describe this stuff?

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 15/05/2026

This weekend, Co-Prosperity's gallery in Bridgeport, where we usually host Level Eater's main events, debuts one of our very favorite recurring exhibits in the space: Typeforce! It opens tonight—always a marvel of typographic artworks. Learn more on Instagram: www.instagram.com/typeforce/

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typeforce • Instagram photos and videos

4,981 Followers, 2,778 Following, 106 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from @typeforce

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 14/05/2026

For what it's worth, I mention this as a Yes, And, rather than a Well, Actually.

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 14/05/2026

Some FitD games like SLUGBLASTER don't agree with this, as demonstrated by its Nope! rule. Which is to say, the strict bounds of resistance are not actually that strict—it's not just the distinction that's fuzzy. A friend of mine treats resistance like revision in Blades and loves it that way.

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 13/05/2026

What does Yoda say is in the gnarly cave that draws Luke's attention? "Only what you take with you."

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 13/05/2026

Game rules, as written and as played, mingle and interact with play cultures in myriad ways. A rulebook doesn't have the space to convey all the ways a game like D&D gets played. Its job is to convey and affirm a vision of play, not necessarily address, debate, or quash other notions of play.

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 13/05/2026

How do terms *reflect* the ways players regard a game? How do they *affect* how rules get learned or absorbed? In our experience, the Proficiency rules in 5E cause occasional confusion in players who think Proficiency is more complex. The RAW might be just *one* cause of that confusion.

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 13/05/2026

It could be informative to discover how players for whom D&D 5E is their first RPG adopt terms from other RPGs, and discover how play cultures overlap and influence each other. If we could, we'd tag and track some terms like birds in the wild, but we can't, so we don't.

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 13/05/2026

Meanwhile, the term "check," to describe a die roll that compares to an ability score, enters D&D parlance in the early 1980s, around the time of early Dragonlance modules and The Dungeoneer's Survival Guide. With D&D's 3rd edition, "skill check" appears from the get-go but in a roll-high way.

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 13/05/2026

To be more forthright: TTRPGs have included skill-based methods and systems since the late 1970s—several were designed in parallel, most likely—and of course, varied games play with the idea in varied ways. eg: Runequest and Traveller and Bunnies & Burrows each approach the topic in their own ways.

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 13/05/2026

If the subtext (and, honestly, subtweet parts) in yesterday's comments didn't come through: We were alluding to other discussions about what game rules say *and* leave out, and how games "read" differently depending on which other games you've read, and where you're coming from.

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 13/05/2026

Yep! While 5E has been a lot of folks' first D&D, some jargon is in the proverbial water in which we swim. We, as players, bring things with us to these games and ignore, trim, or overlook other things. Rulebooks don't exist in a vacuum, and the context for each player is a little varied, too.

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 12/05/2026

(Of course, "attribute" isn't an official term, either. Ability and ability score are the formal terms. Descriptivist-minded grammarians, take note.)

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 12/05/2026

In his memoir, ON WRITING, Stephen King refers to his flow state as a novelist as a kind of "creative sleep." How does the response to play vary from getting a reader's feedback, one wonders. That informed, creative trance (be it ludic or fictive) is so great.

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 12/05/2026

How "skill check" became a commonplace D&D term—and how that reflects or affects learning the game—remains unclear and fascinating. It shows one more way in which the text of a TTRPG is just one facet of the game's identity. Now, how do YOU teach or use Proficiencies in play?

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 12/05/2026

The 2014 DMG even offers the option to use your *character class* as a Proficiency topic—or to replace the flat Proficiency bonus with a d4, d6, or higher reflecting your character's level. Options abound.

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 12/05/2026

A flexible sense of Proficiency makes it easy to mix-and-match skills with different attributes for descriptive purposes. Giving a lecture on the history of the realm could be a Charisma (History) check, for example. Lots of mileage in dynamism!

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 12/05/2026

The Proficiency bonus can portray any knack or aptitude a character might have, as a quick way to influence an ability check. Remember, no matter how many Proficiencies might seem to apply, any given ability check either benefits from the Proficiency or it does not. It's quicker this way.

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 12/05/2026

In other words, while "skill check" may not appear in RAW or in the index of the D&D rulebooks, the parlance of actual play includes it—formally or informally. How it emerges, forms into parlance, and influences play is *fascinatingly* unclear. Shows how the culture of play varies from RAW.

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 12/05/2026

Hi! The term "skill check" isn't a thing in 5th-edition D&D. It is colloquial jargon for an ability check, which often involves proficiency, be it with a skill, tool, or so on. This kind of jargon reflects how players *regard* the rules, not how the rules are written. Both are important!

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 12/05/2026

All art and all artifice are on some level about what gets selected or edited out. Otherwise, if it had all the things, it'd be that thing.

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 08/05/2026

The very question throws a loop. Strong contrast, killer line work, powerful proportion and energetic shapes. If you count halftone grays as "not black and white," then I suppose this tips my thinking to 51% color and 49% black and white? Is this helpful at all?! I am in a loop!

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 22/04/2026

D&D is magic and now Magic is D&D, too! Play MtG **and** D&D on Sunday 4/26 in Bridgeport, Chicago, with our friends from @wizardstaffing.bsky.social and @skeletalgames.bsky.social at the loft of the Ramona theatre! Tix available now: www.tixr.com/groups/ramov... #ttrpg

tixr.com

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Level Eater Adventures @leveleater.com · 21/04/2026

Friends of Marz and friends of Ours at @wizardstaffing.bsky.social and @skeletalgames.bsky.social present: A thrilling Magic and D&D combo event in the loft at the beautiful Ramova Theater in Bridgeport, Chicago! Play Magic, play D&D, play Magic&D&D. Get tix now! www.tixr.com/groups/ramov...

tixr.com

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