Eternal Champion and the reason I don't care much about the lore in LoL

Señor Karthus·Nov 16, 2015·18 votes·10,429 views

Some of you who played the Sega Megadrive/Genesis console in the 90s might know about this game called Eternal Champion. It was an exclusive and didn't get the best reviews in the world but I absolutely loved it because of its lore. The synopsis of the game was that a superior timeless being called The Eternal Champion was watching the end of mankind in a far distant future. He looked in the river of time for outstanding people whose lives could have changed the world for better forever, but they died before they could have accomplished anything. The Eternal Champion used all his power to cheat time and abduct these people from different moments in history right before they would die and brought them to his time. But since time was such a powerful force, the Eternal Champion only had power to bring one of them a few seconds before their death. So he created a tournament in which only the winner could be brought back that way, with the knowledge of the things to come to avoid death and change and save the world from its fate. The rest would be placed back where they were and face the death they were supposed to face. I was completely in love with this concept and loved to beat the game just to know how every character influenced history and changed the world for good. Even if it sometimes didn't make much sense that every one of them was a martial arts fighter, it made a lot of sense the motivations of them all to participate in the tournament. THEIR LIVES WERE AT STAKE! And they could do things to save the world from its doomed history!

But when coming to League of Legends, where Champions are summoned to fight in it.... it doesn't make any sense for most Champions. It doesn't make sense because most of them shouldn't have any motivation at all to participate in it. Many have cool stories and all but then... Why the hell are they actually in the League? I'm sorry but for me this is the biggest flaw of the lore in this game and why I don't really care much about the lore. Other than Draven and a few more that actually have motivations to participate, the rest makes no sense.

71 Comments

RiotBioluminescenceNov 17, 201515 votes

Holy crap I remember this game.

There was a warlock dude with a cane, and a totally-not-a-vampire guy. I rented the game from my local video store, a week at a time and despite being a bit terrible at fighting games, I completed both of their campaigns to find out their stories. I remember reading the instruction manual on the bus home from the store, learning about their (always very tragic) backstories. I think it was the first time I ever saw a character with the name Xavier - and I was overwhelmed with how downright cool that was.

I do think, however, that it was simply a variation on the standard Street Fighter/Mortal Kombat collect-mighty-heroes-for-a-tournament setup that fighting games are well known for. The added narrative sugar that it was their only chance at cheating their own deaths definitely added to it - but does make you wonder what 'happened' once the tournament was over. You and I saw the cut-scenes at the end (or was it text - it's been so long my brain has turned it into a cut-scene memory) but it makes no story sense to then go back to the start of the tournament and begin again. Having a story with an end - where the characters finally get what they always wanted - is a difficult thing to make sense in a game where you can play it over and over again.

It'd be really weird, for example, to have a text box pop up at the end of every Victory scene, explaining how your champion overcame their primary character conflict. It'd get really tiresome too, after the first few times.

The old 'Institute of War' was an attempt to solve that problem - summon immortal versions of champions to fight proxy battles over any dispute - but it came with its own (well discussed and sometimes controversial) problems. For better or worse we're not doing the Institute of War paradigm any more - and champions have been getting updated and expanded stories explaining their place in the Runeterra universe without an IoW.

I'm sure someone else may come along and suggest it, but if you're looking for match-influenced story, then the player-run Factions games might help scratch that itch. Otherwise, occasionally events have taken player actions and used them to influence a storyline junction - but those are few and far between. More likely, updated biographies and champion stories will show the development of characters in the world - which sometimes bleeds into the game world (as when Gangplank presumed dead in the recent Burning Tides event - and disabled from play until his return).

I feel I may not have addressed your thoughts properly, so I'll end with a question - how would you change League to better satisfy the desire that Eternal Champions created? What would be your chosen solution?

GinoSoldierNov 17, 20155 votes

{quoted}

I feel I may not have addressed your thoughts properly, so I'll end with a question - how would you change League to better satisfy the desire that Eternal Champions created? What would be your chosen solution?

I would honestly bring back the IoW but with a different setting (and perhaps a different name). It always appeared problematic to me how differently power scaled between characters in the lore. I'll use the recent Harrowing story as an example.

Miss Fortune was thrown against Hecarim. Miss Fortune had expended her resources, tactics and allies, and was about to die with no respawns. Plot twist, she got saved by Illaoi.

This still implies that Hecarim would have killed Miss Fortune, and also implies that due to the massive difference in power, there is no space in which some characters can meet some others and not get annihilated. Fast example on the spot; Any mortal without magic (Graves and Darius come to mind) versus Kindred.

The part that clashes unavoidably with the lore, no matter how you put it, is the game itself. Now why in the burning Carebears would Lucian be fighting alongside Thresh, Sion, Zed and Mordekaiser? No matter how you try to present that, it demolishes the lore without a context in which champions can all fight each other randomly, which is exactly what the IoW was.

Let's say once a character 'enters' the League (after being invited/tested), the character himself only creates a replica of himself which the gods of the world (us/summoners) can use to play toy soldiers with. The character then leaves and goes back to Bilgewater to get killed by Thresh. It's somewhat like entering the pantheon (no homo) of the champions of the world. The (us/gods/summoners) then broadcast those random matches featuring random champions with equalized power against each other for entertainment to the world of runeterra as the pseudo Football championships of Runeterra. (Because let's face it, i'm pretty sure those Ionians sometimes get bored meditating and want to watch e-sports too.)

