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Let's get a few things straight RE: lore "rewrites"

MrSc0tty·9/17/2014, 1:48:46 PM·19 votes·1,029 views

Here is what a rewrite is:

Take a story, and either A) change it into a different story featuring the same characters, or B) retell the story with a few changes in a different medium.

Sivir has received a lore Rewrite. Ashe has received a lore rewrite.

What is not a rewrite:

  1. writing a completely new story with characters who are completely different except for the name. Examples: Trundle, Karma. This is known as starting completely over from scratch, and you should start with an apology to anyone who liked the old character.

  2. removing a characters lore and replacing it with a brief summary of the planned rewrite along with an IOU. Examples: Skarner, Rammus. If I stole someone's copy of Hamlet and replaced it with an empty VHS case of The Lion King, they would probably still think of Hamlet as stolen even if they had the brief plot summary and nice images on the case. This is a Lore Deletion.

  3. summarizing and condensing existing lore into a format that is objectively worse in every way. Examples: Amumu, Renekton. Copy/pasting the Wikipedia history entries on Paris and London would not be accepted as a Rewrite of Tale of Two Cities. This is a Lore Deletion.

So if we could please start using the correct terminology I think our discussions might actually get somewhere.

14 Comments

He Who is Pale9/17/2014, 4:05:44 PM3 votes

The only difference in Rammus' old lore and his current abridged summary is the removal of the completely unexplained maze. His story was always: "Armadillo, wizards happened, sapience."

sp4419/17/2014, 7:11:47 PM3 votes

Honestly, I'm getting pretty sick about how every champion has to be "important". It's like we can't have lesser known or independent heroes around, no, everybody's gotta be the heir of a lost civilization, or the king of a warring nation or some crap.

Sneak Dog9/17/2014, 2:28:06 PM2 votes

If Runaan is to be trusted, example 1 shouldn't happen. It has, compare old Trundle with current Trundles voice-overs (the background story came really close to being old Trundle, him being an ice troll is fine too, it's his identity that matters, being a swamp or ice troll isn't really important). Seeing how this happened already, I hope they'll go back when they make a mistake and fix it.

A bit off-topic, but I haven't seem many threads about Karma, and if I compare the two lores, included judgement, the only thing I see is that Karmas use of force is more of a process in the old lore than in the new. In the end, both stories have her using her force almost freely to end the noxian occupation. " Karma had heard enough tales of Noxian cruelty to openly question the elders' wisdom" seems to be the main line that I'd remove. I'd expect Karma to first try diplomacy just as the elders and then realize it won't do. Comparing voice-overs, the new one sounds a bit less aloof? I never was a Karma fan, so I'm curious how her identity was changed.

“But a certain character's entire story focused on his or her connection to the Institute of War!” Yeah, I know these things are sticky; we wrestle with them internally, too. Our philosophy with these characters is that whatever we do to re-shape them should hold very tightly to the “soul” of what a character was in the old canon. Nobody should feel like an entirely new character – their spirit, the “feeling” you get from them, those things should feel true, even if details shift in how they came to be that person.

Piece of a post from RiotRunaan on the na forums here