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Let's Talk About Lore. Together. @Fans, @Riot, @Whoever.

LordHippoman·1/24/2015, 12:28:55 AM·88 votes·24,116 views

People being upset about the retcon is no surprise to any of you, I'd wager. But this has been going on for months now, and all we can seem to do is argue and point the fingers at eachother. A lot of the discussion seems to be about if this is Riot's fault, or ours, or whatever. I think the problem is at least on both ends.

For every attempt to fix things the Lore team makes, when Jaredan or CarnivalKnights comes into a thread, someone rambles off about how this is (and I'm quoting here) "the worst decision since the 1933 German elections". Remember Opeli? Remember the death threats? The Twitter raid GD got dragged into? Remember the last time someone made a "Tech Issue Must Be A Lie!" thread and IronStylus shut them down? Every attempt to forge a new connection is sabotaged by roughly a handful of people who feel the need to throw out every edgy zinger they think up or think they're fighting some kind of internet war where if you aren't with them, you're against them, and Riot is some crushing entity trying to smash their homes.

And there's issues with communication with Riot, I'm not going to say that's not true. Lore is an extremely marginalized area. The president of the company was even unaware about what was going on with Lore. It's not the biggest focus. You just have to check the client and see the spot where Nikasaur or Phreak would discuss community fan work and see #BIGPLAYS ZED BLINKS FOR 10 SECONDS STRAIGHT instead to know that the focus towards community has shifted. It's just the nature of things. Lore is a super small part of a shrinking focus on fan work, and I doubt the writers are any more happy about that than we are. And I hate to invoke this, but we saw what happens to MOBAs that put Lore first nowadays. It was called Dawngate.

There are a ton of people here who make a ton of good threads. CaptainMarvelous continues to make solid Lore Discussion threads almost every week. CupcakeTrap's Bandle City thread and Bilgewater thread were really good, and I've had a great discussion with him in client about reasons we like League's lore, our favorite city states, etc. And it was great. I also talked with Rioters on the forums a few times, about dumb stuff like Jarvan's staunch approval of "The Bro Code" and more serious things like what was going to happen after the League retcon. And it was great.

This is so frustrating to me because I don't think we're at a good place right now, I don't like the retcon, but I don't think this is the way to go about fixing it. This constant fighting and tinfoil hatting over how we're being "TRICKED AND PACIFIED", every single red post breaking out into an argument, etc. I have posted almost exclusively on the Lore Forums for like 4 years now, mostly because I like the people here. I know a lot of the people here. And we enjoyed the forums and the discussions, and that demographic is growing with boards because of the international aspect of it. EUW, NA, LA, etc., are no longer separated, and that opens the floodgates for a ton of potential discussion on Lore. But it kills me to see that time being spent fighting over absolutely everything.

This is not a binary issue. The Lore team's goal is to put out good lore. That makes them money and gets them appreciation. Lore fans want to consume good lore. That makes us happy and gives us stuff to talk about. So why are we treating it like a fight? It's not one. You don't have to declare your allegiance to Riot or the fans. You should want to work with both. You don't have to choose between the LeagueFactions lore or the Official Lore, or the Old one or the New one or even the Beta one where Kayle shot fire for some reason. You can talk about them all, you can enjoy them all, you don't have to pick a side. You aren't going to stop playing League just because you also like to play WoW or Dota or Smash Bros. or something. Nobody is forcing you to like the new lore or the old one. And they shouldn't. There was such a good community here, folks. There still is. This isn't about fighting to "Take Back Lore" or to "Shut up the whiners". It's about working with the people who make the Lore to create something we can all enjoy.

Come on, people. Let's talk about Lore. Together.

EDIT: Goddamn, top thread on the "Hot" sorting for Story and Art, 43 upvotes, and a Red Post. Certainly did not expect that. I appreciate it, ladies and gentlemen. I really don't want to see this community I've loved for so long break apart, and I'm thankful for all the discussion posts and opinions being weighed in in the comments.

158 Comments

RiotRiot Sweet1/25/2015, 3:33:38 AM29 votes

Hey, wanted to hop in here and say this was a really well-crafted post. I can't specifically speak to the Lore team and past/present conditions but I will be sending this discussion thread over to someone on their team, see if they'll consider jumping in for some good back-and-forth.