As lore, it could look like this; the prime god of Runeterra, Rito, has therefore decided that matches would be shorter, and thus tweaked all things in the League to make it so. There was a rather loud outcry of protest among the countless minor gods (that's us normal people by the way), but the more powerful gods quickly adapted, maintaining their influence and power in the pantheon(that would be the pro-players).

This lets you do so many things! It lets you actually kill champions (Graves is already a bit old, and eventually Kindred WILL come and say hello!), because the timeline is potentially irrelevant to the league as long as champions have been entered. It lets you justify skins (granted some gods might be more pervy than some others). It lets you break the time/universe barrier and jump to the age of Project and Battlecast and Mecha, while still retaining the same League of Legends if you so wish.

That said I want two things from Rito. I want the short story of when Graves got his new gun after Burning Tides and he realized that this time it was an actual shotgun! Seriously, it follows previous lore, and it follows his rework. Do it Rito.

And i want Rafen, MF's first mate, to be recognized as a champion and put into the game. The guy survived FIVE harrowings. And he survived Bilgewater in general which seems to be quite the achievement. Also he needs to eat something highly opposed to oranges just to have an interaction with GP.

BLU MedicNov 17, 20152 votes

{quoted} And i want Rafen, MF's first mate, to be recognized as a champion and put into the game. The guy survived FIVE harrowings. And he survived Bilgewater in general which seems to be quite the achievement. Also he needs to eat something highly opposed to oranges just to have an interaction with GP.

Apples.

But yeah, your idea works. The stories we get now are in no way related to what we see in-game have bothered me. I always enjoyed the fact that I am actually a part of this world and now I've been kicked out of it because one random guy said so.

RiotBioluminescenceNov 17, 20157 votes

{quoted}

...Let's say once a character 'enters' the League (after being invited/tested), the character himself only creates a replica of himself which the gods of the world (us/summoners) can use to play toy soldiers with. The character then leaves and goes back to Bilgewater to get killed by Thresh...

Ok - so say that was the case. We fix one of the things deemed problematic with the game at the moment (the lack of player-Summoner connection) but we're still left with games/matches that have no meaning to the world. You are, as you describe it, playing with simulacra of the champions, balanced so as to be 'fair' against each other on the fields of battle (by the flawed, but well meaning, 'Rito').

...This lets you do so many things! It lets you actually kill champions (Graves is already a bit old, and eventually Kindred WILL come and say hello!), because the timeline is potentially irrelevant to the league as long as champions have been entered...

Just so. We're back to the world of Runeterra being irrelevant to the game, just so long as each champ has somehow been magic-3d-scanned into the summoner's database. Even then, there are some champs which it seems a stretch to imagine they'd volunteer for such a process (even though there are yet other champs who, without an updated bio, seem to strain believably in their very existence without the IoW - hello Jax/Orianna/etc.)

I can understand if at this point, your opinion is "Well, it's better than nothing!" but I'm not sure it addresses the issues that Fenrir Epsylon is having in the original post.

That said I want two things from Rito. I want the short story of when Graves got his new gun after Burning Tides and he realized that this time it was an actual shotgun! Seriously, it follows previous lore, and it follows his rework. Do it Rito.

I'd like to see that too :D

And i want Rafen, MF's first mate, to be recognized as a champion and put into the game. The guy survived FIVE harrowings. And he survived Bilgewater in general which seems to be quite the achievement. Also he needs to eat something highly opposed to oranges just to have an interaction with GP.

Unpopular opinion: I don't want to see Rafen as a champ! I think he's awesome, I really do - but amazingly, I think that being an NPC with any kind of background at all, actually makes him a rarer beast than any champion. I want to see him pop up in future stories, and I like the idea that someone had during Fortune and Shadow that he could have an item named after him, but I would actually be a little sad to see him as a champion. Power to the NPCs!

(Please note - I've no idea if there is an intention to make him a champ or not. Maybe the League team are doing it, maybe they have no intention, maybe he'll become so awesome in the future that even I will change my mind ;)

GinoSoldierNov 17, 20152 votes

{quoted}

Snip

Thank you kindly for taking the time to answer!

I realize that going for the 'better than nothing' option isn't what narrative wants but it just feels to me like at some point, the game will have to be somehow tied to the lore again.

Just an example; Currently Twisted Treeline's very existence makes no sense because most champions wouldn't even be able to get close to the place to begin with, considering the Harrowing's mist is protecting the Shadow Isles.

Rito StaffNov 19, 20151 votes

The rocks at the nexus (blue and red) could've been found nearby Shurima, in Mt. Targon. When people approached those rocks they saw replicas of themselfs 'spawning' and interacting. They also saw in the other side, looking back, strange looking aliens.

Alchemists tried to fiddle with the rocks, maybe they had great power to be used for the Shuriman Empire! And they did. (Story of Shurima rise)

However, they couldn't really understand the stones, they were very unpredictable and with time they became unstable up to the point of causing 'natural' catastrophes of ever huge proportions.

It only got worst in the next few weaks as a huge sandstorm just wouldn't go away. The city was doomed. A big boom is heard and something or someone came rushing from the skies (Bard) he was too late however! Everyone in Shurima was buried under the sands.

