#outofshroud

No hate, ever.

Hey, CT, it's been a while.

I'll tell you my frustration when it comes to the folks on this board: I can't show you what we want to do (and are doing) to answer many of your concerns. Yet.

Even when players get royally pissed off, I know it's because you care. Sometimes, we human being type bods say something we shouldn't when we get annoyed, frustrated or downright angry. That never comes from a place of apathy.

Of course, there are times when I get a bit sore when some folks go way over the top. Not usually about myself (I'm ugly enough to be comfortable in my skin), but I'm pretty protective of the Narrative discipline, so when some of the finest people I've ever known are accused of being various things, it does get to me a bit, I won't lie. However, I know where those mistakes come from: a love of LoL from you, and a lack of visibility from us.

There is only so much visibility we can provide while still maintaining our ability to do what we do and, which is completely their choice, some people just prefer to be a bit more private.

We can still do better though, and I know we, and I, have been trying to do so. In the spirit of visibility, I was having a chat with someone who frequents these boards via DMs a while back (before my recent absence from here), about a variety of things that he was most gracious in keeping private. One of those things was a fun creative exercise I wanted to do with everyone on the boards (but haven't been able to, I'll do so tomorrow. Oh bugger, I just saw the time. Ok, later today).

Another topic that he called me on was the lack of understanding about leadership on Narrative, and I've seen some folks say there isn't any leadership, which is, of course, incorrect. The gentleman in question also said that there's a certain history (that I wasn't completely aware of, to be honest) on these and the previous boards of having a name to attach certain things to about how things are developing on Narrative and lore.

As I've said before, Narrative doesn't do story alone, it helps make stories and characters for teams, so we don't ever decide things in a vacuum.

However, the person in DMs, an absolutely passionate player, said I should clearly state that I'm the Narrative Lead on League of Legends, mainly because it would help with transparency for the long-attending members of the boards. So, I just did.

With that out of the way (I didn't say it specifically before that conversation because I didn't really think it was important), and with clarity of where I'm coming from, let me state categorically that every single member of the Narrative discipline works tirelessly to create awesome things for the players. We succeed or fail together, but it is always because we want you to continue to love this game and this world in the way that we do. In the way that your appreciation, your passion, and yes, even your anger sometimes, drives us further onward to do better. That never comes from a place of hate.

Ever.

Riot Jaredan

[[Boredom strikes again!]]

The bitching has officially pushed me to point break so I’m taking time to write this to shut everyone up. The lore hasn’t gone by the wayside like so many of you want to believe. I’m not going to point fingers but one person in specific is driving me up the fucking wall with this shit. So let’s take a trip down memory lane, shall we?

POP QUIZ! Who was the last champion released to have the League of Legends explicitly mentioned in their in-game lore?

If you guessed Varus, you are correct. Draven would also be an acceptable answer though his lore does not explicitly name the Leage of Legends. At all. “A larger stage,” is as close as you’re going to get.

06/06/2012, almost three years ago, was the last canon mention of the League (going off Draven’s lore here) within the game itself. Of course I’m not taking into account any Riot posts on the forums or on Reddit because I am specifically pointing out that Riot has not “given up on the lore”.

That means that there have been 25 champions released since the League has stopped being a thing.

“Well Akali, all of their lore must suck!”

The champions include, but are not limited to: Thresh, Lucian, Yasuo, Bard, Kalista, Azir, Vi, Zed and Elise. Maybe I’m just a sucker for some of these champions (yes I like ladies with legs and pneumatic fists shut up) but let’s take a look at two champions in particular from this list of 25.

Azir and Braum. Arguably two of the best-written, most interesting, and biggest lore-building endeavours thus-far taken by Riot in their ongoing quest to appease what is the loudest minority in gaming that I have ever seen.

Azir’s lore in game is short and sweet. It is literally three lines of text. Three sentences. My introduction to this post is longer. So what has Azir’s lore achieved? It has completely rewritten the Shurima, given Fiddlesticks a life after the League, detailed the rise and fall of an empire that spanned centuries, given a vast amount of depth to a place that previously had none, explained Renekton and Nasus’ existence, gave us a segue into Rek’Sai, and redesigned and breathed life into a once-dead AD carry. And a featured game mode but we don’t talk about that around ask-sivir because she rages too hard.