Appreciate you taking the time to make this. KogMaw

Nybx4life1/24/2015, 3:21:29 AM19 votes

You know what I'd like? I think an Archive of its previous lore to be accessible by the community would be nice. I'd like to see how the lore specifically changes per champion and as a whole, and I think it would be great to analyze it, and maybe ask some of the writers what they thought about certain aspects of the lore changes.

I mean, comic books do reboots all the time, as do their canon. At least there you can see how a character changed.

TerraRising1/24/2015, 3:30:37 AM19 votes

In theory, this would be ideal and I'd fully support it...

In practice, there are a few flaws:

  • Narrative is in full charge of the conversation: Someone from Narrative could, in theory, come in and say "we're not going to discuss the ret-con or anything else, but what do you think of ?" and use that to gather ideas and provide feedback. Even if they didn't use a single idea, the notion of them asking for feedback would be a powerful start.
  • The silence has gone on too long: Except for one message from Carnival Knights on a joke thread and a handful of standard Riot-issue non-answers about Foundations from Riot Whren, they've gone into complete silence for the past two months. Nothing new about the tech issues supposedly preventing them from releasing content or progress on the new bios and the retcon, etc. The cycle of silence and broken promises from Narrative/Lore has fully repeated once again.

Again, I'd love to put all that history in the past and start fresh, but the first step has to come from Narrative. They have to be willing to start the conversation and stick with it. They have to provide some feedback on the ideas we have and be willing to work through the wall of ice they and their previous associates have built. And they should do it as soon as possible.

Baron Perenolde1/24/2015, 2:45:02 AM16 votes

Good show, friend. I wasn't fully aware of the lore when I first joined League over three years ago, but I loved reading each champion's backstory and judgement. I remember thinking "Wow, this JoJ stuff is so cool! I wonder how Riot is going to build on it!". Then I was left puzzled with the various decisions as of late, namely the retcon and denying the existence of us Summoners. I could care less about the Top Plays of whatever; I want to know how things are going in Bandle City or if Jarvan really is Leblanc. Stories help flesh out the game and its characters in a meaningful way, and I feel that League in its earlier days did this better than EVERY other moba out there. :(

RiotRiotJaredan1/26/2015, 1:28:57 AM14 votes

I just wanted to say thanks to LordHippoman for such a constructive and positive post. Great stuff.

CupcakeTrap1/25/2015, 5:56:12 PM13 votes

You are truly a Lord among the Hippomen, fellow Summoner.

I should begin by saying, in accord with your optimistic tone, that I think the members of the Narrative team are passionate and talented. They tell some good stories. And of course it's irrelevant whether or not I agree with their "vision", and even less relevant whether or not they agree with mine. It would, however, be nice if we could get some more meaningful community engagement going, rather than persisting in the present state of affairs, which has Narrative slapping down pre-fabbed lore without prior discussion. In the present state of affairs, I confess that my first reaction to new lore being posted is still one of, well, panic, as I frantically skim it to see if they've just retconned another essential story element.

It would certainly be nice if this thread helped catalyze a change in Narrative's modus operandi, away from the shock reveals and blank-slate rewrites without opportunity for community input. I already feel the cynicism creeping up, but there's some reason to be hopeful. I have noticed that, recently, Narrative has steered largely clear of drastic rewrites. In the first wave, they were quite casual about literally deleting the lore of dozens of characters. Now, though, they're mostly focusing their "blank slate" methods on open thematic space, which is a much more appropriate place for it. I also think the quality is quite good—though there have been some awkward stumbles that more open community review might well have prevented.

At the risk of being wildly offensive, I'm going to appropriate a story from a much more serious context.

A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted a friendly vessel. From the mast of the unfortunate vessel was seen a signal,“Water, water; we die of thirst!” The answer from the friendly vessel at once came back, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” A second time the signal, “Water, water; send us water!” ran up from the distressed vessel, and was answered, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” And a third and fourth signal for water was answered, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” The captain of the distressed vessel, at last heeding the injunction, cast down his bucket, and it came up full of fresh, sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon River.

This all began with Narrative wringing its collective hands over the League itself, trying to make the eponymous centerpiece of the lore of League of Legends "work". By their account, they just couldn't do it. They couldn't come up with a version of the League that was not "all-powerful puppetmaster Summoners enslaving Champions to fight forever", and they couldn't think of a way to have this (caricature of the) League fall. They apparently thought that maybe having Baron Nashor go berserk and destroy the League would work, but then decided against it. (This itself speaks volumes of the difficulties they were having understanding the League.) So they retconned it.

