#runeterra

[ohnoitstbskyen]

So, considering what's going on with Riot right now, do you think Arcane Season 2 got caught up in all of this restructuring?

Yes and no. Arcane season 2 is part of the reason for the restructuring.

As I understand it, internally at Riot, after Arcane was a huge (and more importantly: prestigious!) success, the decision was made to basically hand the entirety of the game's lore and story over to the Entertainment division within Riot. These are the people in large part responsible for projects like Arcane, K/DA, Heartsteel, that animated series China got, all that sort of thing.

The writers at Riot were basically told to flat out stop producing new content and lore for the game - that's why there's BEEN no new story content for League for over a year - because everything was going to be consolidated under the Entertainment division from now on. This is why Riot started talking about "One Runeterra" and "Arcane is going to be canon" and so on.

The success of Arcane convinced executives that what League of Legends needs is a singular cohesive brand with its most successful public property leading the charge, Arcane is going to be the gateway drug, the hook on the end of the line that brings new players and new paying customers into the exciting world of the League of Legends multimedia IP universe!

Nevermind that Arcane's story and worldbuilding is fundamentally incompatible with >checks notes< the overwhelming majority of Runeterra as it exists and enormous compromises would have to be made to either the world of Runeterra or Arcane itself to make it work. Arcane is the big shiny prestigious mainstream Emmy-award winning project that every executive wants to put their name next to, and like companies Pivoting To Video in 2015 because Facebook showed them inflated viewership stats, Riot Games is Pivoting To Arcane. It's better than them pivoting to crypto and NFTs, at least, although I know for a fact that high ranking people at Riot tried to make that happen too.

Now, the primary cause for all of these games industry layoffs is that interest rates aren't zero anymore. Borrowing money isn't free, the curve of constant growth has ever so slightly slowed, taking on debt is becoming a little tiny bit more risky than it was previously, and corporations are responding to this with massive rounds of layoffs and constriction to show "financial responsibility" and prove to shareholders that they are prioritizing core growth strategies and blah blah blah etc. They're also trying to kneecap the growing labor movement in the games industry and exert downwards pressure on wages, but the interest rates seem to have been the main thing.

In Riot's particular case, a secondary reason is they want to pivot the focus of the company to support their One Runeterra pipe dream, so a lot of the people who got fired at Riot are writers, artists, creative leads and sometimes extremely senior and successful staff who are now surplus to requirements. This is also why Riot shut down Riot Forge in the same round of layoffs - can't have a bunch of talented indie devs going off making video games that don't adhere to the new One Runeterra policy. What if someone played Mageseeker and got confused how there can be mages all over Demacia but somehow there are no mages in Arcane's Piltover and Zaun. That's a plot hole! People write snarky articles about that sort of thing. It turns off new consumers! What if Cinema Sins makes a video making fun of it?!?

So yeah. A bunch of cocaine-addled fame hungry executive vultures at Riot are absolutely gagging on their own d*cks to put their name next to Arcane related projects, and since they were going to be screwing hundreds of people out of their careers, healthcare, and in some cases their fucking visa status anyway, it seems to have presented a nice opportunity to clear the board for their latest Visionary Scheme for the company IP.

That is as I understand the situation, anyway. I'm a bitter old man and most of what I hear is second hand and anonymous gossip through my social networks, take what I say with a grain of salt, but I've followed this company for (oh god) twelve years now and I have developed a tragically keen understanding of how its executive class operates.

[axrynic]

CaitVi Kinktober day 4: Against the wall

Atomic Blonde x Piltover's Finest crossover!

Upped the Glaze a bit and it definitely changes so much about color fidelity and texture close up, but tryna do my part to protect against these unethical AI situations.

HD & unGlazed on schmatreon tho!

[eskalivr]

Darkins

[me-and-my-hyperfixations]

𝖤𝗄𝗄𝗈 & 𝖩𝗂𝗇𝗑 𝗂𝗇 𝗍𝗁𝖾 T𝖥𝖳: 𝖱𝗎𝗇𝖾𝗍𝖾𝗋𝗋𝖺 𝖱𝖾𝖿𝗈𝗋𝗀𝖾𝖽 𝖳𝗋𝖺𝗂𝗅𝖾𝗋

Timebomb shippers who’s ready for some CRUMBS ❤️

[moonlitalien]

Painted my League of Legends OCs Ivory (Noxus) and Riley (Piltover) in the style of Arcane!!

[aurelion-solar]

Artist Spotlight: Tom Sayer

Role: Principal Visual Designer

Website - Twitter

In light of Riot Games laying off 11% of their staff globally, I want to make a series of posts highlighting the portfolios of those affected, so that we can appreciate their contributions to the world of Runeterra and continue to support them. You can find a full list of those known to be affected here.

Legends of Runeterra - Region Icons (source)

Legends of Runeterra Iconography (sources 1, 2)

Spirit Blossom Event - UI Elements (source)

Sentinels of Light Event - UI Concepts (source)

Legends of Runeterra - Desktop vs Mobile Layout (source)

[phalanxus]

"And no one is perfect You don't need to be strong, every single day No one really knows along the way That the best things in life won't be, perfect anyway "

[tesnuzzik]

Bilgewater inspired outfits for my boys <3

[sugerblu]

THEY'RE (still) HERE

im so happy with the new cinematic, been playing this champ since 2018 and they're hereee finally, I love them sm.

