From Champ Select to Your Deck

May 1, 2020

From a celestial dragon who forged the very stars to a literal tree (actually, there are two trees), League of Legends has a wide range of champions. And when it came to bringing them to Legends of Runeterra, we had a lot to work with: four (or more) abilities, a backstory, in-game dialogue, art, player feedback... You get it. Sometimes we had a little too much.

We’ve faced all that (and more) throughout development, and we want to talk about it. So here’s how we adapted a few of Set 1’s champs from League to LoR.

Elise, the Spider Lady from... Somewhere

“Champions in League typically have ‘known properties,’ or basically thematic and gameplay,” shares game design manager Shaun “UNCONKABLE” Rivera. “We also get data—thanks to the insights team—about what players think. One of the things we do with that data is turn it into a word cloud to see if we’re going in the right direction.”

But sometimes the things champion mains say make their champion unique doesn’t quite match where the team is heading.

Early on, the team wanted to lean into Elise’s “Spider Queen” thematic by giving her spider-like attacks, an army of spiderlings, and an ascended Spider Queen form. You know, the standard kill-it-with-fire stuff. Initial internal playtests were positive, and the team felt they were landing the cocoon. So when the data from player surveys came in, they were a little surprised.

“Junglers had a very different view of Elise than we did,” product manager (then-insights analyst) Travis “Riot Dovagedys” Boese recalls. “They basically unanimously said, ‘When I’m Elise I’m going to shoot you with that cocoon skillshot, spider form it up, repel, and then bite the s*&^ out of you.’”

Players didn’t seem to care about the creepy crawly spider queen thing that the team thought made Elise, Elise. So... what now? Could they make Elise’s League AP jungler assassin gameplay work in LoR?

“While we were trying to figure out how to make Elise’s gameplay feel good to players, we were working with narrative to figure out where in Runeterra to even place her,” UNCONKABLE says.

For a quick narrative rundown, Elise is a former-mortal-Noxian-noblewoman-turned-spider-lady-from-demigod-bite who now lures Noxian noblemen to their deaths on the Shadow Isles so she can eat them to retain her youth and beauty (pro tip for all the skin care enthusiasts out there, btw). And while the differentiation between Noxus and Shadow Isles as a native region might not seem like it matters much, it informed the direction the team could take Elise.

“We made Elise from Shadow Isles, so we decided to double down on the spider-queen-surrounded-by-lots-of-spiderlings thing because it made sense for that region,” UNCONKABLE explains. “But we still wanted to pay homage to the players who like her cocoon-and-repel playstyle. And that’s where realization came in.”

LoR has a team dedicated to “champion realization.” Basically it’s the devs who make the art, sound, and effects that bring champions to life—all of the pretty things that make you say “ooh” and “aah” with the occasional “wait, what?” It was these devs who brought Elise’s gameplay player fantasy to life in LoR.

But sometimes leaning heavily into a champ’s thematic gets a little... confusing.

Ezreal, the... Space Cowboy?

The team did a lot of exploration with Ezreal. And while his League gameplay is iconic with tons of spells and high mobility, what if—and just hear us out—we leaned into his really cool explorer thematic?

In his earliest design, five artifacts would shuffle into your deck at the start of the game. And if you drew three of the five, Ezreal’s gauntlet would upgrade and he’d become incredibly strong. That’s Ezreal, right? Well... “A lot of Ezreal mains at Riot didn’t understand what was happening,” UNCONKABLE says. “So we had to go back to the drawing board.” “I remember during one of these feedback sessions a Rioter—who I won’t name—said they didn’t know what Ezreal’s deal was,” laughs Riot Dovagedys. “I have a very vivid memory of them asking, ‘Is hesupposed to be a space cowboy?’ And I was standing outside of the room going, ‘What the f*&^?’ So, yeah, we needed to keep trying.”

Have you ever seen the questionnaire that pops up in the corner of League at the end of a game asking for feedback? That’s what the insights team used to propagate word clouds for each champion.

“The methodology we were using at that time asked Ezreal players what his most identifiable trait was,” Riot Dovagedys explains. “The top answers were things like ‘high skill,’ ‘Mystic Shot,’ ‘Q spam,’ and stuff like that. We then gave those answers to the designers.”

So the dev team decided to reel back the thematics and listen to the players: Mystic Shot spam it would be!