Bard did however managed to seal the stone's power. But for some reason, he left them in Runeterra, where they were. Why? After sometime explorers understood that the stones were a link between worlds and theorized Bard had left them for benefit of both cultures.

Runeterrians provide us with information and drawings of important/powerful figures in their world and we play them in the arena for entertainment!

Rioters are the regulators and the ones who get to communicate with them, they get the news on what's happening there.

A bunch of us plays against a bunch of us with replicas of their people. Makes sense to destroy the nexus now! (to stop their spawning)

Like the Harry Potter world, we don't have any interaction but I'm still waiting for my letter to Hogwarts. (It's a believable world)

XulsigaeNov 17, 20159 votes

For any faults the IoW had, it certainly helped make League stand out in terms of story. Having a reason for gold, items, champion interactions, summoner spells and such along with the Journal of Justice helped create a stronger sense of immersion. We weren't just players, we were members of something. Not everything we did mattered, but it helped to feel like we were interacting with characters and the world through their quotes and such. We were able to read about champions and their lives in little stories that helped flesh out the world without needing to be massive events. Letters to the JoJ were fun. The Noxus versus Ionia event helped show that players (some at least) could influence Lore to some degree. I know that the choices were limited and the interactions were little better than an illusion, but it felt different than most other games.

I know you didn't make the decision Bio, but...the main reason the IoW had 'controversial problems' from what I saw was that those who were in charge of the Lore didn't actually know their own lore. The IoW was described in ways by Narrative that a little digging in the JoJ or other sources would show were not true. Felt like new people had been brought into Narrative who had no idea what League Lore actually consisted of. It's certainly Riot's right to change their lore, but it feels wrong to say the IoW had controversial problems and that's why it was removed. Sorry. Fanboy rant over. Thank you for all the love you show the Lore.

RalanrNov 17, 20154 votes

I know what you mean. The idea of being a summoner, walking amongst the institute and interacting with the champions...that was something.

RiotBioluminescenceNov 17, 20154 votes

{quoted}

...I know you didn't make the decision Bio, but...the main reason the IoW had 'controversial problems' from what I saw was that those who were in charge of the Lore didn't actually know their own lore. The IoW was described in ways by Narrative that a little digging in the JoJ or other sources would show were not true. Felt like new people had been brought into Narrative who had no idea what League Lore actually consisted of. It's certainly Riot's right to change their lore, but it feels wrong to say the IoW had controversial problems and that's why it was removed. Sorry. Fanboy rant over. Thank you for all the love you show the Lore.

Sorry for my words being a bit mixed up - I meant that the change (the retcon et al) was controversial, and has since been well discussed by people on this board. I didn't mean to imply that the Journal of Justice, or the Institute of War themselves had controversial problems associated with them. Aaaaaand now we've fallen into discussing that exact thing again. :/ My apologies for bringing it up again.

XulsigaeNov 17, 20155 votes

Ah no worries. The change was controversial as well for much the same reason- the Narrative team appeared to have no idea of League Lore basics. The reasons they gave were easily disproven by looking at the JoJ and such. Gah. Sorry. Not your fault.

I like much of the new lore, but it befuddles me why the IoW had to go for it to exist.

TerraRisingNov 17, 20157 votes

{quoted}

Sorry for my words being a bit mixed up - I meant that the change (the retcon et al) was controversial, and has since been well discussed by people on this board. I didn't mean to imply that the Journal of Justice, or the Institute of War themselves had controversial problems associated with them. Aaaaaand now we've fallen into discussing that exact thing again. :/ My apologies for bringing it up again.

Old wounds run deep and many are still bleeding.

As you know, the main reason people still gravitate to the Institute of War and the Journals of Justice is that there is substance there where so little exists after the retcon.

Narrative could fix some of these problems by releasing these new "intros" at a faster pace, starting with the ones that the retcon broke (including Singed). Instead, they've decided not to do that for reasons that still baffle me and many others.

I mean, we were told that the new bios wouldn't need to be tied to champion reworks, releases and special events... yet, that's exactly what's been happening. Bilgewater and Shadow & Fortune, along with Fiora's rework, gave us ten new bios out of the 128 champions (including Illaoi). At this pace, we'll be waiting 15 years or so (with new champ releases) before this project is close to done.

lofi n chillhopNov 17, 20152 votes

{quoted}

I feel I may not have addressed your thoughts properly, so I'll end with a question - how would you change League to better satisfy the desire that Eternal Champions created? What would be your chosen solution?

{quoted}

The Noxus versus Ionia event helped show that players (some at least) could influence Lore to some degree.

Wait! Wait! Imagine a scenario where there is a sort of overarching plot to the game - in addition to the individual champion lore.

that, the "summoners" can choose a faction they represent. and as a community, we compete representing our faction,and at the end of a certain event each year that occurs before (or after) the professional season, the faction whos representatives have performed the best change the outcome of a conflict based around the "summoners" lore.

and then the champions themselves, their lore is all about who they are, and why they are a "champion" from their world. maybe most of the champions are from the same lore or a linked lore to the summoners --- but some champions could be "grabbed from their universe" just because they are something special that we summoners bring to the table of our battle.

and the tie in between the champions and their lore, and the summoners and "our" lore, is something along that line. that somehow we pull them or maybe create doppelgangers of them, or something, because they are impressive heroes. I guess this plays into the issues of the IoW tho does it? I don't really understand what the problems of the IoW was...