If they'd "cast down their buckets" into the waters of the lore community, they would have found well-tested solutions to these problems. Perhaps a discussion with the community would have explained to them that the League is not some kind of crazy magocracy that mind-controls Champions, but a supranational entity with aspects of the European Union, European Court of Justice, World Trade Organization, and United Nations—not a unitary, monolithic actor, but an amalgam of power and interest roughly channeled by idealistic institutions into a more or less functioning (but far from ideal, and questionably stable) whole. It exists because of the consensus among its member-states. It is at once a dispute resolution mechanism and an international forum, sponsoring both idealistic visions of a new Runeterra without war (a reality it never quite manages to achieve for long) and cutthroat realpolitik bargaining. It resolves many mundane (but important) legal disputes among nations concerning trade and the like, and it furthers the study of magic (trying to sequester the most dangerous Rune Wars magic in spooky library-vaults). When war does break out, it enforces the laws of war and strives to contain the fighting—even as both combatants use their influence within the Institute to try to gain an advantage under the guise of "enforcing the rules". All the while, the specter of collapse, and a return to unchecked warfare, looms in the background. If "Nashorzilla" physically destroyed the League, but the political will behind it remained, it would simply be rebuilt. Baron Nashor attacking the Institute would certainly make for a very bad day for some Summoners and Champions, and perhaps make lunch out of others, but it would be very unlikely to destroy the League itself. Nor would a grand revelation of corruption do more than weaken it; the powers that be already know the League has its share of corruption, just as they have within their own borders.

If you wanted to destroy the League, you would set up another Kalamanda. In Kalamanda, when Demacia and Noxus openly ignored a League peace edict and began what could well have become a full-scale war—on top of a nexus, no less, providing a perfect recipe for Rune War-level catastrophe—the League used all its strength to forcibly break up the two (relatively small) detachments. This was more a statement than anything: a show of force that told both Demacia and Noxus, "If you guys really want to do this, you know we can't stop you, but you'll do it through us, and the League will fall." To avert a more gradual collapse, the League put everything on the line and issued this ultimatum. That time, Demacia and Noxus decided they weren't ready for another round of Rune Wars, and grudgingly agreed to back down. The League (and Valoran) might not be so lucky next time.

Anyway. I get it. The League's out of Narrative's picture. And, at the risk of running counter to Hippoman's valuable message of togetherness, I will say I'm kind of okay with that. I wasn't impressed by the vision of the League they presented when retconning it, which I found quite shallow and uninspired. I'm not sure I want Narrative writing League lore. They're pretty good at Runeterran lore, and I enjoy a lot of what they've written, but I was able to come out of my post-retcon melancholy when I asked myself—wait a second, do you really want these guys writing the League in the first place? Would you rather go through the trouble of incorporating their League-less Runeterra lore into Factions, or would you rather have to alter Factions to follow each and every meandering step in their "all-powerful puppetmaster Summoners" League story? I realized that this may well have been a blessing in disguise. If the League's story doesn't speak to them, and other stories do, then hey, I say they go for those other stories and leave the League to the community.

NorthernDruid1/27/2015, 11:04:01 AM13 votes

What honestly confuses me is why they made the retcon in the first place.

Because you don't do that kind of retcon, you don't go and say "everything in our story is no longer the story, and will be something else" and then you go on to say nothing for the next few months.

Heck, the idea of retconning a dynamic medium like League in the first place is the most staggeringly careless thing I can think to do. And unlike a retcon in a static medium, since League changes with it's lore (not that it has done so yet after the retcon) you are robbing people of those stories.

That's why Trundle was (and still is) so badly recieved. Because not only does he no longer exist, you cannot go back and experience the part where he did.

If someone reboots my favourite static media (whether it be a game series, a comic book series, a book series, a tv series, what have you) I can just ignore the new stuff and enjoy the old static stuff that I still have.

If you rip the summoners out of the game, if Sona no longer communicates telepathically with only me, if the champions stop adressing me. Then that story element is gone and the only way for me to know it ever existed is through my own memories or whatever static media have recorded the situation.

So when you alter a story which is told continously, then you're not only taking away the future of the story that I want to find out, you're taking away the past and present as well.