But sometimes player League fantasies are a bit more difficult to bring into a card game.

Hecarim, the Really Fast Horse

“Hecarim was a difficult champ to bring to LoR,” says Riot Dovagedys. “The overwhelming sentiment we got from players was, ‘He’s a horse and he runs really fast.’ Which... Cool. But how do you make something run really fast in a card game?”

Luckily the realization team was up for the task.

Sometimes you get really lucky and get something right the first time. Making Hecarim was one of those times. When the team brought Hecarim mains in to test the Spectral-Rider summoning, Overwhelm Hecarim card and saw the build up of him casting his ultimate and moving really fast, that was it. Got ‘em. Time to call it a day.

Or was it?

“We were really interested in exploring Runeterra, and adding Followers was an interesting way to add depth to the world around the champions we knew from League,” says narrative lead Mel “Melell” Li. “League has a spotlight on champions, and LoR is like, ‘Who’s in your crew? If they’re at a bar, who does this champ talk to?’”

So if Hecarim was at a bar, who would he talk to?

“The majority of our card art was done by the incredible team at SIXMOREVODKA in Berlin,” says art director Greg “GiantArtist” Faillace. “We encouraged them to do a lot of exploration and to let their imaginations run wild.”

“I came into the office one day and there were a bunch of explorations on the wall, and I saw this dude on a chariot with these three ghostly sharks. And it made such little sense that I was immediately in,” laughs UNCONKABLE. “One person on our team at the time absolutely hated it. They said it was the stupidest thing they’d ever seen. And I kept trying to convince them that we had to make it. And then we did! It’s so ridiculous. I love it.”

Darius, the Big Hatchet Man

Some of LoR’s core mechanics didn’t exist in the beginning of development, including champion level up. Instead, in an effort to make champs feel like their League counterparts, they came with various spells when added to your deck.

“At one point Darius was a 5-cost 5|5, and when he attacked he’d do 1 damage to all enemies that weren’t in combat,” shares UNCONKABLE. “We wanted to give him a ‘punish the weak’ feeling to match that oppressive juggernaut fantasy. And he had his Noxian Guillotine spell that kills a damaged unit and lets you keep killing. They paired really well together.”

Then Darius mains at Riot got their hands on their beloved beefcake brute and delivered an overwhelming onslaught of feedback.

“Everyone said the light AoE damage felt more like Katarina than Darius,” says UNCONKABLE. “I tried to remind them there would be bleed effect visuals added, but they didn’t budge. I remember one person said to me, ‘No! I play Darius because I want to be big hatchet man!’”

So that version of big hatchet man went to the chopping block. The next version of Darius leaned more heavily into his ultimate reset mechanics from League. When the enemy Nexus hits 10 or less health, he becomes a 10|5 with Overwhelm, similar to his current state.

“It was around this time that we started to explore the level-up mechanic for champions,” shares Riot Dovagedys. “Shawn ‘smnoshoes’ Main and James ‘Bokurp’ Hata pitched the idea, and Darius was the first example they shared. It was a really elegant design. He leveled up and then boom, you’ve triggered this huge monster that’s going to kill you. It felt like Darius hitting level 6 in League.”

“Darius’ level up animation was the first one we completed,” adds senior software engineer Patrick “Riot Crowtaro” Conaboy. “I really wasn’t sold on the idea of playing a cutscene in the middle of the game. And then I saw him yoink the camera down with his E and I changed my mind. It was really exciting and made the game feel more dynamic.”

The new mechanic gave the narrative and art teams the ability to tell a deeper story as well.

“Writers on LoR work a lot on describing the scene: What’s the moment that expresses the gameplay? What’s the character experiencing at that exact instance? And then we give those prompts to the artists,” explains Melell.

The champion level ups made it easier to tell a story.

“We try to give them each a quiet moment before the high action moment,” says Melell. “We want to make the cards feel like a storybook so players feel like they’re experiencing a real moment in these characters’ lives.”

But art prompts aren’t the only way the narrative team can make the cards feel more alive.

Garen, the Hopeless Romantic

The Might of Demacia’s gameplay design was relatively straightforward. He protec, he attac, but… how does he interac? Aside from shouting “DEMACIAAAA” at the top of his lungs, who is Garen Crownguard?