All without the League. All without needing a long and drawn-out in-game back story. Three lines. Three. Lines. Go look, I’ll wait.

As for Braum, what did we get from that? Howling Abyss, more information about the Freljord, a cohesive Freljord that didn’t suck, and arguably one of the funnest characters in the game from a writing perspective. It boggles my mind why more RPers don’t pick him up because he is hilarious.

His in-game lore is a story, told from a grandmother to a daughter, extolling Braum’s fantastic feats of strength and mind. His lore tells us almost nothing about him! He’s a good guy who uses a door and apparently can punch through a god damned mountain. It gives us nothing about his motivation or his purpose.

The lore that Riot released after the fact fleshed him out but they still gave us so much wiggle room to do our own thing that I personally think he’s about as perfect a character as you can get.

Ekko falls into the same boat. The only person here that I have honestly seen take him well and properly is deathrocket. There is a very real chance that Ekko’s lore could invalidate a vast amount of her work and world building and the only thing she has said on the topic is “that’ll suck, guess I’ll have to work on it.” That’s it. No panic, no complaining, no fluster or bluster. She’s just rolling with the punches and calling it good. Which is absolutely incredible considering the effort that has gone into that Jinx.

What I’m trying to say is, in no uncertain terms, get the fuck over it. Things change. Riot is no longer writing lore into the game but they will come after the fact. The constant bitching, moaning, whining and complaining is achieving one thing and one thing only:

You are driving away those in this community who have done incredible work to get their characters going. Off the top of my head I can name two of the best blogs on this site who have packed up and carted off because they grew sick and tired of the constant bitching, bickering, petty name-calling and under the breath talking. And I know for a fact that at least two, if not three, more are considering the same course of action.

I recently picked Tera up again. Apparently there’s a new class and it’s really fun and overpowered and some of my friends want me to play. Whatever. The taste I have in my mouth because of that game is sour at best, downright toxic at worst. Again, whatever. To play with friends, I’ll do it.

So I threw together the new class and went out for a test run. They’re kinda cool, giant-ass laser cannon strapped onto a hot Castanic, sure, I’ll bite. But what struck me the most about it is how out of place I felt. Not because I don’t know the game (let me tell you how much dumb shit I’ve done because I keep defaulting to the GW2 control scheme) but because I’m a Castanic in a skimpy little outfit running around with a giant laser cannon...

... that shoots cannonballs.

There’s something painfully jarring about the design of the weapon I’m firing, the casings that it’s apparently launching out the side, and the projectile I’m firing. As in, not a single piece of those three fit together in any way, shape, or form. I admit fully that I’m a firearms person so I understand why these things don’t go together but at the same time I have to sit here and contend with myself to wrap my head around the designs and why it ruins the class - and by extension, game - for me so much.

I’m a well-versed writer. I’ve been writing for most of my life, I’ve gone to school for it, and I’ve written creatively in three languages. But the thing I’m better versed in is writing very, very poorly. And before you get good, you have to suck. Dave Grohl actually summed it up very well and succinctly;

Musicians should go to a yard sale and buy and old fucking drum set and get in their garage and just suck. And get their friends to come in and they’ll suck, too. And then they’ll fucking start playing and they’ll have the best time they’ve ever had in their lives and then all of a sudden they’ll become Nirvana. Because that’s exactly what happened with Nirvana. Just a bunch of guys that had some shitty old instruments and they got together and started playing some noisy-ass shit, and they became the biggest band in the world.

Writing, in my very unprofessional opinion, is the same way. You need to suck. You need to make mistakes and throw stupid things around and make a fool of yourself before you get any semblance of where you’re going. And honestly you should do so in a place where people can critique you openly. Some of the critique you’re going to get is going to be awful. Some of it is going to be unerringly good. And some of it, somewhere in the middle, lay the people you should truly listen to.

I’m not condoning people bashing others and I’m not condoning blatant fanboyism. Both of those things will set a writer back exponentially in their development. And yes - being a fanboy and loving everything someone writes hurts them almost as much as harassing them. If not more.