Sparrow89Nov 17, 20153 votes

" Having a story with an end - where the characters finally get what they always wanted - is a difficult thing to make sense in a game where you can play it over and over again."

Reminds me of a quote I heard once.

"No [good] story should ever end in resolution..."

RiotBioluminescenceNov 17, 20153 votes

{quoted}

" Having a story with an end - where the characters finally get what they always wanted - is a difficult thing to make sense in a game where you can play it over and over again."

Reminds me of a quote I heard once.

"No [good] story should ever end in resolution..."

You're quite right - but it was what happened at the end of Eternal Champions. The winning fighter got a second chance at life; a second chance to save the world. Obviously, if they intended a sequel, then something would be found to have gone wrong, creating new conflict, but I don't believe there was an Eternal Champion 2.

Now, in Burning Tides, Sarah seemed to get what she always wanted - but it didn't satisfy her. She's still driven to find the body of Gangplank, and to wipe out anyone who may have sided with him. That (in my personal opinion - you may have another view) was Miss Fortune 'getting what she wanted' but the character developed to have new desires - just as a good character should.

My initial point was that in a one-and-done game, you can have a 'happily ever after' - but finding new goals for a character after every game of League is pretty much impossible. There's a dissonance between the player's goals: get better at the game, crush my enemies, go up the ranks, place more wards than the opposing support (that's my goal), get a pentakill, have fun with my friends, etc. And with the champion goals, which may be as varied as: play music, unite my people, scare the living bejezus out of my victims, follow the scouts code, or herald the machine age.

tl;dr - I agree with you entirely - and the result of that creates problems for a game that is played many many times, over and over.

Señor KarthusNov 17, 20153 votes

But you see, this is what I respectfully disagree with. You see the game as a chronological timeline while I see it as a fixed moment in time and space. And I am going to explain the pros and the cons.

I understand that you want to see the game as a more dynamic story where events happen that change the characters and all what is going on in the game. But the truth is that this is the hardest way to see this game and the hardest way to make sense of it all. After all, it is a game that has been played a billion times and every time it has been different. You cannot make sense of that at all unless you perceive it as different universes where things have gone differently. And this is a much more solid way to see it because the lore has changed already radically. The stories of the game and certain characters are not the same anymore and that already proves that what we are playing now is not the same that we played before. We are allegedly already in a different universe than 2 seasons ago. Every time a Champion is added to the game, I see it as just another universe where that Champion always was in the game. Every time the lore changes for a character or characters, I see it as another universe where it always happened that way. And so and so. And it makes sense. You cannot make sense of a battle that happens a billion times and every time differently without recognizing them as unique isolated universes. And in those unique Universes that everything happened in a certain way, you can have ends. You won the game, you won that unique battle that decided the fate of many people. You play again, it is another Universe where other people won.

RiotBioluminescenceNov 17, 20153 votes

[{quoted}](name=Fenrir Epsylon,realm=NA,application-id=6kFXY1kR,discussion-id=8TdI25zj,comment-id=0001000200000001,timestamp=2015-11-17T17:44:47.212+0000)

...You cannot make sense of that at all unless you perceive it as different universes where things have gone differently. And this is a much more solid way to see it because the lore has changed already radically. The stories of the game and certain characters are not the same anymore and that already proves that what we are playing now is not the same that we played before. We are allegedly already in a different universe than 2 seasons ago.

I am somewhat familiar with working on games featuring parallel universes, but there are some downsides that I'm not sure you cover - specifically, if everything can happen, then nothing has happened.

Everything I do in the game now, while meaningful within the context of that individual match, loses all meaning when viewed outwith that match. As far as every other match is concerned - and indeed, as far as every other player is concerned - it may as well never happened. It is, to give myself flashbacks to a certain pair of ginger haired, English-accented, fictional scientists - existing in a state of quantum uncertainty. "He doesn't row."

Now you can certainly take the player as the 'fixed point of reference' for the story of any particular game - and most games accidentally do this. When I play through a game like Fallout 4, I'm having a different experience to that which you are having - both equally valid interpretations of the story. Maybe I've got a female avatar who looks a bit like Janelle Monae - maybe you've decided to make a male avatar that's the spitting image of Hank from King of the Hill. Maybe you sided with the Institute, and maybe I didn't. Maybe I placed my crafting station in Sanctuary - maybe you can't be bothered with the settlement system at all! All perfectly valid ways to experience the story - and to each of us, a full narrative experience.

But Fallout is perhaps not the best comparison. Would we still feel like we'd had a satisfying experience if we played Fallout from beginning to end 10 times? A hundred? A thousand? Or would it all start to seem like the story hardly mattered on our nine hundred and ninety ninth play through?

Perhaps a better comparison would be something like FTL - a roguelike to be sure, but one that encourages replay hundreds of play throughs. Roguelikes usually forgo much of what is considered 'traditional' narrative - instead providing you with awesome player-narratives, with a thin veneer of setting to start you off. I'm fairly sure that no-one is particularly satisfied with the story in FTL on their second completion - instead, they are super satisfied at the player game play choices that lead them there. Missiles or drones? Engi crew-members or Rockmen? Tried to save that slave ship, or not?

