Helloooooo Community Creations! I’ve cobbled together a [Guide] post here for anyone who’s new to concept making or even anyone experienced who’s curious. So if you’re new, welcome! I hope to help you get that concept out quickly, get it out nicely and otherwise help you out with your post to make it the best it can be. It’ll be a bit of reading but I hope you’ll deem it worth :)

Please note: There are hundreds if not thousands of ways to approach an idea like a champion concept. The following are not rules of any sort, they are strictly guidelines that you can choose to follow. They’re simply there to help you out if you’re stuck or want help.

The Spark

What I mean by “the spark” is that initial ‘aha’ moment that has the possibility of becoming a champion concept. This can range anywhere from “I wish there was a sand mage in League” to “wouldn’t it be better if Quinn used a pterodactyl?”. Anything goes, really, you just have to be excited (or entertained) by the idea enough to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. These can come from anywhere so keep an eye out for them!

#The Approach

There are hundred of not thousands of way to approach making a champion, each with their own pros and cons, so for sake of our sanity let’s focus on two very broad ways:

From the Character

This means you’re probably coming from a spark generated from a lore idea or even a missing personality. An example would be making a Watcher or trying to bring in another Rakkor into the League scene. Maybe you want to see Heimerdinger’s brother? Or maybe Darius’s sister? Like I said, anything goes! But when you take this approach keep a few things in mind:

• Make sure it’s not already in live, do your research!
• Make sure you can put them somewhere in Runeterra. While not impossible, try to avoid having them “pop out of nowhere”.
• Try to get an initial personality in mind. You want to try to avoid making another version of Lux (bubbly) or of Garen (narcissistic), for example. Make sure they can really take charge of their own personality, it adds a good bit of depth.

From the Kit

You’re making a League champion after all, you gotta make sure they have their own weapons and spells! Seriously, this is required for a champ concept, or else you’re making a fan fiction (which in of itself is not a bad thing). A lot of times I see people use this approach from a theme (i.e. sand based, explosives based) or around a central mechanic (i.e. rage mage, a spell reflect, runes). which can always be tons o’ fun. Try to keep these points in mind when taking this approach:

• Make sure it’s not already in live, do your research!
• Try to include combos and synergies into your kit, don’t just have 4 spells just kinda there
• Damage numbers are technically optional, you can use phrases like “high damage” and “low damage” if you don’t feel confident, but putting in that extra effort to include precise displays of power can really shine through
• Cooldowns and costs are heavily recommended, because it shows us the playstyle you’re trying to go for. There's a big difference between a 3 sec CD spell and a 10 sec CD spell.
• Skill names are hard, I’ve been there time and again. Don’t be afraid to ask the community for some help. Name brainstorms are fun!
• Make sure to show more of the character’s…character through their skills, and avoid skills that wouldn’t make sense on that champ.

#Building: Character and Lore

Lore is incredibly important in a champion design, it’s the one real opportunity to shape your champion’s personality and origin as well as great practice for creative writing. I will always suggest for you to get some lore out on your champion concept, no matter how good or bad you feel you are at writing. This can be really easy or really difficult for different people, so let’s break it down and think about what a champion’s lore need to accomplish.

Origin

A champion’s origin need to be stated in the lore, we as an audience needs to know his ties and where he hails from in the many assorted realms of Runeterra (and beyond). It could be as simple as vague references like Jinx’s “Though the young woman's origins were a mystery, some saw traces of Piltover hextech in her firearms, while others described the street fashions of Zaun in her dress.” or as complicated as Shyvana’s “Dragonkind considered Shyvana's impure blood an abomination, and she spent her youth pursued….[snip]”. Try to think of where your champion would make sense to be from, and how being from there shaped them into the character they are in your head.

Personality

Even more important than their physical origins is the origins of their personality. Ask yourself how they became who they are now, what events transpired to make them into a heartless killer, a glorified anti-hero or a burly kind-hearted soul. You don’t need to tell us, the readers, exactly how, but if you don’t make sure to give us a prime example of their personality. At the end of the day we shouldn’t just take away good read after going through your lore, we should be able to guess how your champ would react to random situation, we have to know your champ.

Description

It’s difficult to include a physical description inside the lore (I usually don’t bother myself and make a separate ‘Description’ section) but I mention it now because this is a great place to think about how your champ looks. If you’re a decent artists you’ve probably already drawn up some art or a sketch. But even if you’re artistically challenged (like me!), I still highly suggest to try to do your best telling us readers how you envision your champ.

Motives

If you do anything with the lore right, make sure you adequately explain to us why the champ is fighting. If the champion is in league then he/she/it is fighting something or someone. Tell use what! Make sure that if we ever play as your champ, we know why they're there in the first place.