“We knew way back in the day that we wanted to expand on voiceover work. We saw it in other card games, and it was already in League, but we wanted to take a closer look at the characters, especially champions,” Melell shares. “League has so many cool VO interactions, but there’s so much going on in the game. You need to stand right next to them to interact, and it’s usually hard to hear over the actual gameplay.”

So, what’s Garen like at a party? How is he different when talking to his aunt vs when he’s bantering with Katarina? You’ll have to play them together to see.

Katarina, the Meat Grinder

Katarina fell into the Hecarim “gotta go fast in a card game” bubble. But unlike Hecarim, it took numerous iterations to get it right. As a hyper-mobile assassin whose kit revolves around jumping all over the place, it wasn’t exactly an easy translation from Rift to deck.

“When we’re exploring cards early, we’re playing on paper so we can make changes faster,” explains UNCONKABLE. “We have to ask the playtesters to imagine all of the things like animations, sound effects, and visual flair. It can be challenging to get feedback on cards at this point because a lot of the game is all of the realization we add later.”

Before landing on her final quick-strike-and-return-to-hand gameplay, Katarina saw one iteration that was clearly wrong: the meat grinder.

Any time you resolved a spell, Katarina would do 1 damage to everyone in combat. The deck became Katarina, a bunch of Challengers, and as many spells as possible. But the team quickly realized that meat grinder Katarina was past its expiration date. It was time to try something else: Focus on her Death Lotus.

“We gave Katarina her Blade’s Edge, and every time you resolved one, it’d shuffle two more into your deck. In theory it was just a hail of blades coming at you, but in reality no one played all of the blades at once,” recalls UNCONKABLE. This meant that you’d have to physically press “Okay” every time someone played one of these cards. So if your opponent played 10, you’d just sit there, slowly accepting your inevitable defeat. “That build lasted a day. And then Alexz ‘Careless Whisper’ Lee, one of the other designers, came over to my desk and said, ‘This is literally the worst time I’ve ever had in my life. I will f&^%ing destroy you if this stays,’” laughs UNCONKABLE. “Point is, you just have to try a bunch of stuff. And people will tell you right away if they’re having a good time or not.”

But where do you start when a champ has six (seven?) abilities to choose from?

Karma, the Dragon Lady?

Karma holds a unique spot in League. She’s a support who provides powerful shields to her allies... and runs down her enemies with terrifying speed, snares them in spot, and blows them up with a massive burst of damage. So how do you translate all that to a single card?

Before we get into the specifics of Karma’s tumultuous design process, it’s important to call out some of the key differences between League and LoR. In League, a lot of the high points (often ults) for champions are AoE or crowd control—stuns, knockups, etc.—which is difficult to bring to a card game. And, unfortunately, that’s a big chunk of Karma’s kit.

The next problem is her Mantra-empowered Q, Inner Flame. If you’ve ever laned against her, you know it deals a shocking amount of damage. But in LoR, the team wanted to generally keep huge damage with champions it fits with thematically, so they decided to leave that to things like Jinx’s Super Mega Death Rocket.

That leaves barriers. Great. Cool. Ionia is a region that really likes barriers. But there was one problem: Shen.

“When we were working on Karma, we knew we wanted Shen in the game. And his most iconic spell is his ult, Stand United,” UNCONKABLE explains. “At that point Shen literally was his ultimate. He was just a spell card. So we couldn’t give Karma these powerful shields, because it would diminish Shen.”

“We decided to look into her backstory, and there was one story where she staved off a Noxian invasion by summoning these two spirit dragons, which basically are the Mantra,” says UNCONKABLE. “We thought it was really cool, so we created a version of her where she’d summon two dragons. But no one understood what we were doing. Everyone said she felt like Annie summoning two Tibbers.”

That’s when game designer Noah “Riot DefaultChar” Selzer recommended exploring her Enlightenment thematic. The team loved the idea, and—unlike the dragon lady design—so did the Karma players.

Sometimes the designers know what kind of design they want, just not the champion it goes with.

Fiora, the Win Condition

“I’m a big fan of Yu-Gi-Oh,” says UNCONKABLE. “As the initial design lead for LoR’s first set of cards, I knew that I wanted to add a card like Exodia to the game. And originally I wanted Heimerdinger to be the alternate win-con, but Andrew ‘Riot Umbrage’ Yip, LoR’s design director, had a really cool concept where Fiora won the game through combat. And it was just so good.”