Once Riot goes as far as to take away the setting elements from the game itself, the story won't just be dead. It will be obliviated.

They won't just be betraying my investment by not following up on it. They'll be tearing down the foundation that investment is built on in the first place. They'll be taking away from me the dreams they encouraged me to dream in the first place.

So when you say "Trust us!" the reason we won't isn't because we think we won't like what new things you make up, it's because you've promised to go kill something we've invested ourselves in while we could be investing in static media which cannot be taken away from us.

The only reason I'm still interested in anything the narrative team says, is because they haven't actually done any of the things they said they'd do yet.

They've said they're removing the IoW and the Summoners and the LoL. But they haven't actually given us anything which goes against it. Or which couldn't have existed within the oh-so-constricting base premise of the entire setting.

So not only are the threats to purge the fiction we've invested our emotions in horrifying to us, so far they've been empty.

Sneak Dog1/24/2015, 3:57:32 PM11 votes

This is not a binary issue. The Lore team's goal is to put out good lore. That makes them money and gets them appreciation. Lore fans want to consume good lore. That makes us happy and gives us stuff to talk about. So why are we treating it like a fight?

I used to be a lore fan. Now Riot retconned my favorite champion, retconned the premise of the lore and changed another champions main motivation and modus operandi.

Sure, I could move past the premise change, but I can't move past my favorite champion just getting retconned.** I can't invest in the lore when I know that my favorite character could be unceremoniously removed. **Given Riots current level of communication, this could be announced tomorrow, without any Q&A or other way to give feedback and it could replace everything I love about that champion. It has happened before to me.

For me, this is a binary situation. Riot is telling me they do not mind to just retcon and change champions or even the premise on their own whims for their own reasons. I can disagree, give valid and constructive feedback or even rant all I want, Riot does not seem to care about my opinion. This is actually unique to narrative: The skin team tops all others Imo in gathering feedback consistently, Vesh just put out a Q&A for his little side-project, Stashu's Cassiopeia rework regularly has discussion, every now and then gameplay gets discussed by Rioters, but narrative hasn't bothered to make a Q&A after releasing a dev blog stating they change the very premise of the lore.

So yeah, for over a year now I've been frustrated with the way the lore is going. Especially since narrative isn't even coming out and just bluntly stating that they are willing to change the core of champions. I'm not going to flame any rioter responding here since that'd be stupid and uncalled for. My frustration is aimed at the department, not to the people in the department, but I don't have to be nice and welcoming either. I don't have to hail and praise them for finally coming out of their shell when they do. They shouldn't expect or even wish for a community welcoming them after such a long time of silence, their at least one false argument in the dev blog and questioned retcon. ** What we should be is constructive and civil. That's all.**

Gray Fanchon1/24/2015, 2:35:26 AM10 votes

You, sir, are getting an upvote. :D I absolutely think this approach is a good idea; it's understandable that some don't like the change to the lore, but there's still so many chances to tell stories for Rioters and fans alike here. It'd be a shame to squander that, especially now! I mean, this is the time when Riot is forming a lot of what Runeterra is going to be going forward, yeah?

This is a great time to give feedback, thoughts, try and influence things. Riot is constantly looking at what we're saying and taking it into account - it'd be a shame if bitterness made that a non-issue with the lore, especially with how much some of the playerbase really seem to care about the stories of this world.

alagore1/24/2015, 5:26:26 AM8 votes

On the subject of the retcon, it was needed. The reason I say it was needed was because the institute of war was a story breaker. They were waaaaaaaaaaay too powerful. Since it is late, and I'm on mobile, I'm just gonna copy paste this here.

The much maligned-retconning of the in-universe League could have a point to it. It was backed by extremely powerful summoners, which means any threat to Valoran's safety was squelched immediately. One can see this in the backstory to the Crystal Scar; it was a war zone, complete with hextech nukes, until the Institute said "No. Stoppit." and stopped time around it. They could have done that at any point during the story, could still do that at any point. Which means that the Black Mist of the Harrowing is nothing more than a heavy fog to them, The Void becomes a mere annoyance in their presence, and the Demacia/Noxus cold war has no means of going hot without drawing the Institute's ire.

While I don't have much of a position on the new lore, I think it will become better, once more champion lore is updated, so the story connects with itself better. Just my 2 cents.

EDIT: I don't know why I am being downvoted. I just said my opinion. Sorry D: