Patch 5.11 Dev Interview w/ Tyler Morgan aka Riot Durdle

I could write something up, anything in particular you'd like to hear about or just a general design thing?

I always find writing about design fun!

Fiddles adventure was "gameplay first", e.g. the encounters were designed before narrative was hooked in, but knowing that the Warwick adventure was meant to pair with Arcane, we wanted to try a "narrative first" approach. We told League's central narrative team the core bits (use WW and/or Amb, set on this PZ map), then they pitched a story and selected followers that fit the rough arc of encounters.

Based on the character/landmark, encounters can be developed mechanically (Sump Monument just summoning itself) or interpreted flavorfully (Zaun Bouncer is an annoying blocker rather than a Flow deck). Being narrative first, I tended toward flavorful interpretations to make the characters feel more like people you were interacting with. The decks occasionally make less mechanical sense because of this, but I like that Academy Prodigy is hanging out with a bunch of other students and they occasionally celebrate Progress Day.

Powers are where we get to make an encounter unique. I kept things simple for the most part, like the powers that just summon landmarks, but I occasionally used them to reinforce the flavor: Academy Prodigy's power makes units "teach" each other and Zaunite Urchin begs for your cards. For bosses, we'll sometimes craft powers that tilt you toward a certain strategy, but I really liked getting to use the powers we had just designed for the champs, made for a nice nod.

The twist ending was suggested by narrative, but I don't think they realized how well it'd actually land. Turns out its as easy as having the adventure icon be Warwick :P I was actually worried that the map scrolling animation that plays when you enter an adventure would give it away, so I toggled the boss node to not be revealed, but it turns out literally everyone skips that animation by mashing click. Very funny to watch on stream.

Narrative had picked the Chemdrake, but his design is basically a power so I wanted him to start in play and Shackles was just a super flavorful chef's kiss way to do it. I kinda wish I had made him unkillable, the encounter is goofy once he's dead, but Teamwork makes everyone a god by that point anyway. He used to be on the 1* too but folks pointed out that new players wouldn't understand that this is actually a twist, plus having the maps be different helps the twist land even more.

For reward nodes, there's a weighting of rarities that's been pretty consistent across adventures, I personally haven't changed it. We mostly modify the pools of options, trying to reduce the amount of obviously bad options appearing e.g. a Gold node when there's nothing else to buy after it, or two of the same option next to each other.

Uniquely structured adventures are absolutely on the table. It'd be nice to have more branches where you're making a more significant gameplay decision than "I want this reward over that one." Perhaps even making that choice for story reasons? It's a space ripe for experimentation for sure, and we're already having fun messing with the conventions e.g. strange Fiddles encounters, fake WW bosses.

We definitely want to make new special encounters and have a few ideas ready to go, but it takes an engineer's help. Our rough plan was to see if we can't make that a part of the occasional future event, so the new node debuts with an event and then it sticks around afterwards. Don't take these as promises though (I get in trouble when I promise things), just showing you how we're thinking about things.