As a nod to Fiora’s “casual pentakill” playstyle in League, in her original LoR version the “I win the game” mechanic required that she kill four units. But there was one problem: Sometimes you didn’t actually win the game.

“The card originally did 99 damage to the enemy Nexus,” explains Riot Dovagedys. “We didn’t have the tech yet to just win the game, so it had to do damage. But because of that there was a way you could not die.”

At the time Barriers could be cast on your Nexus, which is precisely what happened during one of Fiora’s playtest matches. The resulting press-F-to-pay-respects moment resulted in the engineers ensuring Fiora had the tech necessary to make sure no one else had to go through the pain of not winning when playing Fiora, the Win Condition.

But when it came to engineering challenges, Fiora was far from winning that game.

Teemo, the Engineering Nightmare

Teemo is... a controversial champion. He’s either someone you hate because he’s a sick, twisted sadist. Or he’s someone you love because you’re a sick, twisted sadist. Love him or hate him, Teemo changed the game for the better.

“Originally Teemo put a couple of mushrooms in your deck whenever he attacked. But unlike now, they did two or three damage each. When one hit you, it hurt SO MUCH,” says UNCONKABLE. “A lot of people on the team thought it felt bad.”

That’s when Riot DefaultChar suggested making Teemo a 1|1 Elusive who didn’t just plant shrooms in the opponent’s deck, he doubled them. By making Teemo a low-cost champ, he could be played early and start building the garden. And doubling the shrooms each time? There’s nothing quite like slapping your opponent in the face with a handful of mushrooms while spamming the Braum emote.

But there was one tiny problem: Teemo broke the game.

“In engineering, as you go further along in the development process, you build tools for yourself to use later,” explains Riot Crowtaro. “And since this was early, our toolbox wasn’t as well stocked. So in order to solve unique problems—like Teemo’s shrooms literally crashing the servers—sometimes you need to take the tools you have and turn them into the ones you need. Say you need to hammer in a nail, but you only have a saw. You just take the saw, turn it sideways, and bash it into the nail.”

Initially Teemo inserted actual mushroom cards into your deck for each mushroom he made. In his initial build where you’d have one or two, it wasn’t so bad. But the new double-the-count build from Riot DefaultChar meant instead of having 40-60 shrooms in a deck, you’d have a couple thousand.

On top of that, cards that buff the others in your deck with +1|+1 (for example) meant going through all the shroom cards to make sure they didn’t need buffs too. When you’re talking about 40 vs 40,000, that makes a pretty big difference. Beyond the engineering feat, there was a feelsbad situation for individual shroom cards. Each time you drew one, you’d have to sit through the entire animation, one at a time. In some cases, this meant sitting through hundreds of card draws as you watched yourself become more and more dead.

“So we made a few adjustments to the game. From an engineering standpoint, we made it so the mushrooms would attach themselves to a card, instead of being individual cards,” Riot Crowtaro says. “And we swapped from a one-at-a-time mushroom explosion animation to a single ticker animation, so it would count up really fast as you drew mushrooms. And we made changes to the animation system so animations can overlap.”

“Even recently we changed the way we calculated how mushrooms are doubled,” Melell adds. “We went through a variety of methods to calculate how many mushrooms were on each card because of the insane numbers of mushrooms some people were putting into their decks, which would then slow the game down considerably.”

In short: Players being so dead set on pushing and breaking rules caused the team to refactor mushroom calculations multiple times. So, bravo. You did it. You almost broke LoR. And for once, Teemo did something good. “It’s been several years since all of this went down, and at this point we have a much more mature codebase,” Riot Crowtaro says. “We’re able to do a lot more ludicrous things without having to pretzel ourselves to make it happen. And because of Teemo, we can do a lot more in the future.”

And Teemo’s not the only Yordle to waddle his way into LoR.

Heimerdinger, the Big-Brained Turret Man

“Heimerdinger was a lot of fun to figure out,” says UNCONKABLE. “In one of his earliest iterations, he built a turret and it just got bigger and crazier as you went. It was really cool, so Riot Umbrage wanted to lean further into the crazy inventor thing, where Heimer makes a bunch of turrets whenever you cast a spell and that mana is the turret’s power.”

