Read on Twitter
With Call of the Mountain imminently upon us, I wanted to introduce some of the awesome people that worked on the set and brought various pieces of it to life.
I'll start with the design team and myself. I was the lead for Call of the Mountain and am the content design lead for LoR, responsible for maintaining the quality of cards and sets. Before that I designed for MTG. Looong before that I directed theatre.
I'm really proud of Call of the Mountain, particularly the way our early thematic explorations lead directly to the major set mechanics - Invoke, Daybreak, Nightfall. Also, I'm DELIGHTED that my placeholder name of Swole Squirrel stuck.
Mark @G_MAJ0R was an early designer on Call of the Mountain and is design lead for the next set coming early 2021. He started as LoL QA in 2011, transitioned to design in 2015, and moved to LoR in 2017.
Favorite contribution: "Pitched the Invoke mechanic, including the constellation theming of Celestials. That felt like the first time I had a big impact on LoR content, and the team did a great job bringing it to life during the rest of set development."
James Hata @james_hata was another initial designer on the team. He formerly was the lead designer for Duel Masters and is leading the summer 2021 LoR set.
James helped us to initially design dragons and, in particular, fought to ensure that Celestials and Dragons each had a unique identity (where initially these giant monster tribes had blurred together).
Noah Selzer (seen here 2HGing with @DanaFischerMTG) leads the final design team. He joined LoR after working on League (particularly Maps and Modes) and I'm awe at his ability to be so versed and so skilled in so many different card games.
So much of the work of final design is about executing on ideas already in the set and bringing them to fruition - for example working to ensure Dragons had a distinct and viable strategy - but he was also responsible for designing Daybreak and Nightfall.
Xian Li @xaenya was another final designer for Call of the Mountain and is responsible for many features in the game. Prior to Riot, she worked on a variety of game projects from educational games to mmorpgs.
She was particularly responsible for executing on the Celestial cards and invoke, helping us deliver on the excitement (especially at the top end) and the balance of the choices.
Dave "The Wizard" Guskin @davetron had various roles on the team, implementing a bunch of the cards in early design, and for a time lead the final design of the set. He's been on LoR for 2 years and he's been in games for 15 years (7 of them at Wizards on M:tG).
In particular, Dave is responsible for us figuring out the 8+ cost play pattern of Trundle and his trolls (and some things I can't talk about until October).
Steve Rubin @RubinZoo is a former CCG pro player. He first started on LoR 3.5 years ago as the first R&D Playtester at Riot, then transitioned into Game Designer & is now the Live Design Lead for LoR.
He was a final designer on Call of the Mountain and in particular worked on the Nightfall patterns, during which he designed the version of Nocturne you see today.
Paul Sottosanti @psotto was another final designer on the set. You may also know him as the designer of our Expeditions draft mode.
For the set, I'm most excited that he figured out how to take Taric from a handful of disjointed ideas into the beautiful design you see today.
That's the design team for Call of the Mountain - it's a little larger than you can expect to see for most sets, mainly because we had groups that moved on and off during the design. I'm incredibly proud of all their work and can't wait til you get to play with the cards.
Let me pick this thread back up and introduce our amazing narrative team. Narrative is active throughout the life of a set, closely partnering with design and art.
Mel @smelissali is the narrative lead for LoR where she does worldbuilding, character creation, art descriptions, voice writing, and flavor text for sets--including Call of the Mountain! She's a long time TCG fan and a former scientist.
"It was a joy to work with our talented art and design teams to build out the world of Targon and I love how gorgeous and storyful the illustrations turned out..."
"Also exciting to get to build out Leona and Diana (both really fun to play in League too!) through their voice lines and to explore how their faith could shape the followers that we made for them."
Rachel @rnoelliams contributed to scriptwriting and flavor text for Call of the Mountain. Prior to working on Legends of Runeterra, Rachel was exploring interactivity through choose-your-own-adventure series for streaming platforms.
"It still blows my mind that I got to write for some of the champions I mained when I first started playing League!"
Conor @riot_fizznchips is a longterm writer at Riot, having scribbled nonsense for League of Legends, Pentakill, Arcane, and Legends of Runeterra. In his spare time, he plays awful guitar and cooks suspiciously British meals.
"Aurelion Sol was a ton of fun to write! I wrote in a few back and forth jabs between him and Vladimir, but I'm really not sure who would win that sass-off. Outside Call of the Mountain, Draven, the Crimson kids, and Fizz + crew were a blast, too!"
Meaghan @meaghanbowe was the editor for all card text and VO in Call of the Mountain. Favorite contribution: "I wrote the script for Lyra, the Lunari Shadestalker. I LOVE the Lunari and their ideology. (Oh, and please DO eat the Tasty Faefolk. They grow back.)"
Continuing this thread with the internal Riot card art folks. We have a lot of external partners who create the final art you see on cards. Internally, the team is focused on things like worldbuilding and concepting characters.
Edmundo Sanchez joined LoR three and a half years ago after 10 yrs on League as a concept artist and lead. As the concept lead on Call of the Mountain and on LoR, he's responsible for driving the worldbuilding and concepts that expand the league universe and the existing stories.
Favorite contribution: "love developing and expanding the world and narratives with the team. Had a blast working with our environment concept artists/team on the development of the Solari, Lunari, Asol, and Taric background concept art."
Den @denwhat_ has been a concept artist on LoR for over 5 years. "My favorite characters to create for this new set were definitely for Lulu's group. I love Tasty Faefolk and how I was able to show fans what Lulu meant with her famous League voiceline: 'Yup, that tasted purple!'"
Chris @skeeziks has been a concept artist at Riot for over 7 years joining LoR over 2 and a half years ago. He worked on Trundle's trolls as well as the Solari and Lunari groups for Call of the Mountain.Favorite Contribution: "Sun Ball, but I do love those trolls too."
. @riotsilver is the art director for card art on LoR. He's been with Riot since 2012 originally working w/the League splash team.
"I'm just stoked that we were able to create multi-card interactions between the illustrations, especially the mountain climbers and Lunari/Solari"
"I'm just stoked that we were able to create multi-card interactions between the illustrations, especially the mountain climbers and Lunari/Solari"
Aron @AronElekes is the newest member of LoR card art team. He started as illustrator almost 2 years ago and is currently working on character and environment concepts for upcoming sets.
"It is always a pleasure illustrating the concepts your buddies created - you get a chance to step into their heads a bit and have a better understanding how their decision-making works on theming, aesthetics. Crescent Guardian is an amazing design of Chris that I illustrated."
