Some player types are more likely to engage with the lore than others

The boards are a bit dead so might as well share my thoughts, no matter how wrong I might be.

It is no secret that the Story, Art and Sound board here is the only place where one can have an in-depth lore discussion* . On reddit almost all lore discussion gets drowned out by talk of LCS, highlights and streamers, and some users are downright hostile to story posting. The redditors truly interested have either isolated themselves in smaller, often champ-centric communities or made their way here.

Having spent six years on reddit (as an admin of a 60 000 strong community at that) and two years here I have some observations about the League community I would like to discuss.

But first, a few questions:

• Why is reddit full of Ahri mains, and yet barely any Ahri lore discussion takes place here and anywhere?

• Why does Swain have a tiny playerbase and yet is overrepresented in lore boards?

• Do you think Draven fans are more likely to read and think about a complex, compelling story than Malzahar fans (fans, not just freelo train passengers)?

My answers to these questions somewhat overlap and can be summarized as:

##Just because the playerbase enjoys playing or looking at a champion doesn't mean they want to read about them. Some champions have themes which attract book and story lovers, and some don't. Giving too much lore to the latter is wasted effort and giving too little to the former will leave the narrative fanbase very dissatisfied. Lore, like skins, is a product, but predicting potential lore impact by a champ's popularity may not be the most correct approach.

This is by no means a perfect and exhaustive or completely correct answer. Giving too much story interaction to high pickrate champs is not always wasted effort: trying to get lots of people into the lore by writing about their favorite champion is worthy of applause, but the fact remains that the majority just doesn't play League for the lore. So making a broad champion such as Ezreal important to so many stories recently is strange, IMO.

How can we predict which champions will attract more readers than others? I have some clues which are by no means set in stone:

• Does the champion already have major and long-lasting influence on existing lore, possibly cut short by the retcon?

• Does the champion resonate overly with nerdy types? (Lovecraft and Star Wars) (LotR references where???) and many more

• Is the champion visibly topical in a political sense? . The massive controversy might fall here, not sure.

• Is the champion fangirl bait? (laugh all you want here but the fanfiction and RP communities are fangirl town)

• Does the champion have glaringly obvious influences from famous books, maybe classical literature? No big surprise, booklovers will want to read about their champions.

• If you tag a champion as some cool, mysterious, intellectual, maybe a bit insane and inwardly torn 2deep character readership may rise as well.

• Feel free to add any, in your experience as writers and readers.

https://imgur.com/t8vzF3M

##And voilà, we can see why people have been dying for Swain lore and begging for it for so long since the retcon: he covers all of the above points, completely blowing away competition. Maybe almost no one plays Swain, but everyone mildly interested in the narrative will show at least some interest in his in-universe exploits.

*[It is no secret that the Story, Art and Sound board here is the only place where one can have an in-depth lore discussion] I would love to be proven wrong about this one.