So here’s Heimerdinger with all of these turrets. But what exactly is he planning on doing with them? What’s his pinnacle of brilliance? His magnum opus?

“I walked into the office one day and saw that someone had printed out a bunch of art and hung it on the wall. And T-Hex was up there,” laughs UNCONKABLE. “And I was like, well, obviously this is going to be a card. And someone told me that dinosaurs don’t exist in Runeterra.”

“I was that person!” GiantArtist interjects.

“Melell! It exists, right?” UNCONKABLE asks.

“All of the cards and ‘pieces’ that players interact with exist,” Melell laughs. “How they’re used, and how (if at all) they ever encounter each other is entirely up to the player.”

“I just hope players feel like we did him well,” adds UNCONKABLE. “I hope Heimerdinger players feel like they can make the crazy, big brain plays to go along with the crazy, big brain inventor.”

Lux the It’s-Not-Just-A-Phase-Mom-I-Really-Don’t-Belong-Here Demacian Mage

“We have a goal for every champion to have a deck that they’re best fit for,” Riot Dovagedys shares. “And for a while, Lux broke that rule. She made a Final Spark that did 10 damage and cost 0 mana for a long time.”

“Yeah, her original intent was to be paired with Heimer. It was supposed to be a big spell deck,” UNCONKABLE offers.

But Heimer’s from Piltover and Lux is from Demacia. Big spells felt at home in Piltover, but since Demacia has that whole “persecute the mages” thing going on, it left Lux in a bit of a bind.

“She was difficult to do thematically,” adds Melell. “Her whole tagline is that she doesn’t fit in Demacia. So how do you do that while also making her cohesive with the cards from that region? We needed to figure out the relationship between Lux and Demacia. And I think we managed to do that when we found Mageseekers.”

As the team worked on Lux and the Mageseekers for LoR, other parts of Riot took notice.

“As we were fleshing out the backstory for these characters, someone mentioned how cool it would be to make a Lux comic,” Melell recalls. “The resulting comic with the Mageseekers came out before we announced LoR. It’s really cool seeing world building cross over to other mediums.”

How would you feel if we told you Lux and Draven actually have a lot in common?

Draven, the Foul-Mouthed Funnyman

Noxus is a hyper-militaristic society. With champions like Swain, Darius, and Katarina calling it home, at first glance it’d be easy to confuse Noxus with a gathering of edgelords and tryhards. And then you have Draven, a bombastic showman with an inflated ego.

“We ran into similar problems with Draven that we had with Lux,” Melell says. “He just didn’t really fit in with Noxus—he’s fun-loving and over-the-top, which isn’t Noxus’ deal. So we looked at who he’d surround himself with. And that’s how we found the Reckoners.”

But a group of loud gladiators with a wrestling showmanship vibe wasn’t the only way the team was able to capture some of Draven’s... unique charm.

“There are these awesome moments where we’re able to show that you’re in the world of Runeterra and not on Summoner’s Rift,” Riot Dovagedys says. “I really love that when you have Draven in play and your opponent plays Teemo, Draven literally goes, ‘What the f*&^ is that?’”

“Woah, woah. It’s bleeped out! We don’t know what he’s actually saying,” Melell interjects. “You’d have to ask Conor ‘FizzNChips’ Sheehy what he meant when he wrote that line.”

“All right. All right. Well, we know it at least started with an f,” laughs Riot Dovagedys. “Anyway, it’s my favorite piece of VO because it feels like that’s how Draven would actually react if he saw Teemo. It’s so good! And everyone—well Greg sits far from me, so he doesn’t hear it but—everyone around me can attest to the fact that I yell our VO on the daily.”

“I can hear you,” GiantArtist smiles. “You’re yelling.”

“The point is, the VO makes these champions feel alive. And I just think it’s really cool to be able to see and hear that,” Riot Dovagedys clarifies.

[Champion], the ???

“I feel like every champ just has some insane story. Early on we were trying tons of stuff, but we really just wanted to make sure players liked it—that we exceeded any expectations they might have,” says UNCONKABLE. “I’m really proud of what everyone did, and I hope players feel like we got it right for their champs. I’m excited to see what they think about future sets.”

While we weren’t able to share the stories ofevery champ that’s out so far, rest assured they all had their own unique quirks and challenges. We can’t wait to see what you think of the new ones, and we hope to share their stories in the future.