#Building: Kit and Gameplay

There are so many ways to go about this. Personally, I always like starting out with the passive but you usually want to start on whatever central mechanic/skill you want and build around that, tweaking as you go. Leave numbers for last! Make sure you have a cohesive and fun kit to mess around with before you start fiddling with the details. It’s very possible for skills to change once you get things like cost and cooldowns in, but make sure you can see a kit that you want and work to make sure you can make something close.

This is where knowledge of Game Design can really come in handy, but for the sake of simplicity I’ll give you a crash course.

• Kit Focus

  • Auto Attack: Jax, Fiora, Kog’maw

  • Caster: Alistar, Renekton, Lucian, Riven, Shen

  • Reactive: Braum, Yasuo, Sivir

  • Proactive/Initiative: Rammus, Leona, WuKong

These are simply examples, there are plenty more. The lesson here is to try and think of how your champ would approach a fight and try to get a kit going that reflects that.

• High/Low Points

  • Ideally you will want to have the possibility for awesome plays. Saves, snipes and jukes all count, and your champ’s theme can easily direct you. Try to create a kit that makes actions worthy of your character’s theme really powerful, but actions that aren’t less than ideal. Braum, for example, feels great when you jump to someone’s aid and shield them, but doesn’t do so well chasing someone down as they’re running away. It’s not that he can’t chase them down but it’s that he plays better when saving his allies.

• Ability Types

  • Blink: This is a short-range instant teleport. Summoner Flash is a prime example. These are powerful mobility spells because it allows to jump over terrain as well as not having a leap’s vulnerability during the movement. i.e. Ezreal E, Katarina E

  • Leap: A jump, pure and simple. These tend to be longer range than a dash.

  • Dash: A massive dash of speed to a nearby location while staying on the ground. These tend to be the short range

  • Gap Closer: some form of leap, blink, blink pull or slow that is designed to allow your champ to get closer to it’s target. i.e. Kha’zix E, Renekton E

  • Primer: I’ve called these ‘dependent’ abilities as well. These abilities give a de-buff or extra damage modifier to increase the effectiveness of follow-up abilities, auto attacks or other damage. i.e. Katarina Q, Zed Ult

  • Trigger: This is an ability intended to trigger a Primer ability. It’s suggested to let it be able to somewhat stand on its own as well, but if you have a Primer, you need an intuitive way to trigger it. i.e. Akali E, Katarina W

  • AA Augment: Auto attack augment, this is an ability listed as “On next auto attack [X]”. Make sure your champion has a kit that synergizes with melee range before considering this. i.e. Riven Passive, Renekton W

  • Snipe: This is an ability with very long-range and a narrow hit-box meant to be long range damage but hard to hit. They reward accuracy and punish close range use with various mechanics like a long animation time or distance based damage. i.e. Nid Q, Jinx W

#Building: Formatting

Here’s a great example of good formatting: Fenris, The Howling Wind by Dragonzilla (With help from Flintfall)

While this is still entirely up to you as the author I have a few suggestions in your ordering to help readers get hooked and stay interested. Here’s a good order to go by:

• Art - Art is hard. It really is. No one will blame you for not having some. But by that same logic having it is great! Start with this if you can, because it will really grab you reader’s attention, not to mention be an awesome thumbnail image in the Boards! Some people do it themselves, other find a friend or other kind-hearted soul for a free commission, but don’t feel bad if you can’t get any you’ll be with the other 90% of the conceptors.

• Lore - Lore is a great start, it’s great for ‘setting a scene’ for your character as well as describing his theme and overall personality. It can do what even the best art can’t, paint a picture of the character as a person. You want your reader to see what and who your champion is and why they feel the way they do to really drive kits home. Make sure your lore is memorable.

• Description/Base StatsI see a lot of people preface the kit with compliments to the lore like physical descriptions (if art is lacking) and base stats. Feel free to do so or not do so. If you need help making sure your base stat numbers are right try looking up a similar live champion and later those stats slightly where you can to better fit your champ specifically. Auto attack range can be a bit tricky, as that’s a huge portion of a ranged champion’s design. Try to make the range fit with the rest of the kit, as an example, Caitlyn’s is long range as is her Q and R, meanwhile Vayne’s is not but she as decent mobility and chase to make up for it, don’t be afraid to experiment!

• Kit - Kit’s are hard to make perfect and to be completely honest you probably won’t make a stellar one on your first try. Keep at it though! They only get better with practice! Formatting wise try to break up the separate abilities the best you can and try to also break the cost and cooldowns of each ability as well. Those need to claim their own space visually, they’re very important to define a kit’s intended playstyle. Another addition to consider is also the logic of you the creator behind the each skill.

• Extras - After the kit it’s free game, so here are some fun sections to add that I’ve seen and occasionally used myself: FAQ, Taunts, Jokes, Dances, Champ Interactions, Item Interactions, Skin Ideas, Trivia, Development Log, Changelog, Thanklog, Playstyle, Recommended Items, Counters, Lore:Part 2, League judgement, or anything else you can think of. Keep in mind though, that making a concept too long can really make reading the whole thing difficult. You want to make your post entertaining and interesting, making it too long will turn it into a chore, so have fun with it but be conservative!

#Post-posting: Taking Feedback

This may not be a problem you normally have, but when you put work into something and present it it’s sometimes very hard to take negative feedback. And I’m not saying rude feedback, I mean points to change things for [X] reason and claims over overpower/underpowered or weak lore. Remember, unless they’re being rude they’re most likely trying to help. It will be hard to take feedback for a champ concept you have your heart on, so here are some tips:

• Be open to change, look over your concept the best you can and look for weaknesses. If someone points one of them out explain why you decided to keep it. If you don’t have a good reason, then it might be time to change that portion.

• Ask for idea but don’t let someone run away with your concept. The Creations Community is a great load of people, but sometimes they/we can get a bit carried away with a great idea. When you ask for input on a possible change try to propose options or limit the scope of a brainstorm so the other people that are helping don’t change more than you intend. There can be a lot of synergies and dependents in a concept so changing one thing may mean changing a lot, so keep that in mind and remember that it’s your concept.

• Critiquing a Concept is hard, it’s a lot to take in and requires decent knowledge of writing and game design to give a good review that a conceptor can use. Knowing this, don’t be too hard on people who don’t give the best feedback or just vote and leave. Not enough feedback is a very common problem in Creations, so don’t feel too bad if you run into that. One idea that vBulletin has done that can work very well is to establish a ‘review trade’ system. Create a post saying you will review someone else’s concept if they review one of your choice. Remember: people want a review just as bad as you do so why not kill two birds with one post?

• Do not feed the troll. Trolls aren’t as common as you would think, but on the off-chance don’t let them get to you! Just downvote and move on, their comment will remain there at the bottom accumulating hopefully nothing but more downvotes. If it’s rude and hurtful you can even report it and get it removed!

• Create a Nexus post. If you plan on making more concepts try making a central post that you update with the links to all your champs, and then place a link to that ‘nexus post’ to all of your new champs in the future. If someone likes your new concept they may explore your other creations!

#Post-Posting: WIP Concepts

Work In Progress champ concepts are quite common and I actually encourage you to start these for your first few champs concepts if you feel so inclined. Wherever you have ‘holes’ in you concept explain what you’re thinking about doing and any problems you’re running into. Writer’s block is a very common ailment! Don’t be afraid to post an incomplete concept and ask for help, as long as you remain open minded and let people tinker with your idea as well it could turn out great!

One thing to note though is that a WIP concept does not excuse you from spamming. Treat each iteration as a new concept and make sure you wait in between versions. I’ve held on to WIP concepts for months before posting again, people are much more inclined to help if they aren’t annoyed at seeing that particular name again and again. And don’t forget to give credit to those you help! It’s a good show of respect and also encourage others to help out too!

#Other Helpful Posts

• How to Review a Champion by Jaykoboy

Great guidelines and tips for giving feedback to a champion concept. I highly suggest looking through this, you’ll probably learn a thing or two, I know I did!

• Champion Creation Tips v3 by Katsuni

MASSIVE guide that stomps this little pebble of a guide into dust. If you want more detailed help, and I mean MUCH more detailed help try tackling this monster. Be advised: be prepared to not read in one sitting, I am not exaggerating when I say MASSIVE.

• Champion Concept Index v2.0 (vBulletin) by Wulffe

The CB champion compendium older and bigger brother. You can find some of the best and oldest champion concepts here. If you look really hard you may even find concepts that inspired actual live champs!

• Champion Concept Forum Guide Compilation by Merylindra

If none have what you’re looking for this post will get you there. While it contains some of the above as well, this awesome post includes other guides and even free review threads. I highly suggest exploring your options here.

• Calling all Champ Concept’ers, Share Your Experience! by Sir ArmaMalum

This is a post I made myself as a sort of ‘group interview’ to show you how other conceptors including myself approach various areas of a concept. Everyone has their own process and their own specific difficulties!

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Addendum

Feel free to ask me questions or point out anything I should include, I’ll be honest there is soooo much more I can go into, so if you’re confused anywhere please ask! I’ll be happy to help you where I can.

Also, a big thank you to CaptainMarvelous and everyone who responded to the "Calling all Concept'ers" post, you guys really helped me out! :)