Now one could argue that the player-narrative side of League is already fairly well covered. Games have (the good ones, at least) a beginning (laning), middle (teamfights), and end (base fight). Those 'stories' are ones that I at least come back for every game - a test of skill against the game, myself, and my opponents - one that I can have great influence upon and that has meaning for me. It's different every time.

I'm getting a bit carried away now (my apologies for anyone slogging through this) but my basic point is that - League provides a pretty good mechanism for player-narratives that have meaning to players, but the frequent repetition puts traditional-narrative in a difficult place. We could, of course, treat each game as it's own universe, but does it then still matter? If it can have no influence on other games, or the characters in the future - was it simply a tree that fell in the forest with no-one to hear? A quantum event with no observer to collapse it?

Lastly, could you not already decide that this was your head-canon, treat all fan fiction as alternative universe truths, and carry on with the game as is? What would be the difference?

Señor KarthusNov 17, 20153 votes

I get what you mean with the "if everything is possible then also nothing is possible." And I agree but I don't see the problem there. For example: rebooting the Lore means that nothing of what happened during that lore actually happened. Rewriting and rebooting are the ultimate example of saying "remember this that happened? Never mind, it never happened." But it did happen. We played through it. We were into it. It is just not the same thing that it is now. It never is. It never was, never will. They are just different universes. We could stretch the relativity narrative and start thinking if our Universe and reality is actually real. Some scientists think it is not. But does that matter in the end? Meaningfully or meaninglessly, we experience our lives the way we do. And we experience the game and play the game the way we do. And we find a meaning through it.

I honestly think the lore should work towards this mindset because it is impossible to find a sense in the constant repeating of events (unless it is some kind of story plot like in Groundhog's Day). This way, you can create a story without having to deal with a lot of "how do we translate this aspect of the game as writing" and you can focus on meaningful stories that make sense for the characters. As meaningful as they are and as they last until they are rewritten. :)

HellioningNov 17, 20153 votes

You can't really compare roguelikes to MOBAs. Lots of things can happen in roguelikes and games of that ilk; it's basically their entire selling point. You can create elaborate tapestries of what happens in a succession game of Dwarf Fortress because a lot of things can happen; maybe you accidentally break through to the Caverns and not notice, resulting in your bottom floors getting eaten by a giant cave spider. Maybe you didn't notice that you tried to sell some wood to elves and you get besieged before you're prepared for it. Maybe you just create a giant lava spout for no reason. Lots of things can happen.

In comparison, you can't create a 'game narrative' for League without some sort of League. There's only so many ways you can write 'And then Ezreal died, so he waited approximately 40 seconds to respawn' unless you have some sort of explanation for why he respawns. And maybe you can create dialog for certain situations (Thresh and Lucian having to lane together and hating it, Draven and Darius ending up on opposite teams and taking the oppertunity to trash talk, etc.) but it's not a game that lends itself well to traditional story telling inside the medium.

So yes, I understand WHY narrative made the decision to divorce gameplay and narrative. It was a bad decision, but it was an understandable one (and one I don't want to get into right now; I've argued that enough.)

RiotBioluminescenceNov 17, 20152 votes

{quoted}

You can't really compare roguelikes to MOBAs. Lots of things can happen in roguelikes and games of that ilk; it's basically their entire selling point. You can create elaborate tapestries of what happens in a succession game of Dwarf Fortress because a lot of things can happen; maybe you accidentally break through to the Caverns and not notice, resulting in your bottom floors getting eaten by a giant cave spider. Maybe you didn't notice that you tried to sell some wood to elves and you get besieged before you're prepared for it. Maybe you just create a giant lava spout for no reason. Lots of things can happen.

In comparison, you can't create a 'game narrative' for League without some sort of League. There's only so many ways you can write 'And then Ezreal died, so he waited approximately 40 seconds to respawn' unless you have some sort of explanation for why he respawns. And maybe you can create dialog for certain situations (Thresh and Lucian having to lane together and hating it, Draven and Darius ending up on opposite teams and taking the oppertunity to trash talk, etc.) but it's not a game that lends itself well to traditional story telling inside the medium.

So yes, I understand WHY narrative made the decision to divorce gameplay and narrative. It was a bad decision, but it was an understandable one (and one I don't want to get into right now; I've argued that enough.)

Ah, Hellioning - to refer to Dwarf Fortress as a mere rogue-like seems unfair! Like comparing War and Peace to The Hunger Games. They're both well known, sure - but Dwarf Fortress is the inaccessible monster of a thing that can change your gaming life foreever, whereas most rogue-likes are shorter, throw-away things that are fun to experience and definitely have their fans, but probably won't consume your life and make people look at you like you've grown a spare head. My metaphor got away from me there. Even then - surely Adventure Mode is more like most rogue-likes, rather than Fortress Mode.

Compare, instead, to one of the new wave rogue-likes, like Rogue Legacy, FTL, or Binding of Isaac. A playthrough of these games is measured more in minutes (rather than days for a succession game of DF), and the range of things that can meaningly happen is reasonably broad, but given excitement and depth due to their interactions.