[clefaiiiry]

Some of my favourite short stories from League's Universe page since Riot doesn't give a flying fuck about their narrative team

This is not a comprehensive list -in fact there's many more that I also really like!- so please share your favourites as well.

The Cage by Odin Austin Shafer Featured champion(s): Aatrox

The Man with the Steel Cane by Odin Austin Shafer Featured champion(s): Jhin, Zed, Shen

The Lure by Dan Abnett Featured champion(s): Kayn, Sona

The Man with the Grinning Shadow by Jared Rosen Featured champion(s): Lucian, Senna, Thresh, Karthus

Art is Life by Graham McNeill Featured champion(s): Vladimir

Paintings Framed in Half-Light by Isa Mari De Leon Featured champion(s): Hwei, Jhin

Child of Zaun by Ian St. Martin Featured champion(s): Vi, Caitlyn, Urgot

Perennial by Dana Luery Shaw Featured champion(s): Ahri

House on Emberflit Alley by Rayla Heide Featured champion(s): Viktor

A Quick Fix by Anthony Burch Featured champion(s): Jayce

The Eye in the Abyss by Anthony Reynolds Featured champion(s): n/a

A Good Death by Matt Dunn and Scott Hawkes Featured champion(s): Kindred

[shimutsuki]

2xko ( Project L ) Phone Wallpapers

[ohnoitstbskyen]

Making Arcane "canon" is a bad idea, and probably not actually possible

In the aftermath of Arcane's success, Riot has decided that one of the biggest problems with their storytelling and lore is that it's internally inconsistent, and that popular stories like Arcane are not technically "canon" with the rest of the universe. They propose to solve this by making Arcane canon, and streamlining the rest of the universe around it.

Just one small problem: the premise of Arcane is that magic is rare, it's a fairly low-magic setting, and Runeterra is an ultra-high magic setting absolutely sprawling with mages, artifacts, magic landscapes and entire magic continents. These universes cannot be reconciled without introducing major problems to one or both of them, to their inevitable detriment.

Much more importantly: League of Legends' lore and worldbuilding problems are far, far more systemic and deeper than merely "it is a bit confusing that the in-game champions aren't like the Arcane characters," and trying to solve it by streamlining everything is entirely misdiagnosing the problem.

Let's discuss.

[jomadis]

THE CAMPAIGN IS DONE-- AND SO ARE THE FINAL REFERENCES

We played this Runeterra (from LoL) campaign for almost 2 years, and oh my god was it amazing. But what we have here are all of the PC references! From left to right, we have Aoric, Sounis, and Fargrim (my PC)!! The first references are from July-ish of 2022, and these new references are from this month! More info abt the characters below if you want to read my ramblings haha

Aoric had three references, as about halfway through the campaign he aged 34 years with a magical item lmao-- but overall he got out great! He redeemed his Darkin, became a leader of Noxus, and reached level 20 as a bodhisattva (Runearcana's version of the monk class).

Sounis didn't change much physically-- except for the fact that they died at the end lmao. This Zaunite unfortunately got Void Sickness close to the end of the campaign, which killed them in a matter of months.

Fargrim probably took the most beatings, being the combatant of the party (Runearcana's fighter class). From picking up a man made of fire, to being stabbed through the abdomen by giant claws, this man has a myriad of scars. Despite all of that, he lived through the end of the campaign, becoming one of the leaders of the newly-united Freljord.

What an absolutely amazing campaign! I still have a bunch of references for NPCs that I haven't posted yet, so I'll keep on posting those when I have lulls in regular content! If you're curious about the campaign, I'm also more than willing to answer any questions!

Lastly, have the more accurate group shot lmfao

[sasoxichomoshi]

feast on their sins

[kwaggysshardmindemporium]

Okay, so my DnD game is set in Runeterra. I was doing some session prep today and printing off a card from Legends of Runeterra for NPC art, and I fell down a bit of a rabbit hole. So... here's the best thing in the greater Runeterra canon.

He is wonderful. For those familiar with LoL but not LoR, he's Malphite's son.

So, turns out that he appears in the extended art of four other cards, and the flavor text of him, those cards, and Malphite all form a tour of the area he lives in narrated by him. Also, I was curious if I could get a plushy of him. The answer is no because Riot seems completely unable to monetize this great game, BUT someone DID make an STL file of him for 3D printing. I have a 3D printer, so I gladly paid the couple of bucks for the files. About 7 hours later...

The printer kept fucking up his tail for some reason, but I might try again.

Now I haven't talked about this on my blog, but I actually have a decent amount of experience painting minis for Warmachine/Hordes and Malifaux. It's been a while, but I still have paints and gear, so expect further updates.

[dogstarrb]

Art dump time! The gang got "new skins" in our pf2e game and I got to draw them all over the holiday break. Then we went right back to playing and I promptly forgot to post them.