To bring this all back around to where I was originally going before I went off on a tangent, here are some of the things that I personally have learned and picked up through years of sucking. I could write a comprehensive guide about how to write a story, but then anyone who follows it becomes formulaic. Writing a story isn’t about checking boxes; it’s about distinctly avoiding them to the best of your ability. There are some times where this isn’t strictly true (as you’ll see in a bit) but for the most part, doing your own thing is the most important part of writing. If it’s second to anything, it’s second to having fun.

1) Continuity. I cannot stress how important it is to have all of the pieces fitting together. I cannot stress how important it is to have all of the pieces fitting together nicely. And I cannot stress enough how important it is to make sure your entire puzzle is moving in the same direction.

This is what murdered me on Tera (yet again). The Gunner class is supposed to be some hyper-technologically advanced class working off some alien power source and then using it to build what appears to be Gauss or rail guns.

Firing a cannon ball.

... ejecting a spent casing.

I won’t go into why these things don’t work in great detail, but to try to put it into layman’s perspective: a cannonball is fired from a muzzle-loading weapon with no cartridge. A cartridge is a full package that contains bullet, powder, casing, and firing cap. A Gauss or Rail gun is fired using magnetic forces and currently doesn’t exist in any form (that I am currently aware of. The power required to fire one is astronomical). The time gap between these weapons is several hundred years, so cramming them into one shell makes not a lick of sense from any perspective.

Throw it all together and you’ve got a mess. Your puzzle may as well still be in the box and by the looks of it, three puzzles have been mixed together.

I understand where they were going with it, but from a lore standpoint, it doesn’t work. Everyone has their ‘line’ so to speak - the moment when all disbelief can no longer be suspended and everything comes crashing down. That was my point.

2) Characters. Having strong, engaging characters is very important. Strength has nothing to do with character traits either; it’s entirely about investing your audience in what you’re saying.

Let me make something clear that a lot of artists will disagree with: it is far harder to engage an audience with the written form than it is with any other artistic medium. Looking at a picture or piece of artwork is a nigh-immediate form of consumption. It takes seconds to appreciate artwork (longer if you’re looking at absolutely incredible work) and you get the basics down.

As a writer, you need to convince your reader to read your work. You need to hook them and drag them in. And if you can’t do that, you’ve fallen flat on your face far before you’ve even gotten off the ground.

3) Story. Much like above, telling a good story is paramount to keeping your audience. I won’t go into too much detail about how to write a story or even why it’s important as everyone should have some grasp of it by this point. What I will indulge myself in is to point you towards possibly the best resource I have ever found when writing fantasy, especially in long form.

The Rivan Codex, by David Eddings, is an amazing little book. Within, he divulges every bit of planning, pre-planning, and lore for his novel series. With it, he adds cliff notes, funny anecdotes, and intrinsic detail about the inner workings of his mind.

And I cannot stress how incredible it is to see the process up close and personal. One of my favourite excerpts from it is actually detailing a very important list one of the few you - or any writer - should ever print out and tack to their wall.

Item one: Theology Item two: 'The Quest' Item three: 'The Magic Thingamajig' Item four: 'Our Hero' Item five: the resident Wizard Item six: heroine Item seven: a villain with diabolical connections Item eight: obligatory group of companions Item nine: group of ladies who are attached to the bully-boys from item eight Item ten: the kings, queens, emperors, courtiers, bureaucrats, et al.

I’m paraphrasing heavily here so don’t jump on my back about it; if you want to see the full list in all of its glory, I strongly recommend either downloading the ebook or picking up a physical copy. You will not be disappointed.

Unfortunately, most readings I’ve picked up lately have fallen flat on their face through one or many of these means. Sure, maybe I’m just a picky writer but at the same time I feel as though far too many people are starting to consider writing to be something quick and easy that anyone can knock out.

If you want to do something quicker and easier than writing, I strongly recommend you take up rocket science.

This obviously isn’t an end-all-be-all list. It’s not a step-by-step guide to becoming a better writer or role player, but these are things that you should keep in mind if you want to improve.

And in the interest of not making this essay longer than it is, we’ll end on this note:

The most important rule of thumb I have learned through my years of writing is to heed Chekhov’s Gun.

Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there.