The player narrative of a game of League ususally isn't formed strictly from things like "And then Ezreal died and waited for a while". It's more likely to be comprised of "And then Ezreal tried to flash under the tower - but I totally knew he was going to do that, and our jungler Shaco (who was waiting in a swept brush nearby) got in behind him, Sona hit with the ult and he danced and wept while chain CC'd and died. Bait totally worked, gold for everyone, and Shaco /laugh'ed at their now terrified support. Unfortunately - they took the opportunity to take Rift Herald, so..." It is the player perspective that brings context.

Now, I'm not saying that that is enough - I'm simply saying that player-narrative is different from story-narrative, and that League does have the player-narrative side pretty sorted. It's the story-narrative side that's disconnected/not present.

Huh, I just realized there may well be people in the thread unfamiliar with the term player-narrative. If you're an old hat with these terms, feel free to stop reading now :)

Player-narrative is the story that you make yourself as you are playing the game. Football has a player-narrative (the highs and lows of the game, and the relationships and rivalries of the players, etc.) as does chess and other story-narrative-free games. People generally love playing games like Fallout or GTA for the player-narrative that comes out of them - as you will know if you listen to the players of these games tell you about the insane things that happened to them, that wasn't part of the actual plot. Epic jumps, awesomely hilarious Raider deaths, how you built your car-collection/settlement etc.

Story-narrative is what we usually call story - the events that happen in the game world to the characters. Movies and novels are almost exclusively story-narrative instead of player-narrative. (I say almost, because how a book will affect one reader, compared to another, can be different - if I read a book about life in '90s Scotland, that would have different meaning to someone who hadn't experienced it.) Many games have bad story-narrative, because the industry is still going through the growing pains of working out what it means to be interactive with a story-narrative. Lots of exciting work is being done here - from Facade, to interactive fiction (IF), to things like Left 4 Dead. Not solved though.

The much maligned (and hilarious) term 'ludo-narrative dissonance' is a fancy term that describes what happens when those two types of narrative conflict. I.e. the story says you're a loving father trying to save his daughter during the zombie apocalypse, but the gameplay has you riding a little red tricycle while wearing a traffic cone for a hat instead of collecting medicine. Beware, though - using the term ludo-narrative dissonance can get you laughed at in the wrong crowd. It's just too fancy for its own good!

HellioningNov 17, 20152 votes

Does anyone actually do that?

I mean, not to begrudge you or anything, but 'player narrative' sounds, to me, significantly more like 'highlight reel' or 'something to put on reddit'. It's not something you tell yourself in order to interest yourself in the story; it's something that happens that you want to share.

RiotBioluminescenceNov 17, 20152 votes

{quoted}

Does anyone actually do that?

I mean, not to begrudge you or anything, but 'player narrative' sounds, to me, significantly more like 'highlight reel' or 'something to put on reddit'. It's not something you tell yourself in order to interest yourself in the story; it's something that happens that you want to share.

If you mean do players tell other people about their player-narrative - usually not. But it's what players experience as they're playing, and comprises the multitudes of little 'stories' that happen every time they play a game. I realize that it may not sound like what we usually call a story, but it is a real thing (so much as anything is).

I could tell you for hours the stories I've made/lived in Dwarf Fortress, Minecraft, games of League, or games of Civilization - and yet none of those have a 'story' as we're used to describing. They are experiences - with highs and lows, causes and effects, characters and conflicts. Just because it doesn't have a writer to tell it, doesn't mean it doesn't matter to me, and that it wasn't a story that I took part in.

Please note, though - I'm not saying player-narrative is better than story-narrative. It's not! They're both good and should be used in the appropriate places at the appropriate times. Some players love one more than the other, and that's totally cool. I can understand your position that it's not real story - the discussion rages on in the particularly talkative corners of the internet for this sort of thing, but I find it a useful term.

HellioningNov 17, 20152 votes

I guess I'm just having trouble understanding the concept. Like, I understand the reactions people can have to cool or unexpected things happening in a game, but I don't see how it's a 'story' any more then me almost getting cut off in traffic is a 'story'.

DecritNov 17, 20152 votes

Probably i can help you - i got intrigued with this topic and maybe i can try to explain it from a different point of view, even thought i may be wrong.

Basically, see a story as an experience. story-narrative means that the experience you are getting is from something that is somehow fixed, and you play mostly a passive role. Mostly, but not totally! Many people experience different works in a different way, like finding a favourite character or starting to make guesses over the plot, and some stories might develop differently due to interaction, like in the case of Fallout 4.

Player-narrative is what we could call an anecdote, only that is not necessarily narrated. Basically a sequence of actions can bring you a particular experience that is worth remembering. For example playing 5 Rammus in OFA and being like "OMG it' s so fun to stomp these noobs by chain taunting them under the turret!". It' s something that is born in the moment and can hardly be fully replicated by telling to someone, but has his value because it' s something totally unexpectable, which depended mostly to your own actions.

I am not sure 100%, but should be something like this.

HellioningNov 17, 20151 votes

Is that really narrative?

It just seems like 'something cool that happened.'

DecritNov 17, 20154 votes

Exactly - it' s that! Used a bit broadly, i admit, but is a sequence of actions that bring a value and experience to the user; if that then remains inside the head of the user or gets shared via an anecdote is another matter.

This can have roots in different things, from being "a pro" to "while playing Thresh the enemy Lucian kept killing me the whole time!" or "We did a full pool party team but the enemy team had a kennen" and so on.

It is one of the components that makes a player want to play again and again the same game, or else it would be pretty much the same thing.

a reminder: this is my take and i might be partially or totally wrong on this!

lofi n chillhopNov 17, 20151 votes

"something cool that happened" could be sentence long or fleshed out to be a short novel. and either way, if artistically presented is a narrative. have you ever had someone ask you how you're doing, and you roll your eyes and say "traffic was a nightmare" and then they chuckled and said "I hear you dude" and then the conversation moved on? that was a narrative that was passed from you to the listener! it was an experience that you shared through use of literary devices.

Earl EulrichNov 17, 20153 votes

though the basic problem right now is that basically what idealy should connect the Story-Narrative and the Player-Narrative into a sort of "Narrative-Experience" is immersion - it´s what theoretically really sets apart narration in games from other medias like films where you have a huge difference between both.

But with the retcon you killed any chance to create a cohesive experience and instead basically made the game Player-narrative only, while having a Story-narrative seperate. I still think that way a lot of potential had been wasted.

CherysseNov 17, 20151 votes

Well, I am a Warcraft 3 map editor, and I made a moba myself (and I suspect Rioters have played my map)

I solve the Lore Problem by making the history being made into an explicit Arena, a God's Arena to be specific. Where Gods would use their heroes as a way to probe which god is better, also it is a way for heroes to test all their destructive power, to show their supremacy, to win allies, to win fervor, to gain new items they can take home, to gain raw power and fame. They could summon these heroes in their best moment, no matter if they are dead or alive in the present, as the Gods Land doesn't care about time or space.

In LOL you should redefine what you call Champions, they are champions for a reason, they are champions of their pepole, they are in the league to show their power, and they are choosen by the summoners to fight against other summoners.

In the case of Brand, Noc and Fiddle they are in the league as prisoners, as slaves for the battle.

The league is AN ARENA, it should be defined that way, summoners are the mystical gods of the Arena, the most powerful ones, and the champions are there to win the favor of those gods and have access to the mystical items of the Arena.

The problem is that Riot never made a true interaction between Summoners and Champion (except in the Lore of Lee Sin). What do champions want from the league?

For the Shadow Isles is destruction and death (same with Brand) For mages like Xerath to amplify their power For champions like Kayle and Morgana is the eternal vengeance For others to gain allies and fame for their nations (Annie, Ashe, Karma, Draven, Katarina)

The only problem with the lore is that it is never shown, also characters never grow old, Annie should be 11 already, there hasn't never been a campaing to show the true intentions of the League Characters. There is the problem of the nexus? what the f**ck is the Nexus? Why don't you just make it a rivalry of the Summoner Gods instead? and make the Nexus become the place where the Summoner Gods powers become real (and create avatars of our summoners within the nexus model)

In the other hand many histories in the Lore do not make sense.

I mean, why did Cassio release Xerath for in the first place (and Renek)? Just for the sake of the League? or did she Wanted their greater powers to overthrow Swain?

Riot has wasted many opportunities to create a campaing game with the LoL characters (Campaing games like WC3)

DecritNov 17, 20152 votes

I don't see how that solves anything: that is somehow how was LoL before the retcon, change a name with an other and you are there, and it developed enough issues and left many others opened that it demonstrated, in LoL case, to be not sufficient. I mean, whould Garen still fight Lux even if two different gods order so? Would the two be mind controlled, meaning that what you are playing is not a character but only a puppet?

Also making a single player campaign over a game that is multiplayer, player versus player and party-based makes no sense except rare cases, like an RTS, where a player experience as single player is meaningful ( and fun ) enough. There are many problems here, like "how does impact this campaign all other games"? Look at warcraft 3 again, the campaign is a thing but matches online or quick matches do not give a crap about that - because it is only about beating the faces of the enemy. Between forcing a campaign and releasing lore updates like how happened lately i prefer far more the latter - this game is about pvp, no need for such stuff.

I vastly prefer a game where it is openly stated that characters and gameplay are different entities that are tied but not dependent on each other rather than a mismatch of the two.

lofi n chillhopNov 17, 20152 votes

[{quoted}](name=Fenrir Epsylon,realm=NA,application-id=6kFXY1kR,discussion-id=8TdI25zj,comment-id=0001000200000001,timestamp=2015-11-17T17:44:47.212+0000)

You see the game as a chronological timeline while I see it as a fixed moment in time and space.

groundhogs day :D

Señor KarthusNov 17, 20152 votes

We should have a Bill Murray Champion in LoL x3

HellioningNov 17, 20155 votes

Might I reccomend hiring the people that made Dawngate? They knew how to make a MOBA story work.

NarasimhaNov 17, 20151 votes

To be fair, while the story they started was good, they were far from any conclusions. Hell, they didn't even hit the middle. They barely broke the beginning ground on most of the Shapers.

Sneak DogNov 17, 20152 votes

They had plans, great plans.

There were all kinds of foreshadowing already in the comic and they had already loosely planned two concluding events. Sadly the uploaded manifesto can no longer be downloaded.

HellioningNov 17, 20155 votes

True, but they knew how to make it work. Their story caused the actual game to mean something, both story-wise and gameplay-wise, while allowing for change. It was basically perfect for a MOBA.

Earl EulrichNov 17, 20152 votes

don´t remind me... can´t believe they stopped such a insanly good looking attempt to finally make a good narrative Moba - EA just really is the devil.

Señor KarthusNov 17, 20153 votes

Hey Bio, thanks for replying on my thread. I am so glad you remember Eternal Champion. For me that kind of games find a sense in the fact that, every time you start a new game, is a completely different Universe. Just like League, I like to think that every one of the billion games that have ever been played was a unique and never repeated event for that Universe. As with Eternal Champion, if you beat the game with Xavier, you would know how he avoided being burned at the stake and changed the world thanks to his knowledge on alchemy that helped the human race and turned them into a healthy, equal and non violent species. But if you start over and beat it with another Champion, you would be playing a parallel universe in which it is not Xavier who is granted a chance, but another one.

I like to think the same for League. Obviously I wouldn't like to read a whole text when a Champion wins, but how cool would it be if in the stats screen, instead of the picture of the skin you played with, there was a picture that would show a sneak peek of what that Champion would have accomplished by winning? A picture can say many things. A Champion becoming king. Draven surrounded by all he desired. Ekko finally saving his friend... Etc.

There could be many reasons why the characters of this game could want to win the battle that we play in League of Legends. I just feel that there is no solid concept of what the battle they are fighting is even, and why they are fighting in it at all (not all Champions, but many of them).

I don't feel that the fact that there are many variations of that battle every time a player plays the game goes against the lore. As I said, every game is a different universe where things happened differently. I don't think that ever influenced or stopped the lore in any game ever.

PS: The classic Eternal Champion had a text describing what happened when you beat (or lose) the game. The Eternal Champion Mega-CD had short kinematics (that sometimes weren't super revealing) and text :)

SharjoNov 16, 20158 votes

Well you'll be happy to know there isn't a League of Legends or Institute of War in the lore any longer! That's been retconned outta here! Thus when lore developments come they actually have some kind of stakes. What stakes?! Depends on the story, but either way there is actually no League of Legends in the game anymore, it's just the game's name. No Institute of War, that's been removed!

Señor KarthusNov 16, 201513 votes

I see... but it doesn't make me very happy though... Because nothing of the game makes any sense anymore. Gold income, summoner's spells... Like basically the whole mechanics of the game don't have any explanation through the lore anymore :/

RalanrNov 16, 20159 votes

I know how you feel. I've been wondering what the story behind the rift is and why the champions are there. It's no longer Demacia vs Noxus since the purple side became red.

I'm starting to wonder if all the champions exist in the same time period anymore.

Chromatic EagleNov 17, 20153 votes

The lore and the gameplay are different. Either you didn't feel immersed in the old lore while they tried to explain the mechanics, or you don't feel immersed in the gameplay due to not having any connection to the lore.

Doctor IvelliusNov 16, 20154 votes

Oh, you mean the stories we've been getting that do nothing to affect the status quo? Great stakes there.

Unlike the old model in which there could be lore developments that might affect people, but yeah, it's great they changed all of that.

59CrowkenNov 18, 20151 votes

Why would they get rid of it? I honestly don't think that they could come up with anything better than that.

LordHippomanNov 17, 20157 votes

The whole purpose of the League was, when it was still canon, to resolve political disputes in a fashion that didn't involve war, because Runeterra had been absolutely destroyed in the past by war due to how powerful mages could get. Thus the League was not only a political tool, but a way to sort of give the most powerful mages in the world (Summoners/Champions) something to do but kill eachother. Most champions aren't in the League for personal glory like Draven, people like Garen and Darius have patriotic reasons, others struck deals with the League like Zilean and Olaf (pre-Freljord retcon), and some of them are basically just prisoners that are too powerful to kill (Brand, Noc, Cho'gath). Now, some of them still make no sense (Lissandra is a superpowered ice witch who is trying to hide the fact that she is a superpowered ice witch...might as well go into the world's most popular sport and be an Ice Witch!, Yasuo is a fugitive running from the law, stops to go fight a robot and a rat.), but that's likely just because those characters were released around when Riot may have decided to pull back on the League as a plot point.

It's more about the city-state/faction power than the personal glory/goals for a lot of them. If that still turns you off to it, I do get that though.

Doctor IvelliusNov 18, 20151 votes

I would figure that Lissandra joining the League implied that she was now fine revealing herself (and bringing items to the Institute of War to boot). Why else would there have been a Freljord event between the 3 factions and not just Ashe and Sejuani?

Dominick DestineNov 17, 20155 votes

That Sega game actually sounds pretty cool. Might have to look into it, thanks OP.

That being said, I was never a big fan of the Institute of War or The League... but it had its place and I despised that they chucked all of the lore out in exchange for... nothing. There is no legitimate reason for them to destroy the lore of the game other than sheer Roit laziness. Bring back the lore, Meddler.

I remember the players used to be called "Summoners" in-canon, in-game and in-lore. Now it doesn't even make sense, now it just sucks.

DecritNov 17, 20152 votes

Asking Meddler to bring back the Lore is like asking Ghostcrawler tips about developing a fighting racing game ( not sure if about cars that fight or fighters over cars ).

Sneak DogNov 17, 20152 votes

Car wars, yeah!

Earl EulrichNov 17, 20154 votes

welcome to League of no immersion...