When I started Track of Words I wrote reviews of pretty much everything I read, and blogged about all sort of reading-related topics. Over time I’ve increasingly streamlined what I talk about on Track of Words, and these days there’s no question that I focus predominantly upon Black Library – that’s no surprise, seeing as I’ve been reading Warhammer fiction for well over twenty years! That being said, I’m keen to keep at least a little bit of variety on Track of Words, for my own enjoyment if nothing else. Enter something new (for me) – League of Legends.
What’s League of Legends? Good question – in short, and I’m massively simplifying things here, it’s an online multiplayer game created by Riot Games, with its own setting (called Runeterra), locations, factions and characters. Watch this video for a quick intro to the game itself:
It’s not necessarily something I’m actively looking at getting involved with from a game perspective, but (and I’m not really sure if this is common in computer games or not) the game itself has a constantly developing lore that’s supported by concept art and fiction, with both Graham McNeill and Ant Reynolds working as background writers. That fiction comes in the form of free short stories on the League of Legends Universe website, which is cool.
Straight away that makes it quite an interesting proposition, helped in my mind by having two familiar authors on board. For me this is a brand new IP, with a setting that I’m entirely unfamiliar with and have zero emotional investment in (at the moment, at least). It’s also a semi-regular supply of new, free fiction exploring the setting, the locations, the characters and so on. What that means is it’s an opportunity for me to spend a bit of time reading something different to what I usually read, but still rooted in my usual sci fi/fantasy genre, and explore an entirely new world. I’m hoping this is going to be an interesting journey…
The League of Legends Universe website
Before I go any further, full disclosure of two things. Firstly, I’m really not a computer gamer – the only games console I’ve ever owned was a Sega Mega Drive, and I think the last PC game I bought was the original Half Life. To be honest I’d occasionally heard people talking about League of Legends, but I really didn’t know what it was until I started seeing Laurie Goulding talking about it, after he left Black Library and went to work for Riot Games in LA. That’s the second part – it’s through conversations with Laurie about the work he’s doing on the League of Legends lore that I’ve decided to dip my toe into the background and fiction for this new (for me) IP.
Let’s be clear with something – I’ve got a limited amount of time available for reading (sadly I have a real job as well as writing Track of Words, given that sci-fi book reviews don’t exactly pay!) and I’m only going to spend that time reading something that I’m genuinely interested in. There are all sorts of IPs I could dig into, and it’s in my best interests to make sure whatever I do read is going to be – as much as possible – something I’m genuinely interested in reading, alongside Black Library.
So how do I know whether League of Legends will be for me? Well…I don’t, not really. Or at least, I didn’t until I watched this video with two of Riot’s creative team (including Ant Reynolds, who I’m a huge fan of) about one of the regions in Runeterra – Noxus.
I didn’t really know what to expect, but I can tell you I wasn’t prepared for the depth and detail in the world building on display; straight away it caught my imagination, and had me wanting to know more. Luckily for me there’s a companion short story, again from Ant, which explores a little bit of Noxus and some of the characters mentioned in the video.
As it stands, I’ve read that short story – The Principles of Strength – and now I’m fired up and keen to read more about Runeterra, its people and its background. That’s where Track of Words comes in. What I’m hoping to do is document my journey into and (hopefully) through the world of League of Legends and its fiction, talking about the stories themselves but also my general experiences as I delve into a new world for the first time. Hopefully that’s going to be enjoyable for me, and also for you guys reading this – if you’re anything like me, the idea of reading new fiction from Graham and Ant, even if it’s not coming from Black Library, is already quite tempting. I’m not going to stop reading and writing about Warhammer though, don’t worry!
As I understand it, the fiction is designed to be part of semi-regular ‘faction updates’, which build up and add to the existing lore on an ongoing basis. What that means for me is that I can expect some new fiction every month or so which I can read and review as and when it’s available, alongside my usual BL reviews, and then I can also blog on an ad-hoc basis about how I’m getting on exploring Runeterra overall. The stories are probably going to be my main focus, but I’m a sucker for concept art, location sketches and so on, so there should be plenty for me to enjoy.
Some amazing Noxus artwork (credit Riot Games 2018)
What I’d love to happen is for me to find myself drawn into the lore and history of this IP, and for it to become something I follow on an ongoing basis. Whether that actually happens remains to be seen, but it should be an interesting journey. I hope I can make it interesting for anyone reading this as well, and maybe help steer a few other people in the same direction. Obviously a review of a piece of free fiction takes on a slightly different purpose to a review of something you would buy – you’re choosing whether to spend your time, rather than your time and money – but I’m hoping I can still find something both interesting and useful to talk about.
I would love to know what you think about this, so please do let me know in the comments below or via Facebook or Twitter. I’ll get a review written for The Principles of Strength shortly, and we can take it from there. Here’s to a new and exciting journey!