[2020] I like Tahm's Lore, because I imagine it giving some poor designer a migraine.

Yeah... he was not the easiest character to pitch to our department heads and owners. (Though our PO Omar was onboard really quick) But actually a lot of Tahm's theming and personality was me trying to find a middle-ground between what Game design (The talented Daniel Klein) was leaning towards (an evil demon that eats you) and what Concept Art (The talented Chris Campbell) was leaning towards (a comedic big mouth character). While Chris got the basic image down (which Gem Lim then polished) I began wandering around the office doing the voice and accent with the catch phrase. "Now, I would hate be loquacious in my preambulatory..." while writing short stories. And Chris saw the character was more fun with an undercurrent of threat, while Daniel saw he could have the demon he wanted with comedy... while he was also realizing Tahm could be fun with an ally consume. (Which we called his APC ability at the time). And then it all sorta jelled. (Excluding a long fought battle to let Tahm keep his tiny hat and accent.). Tahm was hard, but imho Tahm is a success story of collaboration. He's what happens when a team of creative people all find creative solutions to make something that appeals to the whole team.

AS a side note... hopefully at some point balance team will solve how to power limit/gate his ally consume. (personally I always thought he should have to eat an enemy to "reload" eating an ally again --in addition to the cooldown) But whatever I'm not a GDesigner.

As someone who used to work on that team, and still works closely with them—theme is definitely a consideration. The team always tries to keep theme intact (or even enhance it where possible), though the work is often all about trade-offs in the end because no balance change is going to be perfect and they all cost something to someone.

I will say that if any change is going to more severely undercut theme, the mandate will often be to find another way to get the job done, because theme is clearly an important part of our champions.

Not exactly. I think both that title and Two Coats came out of a story sketch I wrote. (A story sketch is a idea I came up with while on champ team, which was writing short stories during development to illustrate a possible personality and possible theming to the team... and to hopefully create alignment. I called them "Story Sketches" to highlight their impermanence and their non-directive nature. I.e. to clarify it was a type concept art... (but with words instead of lines.). But because I wrote so many of those story sketches --they all kinda bleed together in my head. ( I think I wrote somewhere between 16 and 18 short stories just for Tahm.) I do remember the name Tahm came from Matt Dunn. (who apparently has a friend named that).

Yeah, the Aatrox removal was not taken lightly. In cases like that, it's a bit easier to see looking back but a lot of their troubled post-release development comes from a dedication to preserving the cool things that make each champ unique. Sometimes, though, the right call in the end is to make the cut (I would argue that Aatrox ended up being one of these cases). If a champion is hewing really close to their thematic pillars but is inaccessible to most of the players who would enjoy that theme because of balance, we're still unfortunately failing to deliver that theme properly to players.

Aw dude, I miss you too! I loved working with you. I remember getting drunk with you and walking home from... that-bar-rioters-go-to (I won't name it on reddit) whenever I go there.

Uh... Hopefully I was a better actor than that. Donno I can't see myself.

Yes. But more for leadership needlessly worrying about stuff. I had to make a powerpoint deck, pointing out that I had done my research beforehand and themed him as "rural crossroads demon" (his real archetype) knowing it was a multi-cultural-- a true universal jungian-- myth. Then... eventually he was okayed and we left it to the various localization teams to figure out how to go about localizing his dialog, accent etc....