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The League of Legends universe and lore was developed by Riot Games and appears in the multiplayer online battle arena game League of Legends, trading card game Legends of Runeterra, and upcoming tabletop game Tellstones: King’s Gambit. Runeterra is name of the world in which the continent of Valoran and its various city-states exist. In the old, pre-2014 lore, the League of Legends (The Institute of War) is the main focus of the in-game gameplay. In the new lore, the Institute of War was completely removed, The four major regions or continents of Runeterra are Valoran, Shurima, and Ionia & Oceania.

Runeterra has several city-states: Bandle City, Bilgewater, Demacia, Freljord, Ionia, Noxus, Piltover, Zaun. The cities were made into an actual part of the gameplay as factions in Legends of Runeterra. League of Legends takes place in the fictional world of Runeterra. The champions of League of Legends are a collection of heroes and villains who have a variety of backstories, often related to the political struggles of the various countries of the main continent of Valoran. Valoran is a supercontinent consisting of two main landmasses connected by a bridge. Additionally, some champions like Aurelion Sol are extra-planar and come from worlds other than Runeterra, but are visiting for their own purposes. These champions sometimes clash with each other, roughly reflected in the gameplay of League of Legends. The lore has gone through two major phases: one before a 2014 revision by Riot Games where games players played actually happened in-universe in a peace mediating competition known as the Institute of War or "League of Legends," and one after 2014 where this in-game institution was completely removed from the story.

Original lore
Some of this section is in-universe in tone, but much of it is explaining the actual process of creating the lore: in-universe writing will be high listed

The setting has gone through two phases: the "original" setting that was canon from 2009–2014, and the rebooted setting from 2014–present. The original setting was very focused on justifying the exact mechanics of a game of League in the world of Runeterra. The MOBA predecessor to League, Defense of the Ancients, featured two warring sides with two separate hero rosters; however, in League, any combination of champions was legal to create a team. To explain this, in the original setting, Valoran was functionally ruled by extremely powerful time mages who could intimidate the other nations into compliance with their whims. The continent had previously been ruined by the excessive use of magic during the Rune Wars. The runes were magical artifacts which some believes were involved in the creation of the world itself, but they are be better known for the destruction they can wreak. They created the "Institute of War", also known as the "League of Legends", to resolve disputes and act as something like an international sports league. All 40 of the original champions in the game joined the League of Legends on the onset of its creation. During this time, the various Fields of Justice were created to facilitate these battles. Of the current maps, Summoner's Rift is set at the Institute of War from the 'original' League storyline; the Twisted Treeline is set in the Shadow Isles; and the Howling Abyss map is set in the Freljord.

In these disputes, "Summoners" (a.k.a. the game player) could control any of Runeterra's greatest heroes or villains in their struggles, thus justifying why a team of five characters who all hated each other might form.

Rebooted lore
Some of this section is in-universe in tone, but much of it is explaining the actual process of creating the lore: in-universe writing will be high listed

The narrative team at Riot eventually decided this setup was too constraining, and "rebooted" the story behind League of Legends in 2014. In essence, the original story put too much emphasis on the faceless player stand-in Summoners and the Time Mages of the Institute; "the very idea of all-powerful Summoners made Champions little more than puppets manipulated by godlike powers." Any interesting champions the Narrative team created were rendered as secondary, mere servants to the Summoners, unable to influence their own destiny. Furthermore, Riot claimed that this original narrative "diminished a player’s relationship to the action, rather than enhancing it". Many champion's lore did not give them reason to join the Institute, such as serial killer fire spirit Brand or void monster Rek'Sai. Riot wished to let champions take the center stage and have stories of their own, pursuing their own unique goals. For example, Riot has since released a plotline about a lost empire in the Shurima desert and a plotline about a clash between the pirate Gangplank and the pirate-hunter Miss Fortune in the city of Bilgewater, both of which were driven by the champions of League of Legends, not Summoners. Riot compared this style of narrative to comic book characters and classic literature, where interesting characters can have many adventures over time and not necessarily have all of them make sense in the same continuity. A side effect of this is "that the game and story aren’t one-to-one copies of each other." The Bilgewater event of 2015 was the first time that a champion, namely Gangplank, had died in the canon. This also reflected the first time that in-game narrative actually had an impact on the lore. Riot's Tommy Gnox wrote that early narrative choices by the design team "fostered creative stagnation" and limited how the game's characters and lore could grow. A few individual champion's lore was grandfathered into the new lore, however, in some instances contradicting the elimination of the League of Legends from the lore. For example in 2016 Fiddlesticks is still the executioner of the League and Brand was still enslaved by the League. When new champions are added, already existing champions from their story usually have their lores updated as well. Sejuani and Trundle were updated along with the Lissandra champion release, the map Howling Abyss came out, and the Three Queens icon event ran at the same time. PC Gamer considers this Freljord event a huge success in terms of storytelling, design, and player interest. The success of the various release "events" have also set up for future releases as well. Due to the Fjeljord lore overhaul event, upon the release of Braum in 2014, he already had a very coherent, consistent lore that was built up through teasers that. In 2018 Riot announced that they would now have a dedicated team developing the lore. Before the establishment of this concerted effort to develop the lore, Riot explained that lore had been written "written by all kinds of Rioters all over the place," which led to the less clear narrative of the game's story.

Appearance in other games
In December 2019, Riot Games announced Riot Forge, a publishing label for singleplayer projects set in the League of Legends universe, but made by other developers. A fighting game with a working title of Project L is currently in development. Riot released a teaser video showing Ahri and Darius as playable fighters. At the 2019 The Game Awards ceremony, Riot Games announced several single player games. Airship Syndicate is developing a turn-based single player RPG set in Bilgewater and Shadow Isles, the first of such titles to be released. Additionally, Double Stallion Games is developing an action platformer starring Ekko. Riot Games' FPS title Valorant is notably not set in the universe. According to Game Director Joe Ziegler, the team had considered setting the game in the universe but found difficulty in to reconciling key aspects of the world of Runeterra with the environment it wanted for Valorant. A campaign to play in the pirate city of Bilgewater has been officially added to D&D Beyond.
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Other media
An animated series entitled Arcane featuring the League of Legends universe is in development. A hardcover companion encyclopedia to the lore entitled Realms of Runeterra is set to be released in November 2020.

Reception
The lore has been called "dumb" by Steven Messner of PC Gamer. Rachel Gu of Gamespot wrote that the lore has often been ridiculed by fans as "some shoddy attempt at stringing together a narrative around the wide expanse that is the League of Legends universe." Ryan Gilliam of The Rift Herald writes that although he himself is a fan of the lore, many players do not have interest in it. Since the reboot of the lore, it has been much more positively received by some fans. Cassandra Marshall of PC Gamer praised the decision to reboot the lore and focus the story around the Events, since it led to a lot new content, like Sejuani and Trundle being updated along with the Lissandra release. Additionally, she praised Riot's ability to build off Events for future content releases, for instance when Braum's lore being dependent on a successful Freljord event. On the other hand, Jeffrey Tyler Robinson of The Gamer wrote that the lore revision of 2014 and subsequent story retcons "has made the game feel more disconnected from the underlying story." He also suggested the narrative discontinuity in the existence of gamemodes like Ultra Rapid Fire and Teamfight Tactics. '''