Design

Prior to joining Riot, Tom worked at Blizzard as a Designer on World of Warcraft, designing much of the core talent system and polishing the new player experience. He also worked on the Warcraft III The Frozen Throne, heading up play balance, and working on a variety of other systems. Tom holds a MBA from Kellogg and a BS in Computer Science from MIT. We thought this meant heíd know a bunch about business and about technology, but we later found it just means he has good alcohol tolerance, and a tendency to make painfully geeky remarks. In his spare time, Tom plays too many games, and reads sci-fi while working up a sweat on the treadmill. Once upon a time, he was the winner of the Blizzard Brood War Beta invitational, and #1 on the SC & BW ladders several times.

Tom briefly meditates and accesses the para-plane of brewing. Focusing this energy, he manifests into existence 2d6 random beers, often including Mirror Pond Pale Ale, Franziskaner Hefeweizen, Young's Chocolate Stout and Spaten Optimator.

Born and raised in the state of Maryland, Rob “rjcombo” Garrett has been gaming for nearly three decades. Inspired over the years by such titles as Star Raiders, The Legend of Zelda, and EverQuest, he embarked upon a career in interactive entertainment after completing a tour of service in the US Air Force. This journey began at Full Sail University, where Rob graduated from the Game Design & Development program in 2002. From there he went on to work with teams at Big Huge Games, Activision, and Red 5 Studios before eventually landing at Riot Games. A generalist designer with a lean toward usability and moment to moment action, Rob's current focus is on developing compelling new gameplay experiences for current and future players of League of Legends. That, and actually completing a full cycle of P90X.

Rob enters a mode of extreme focus, fully wrapping himself in a problem, and shielding himself from all distractions, taunts, etc.

Steve Feak is one of the original creators of DotA-Allstars, an awesome mod of Warcraft 3 played by over 10 million people worldwide. Despite this, Steve is a modest man from humble beginnings. He was born under a haystack in Wisconsin and enjoys spending time with his girlfriend, eating good old American food, and playing with his cat. He's also a diehard Brewers, Packers, and Bucks fan. As a gamer, Steve has a special place in his heart for World of Warcraft, Counter-Strike, Diablo 2, DotA, and old-school RPGs.

Guinsoo solves a Rubik's cube with a few deft flicks of the wrists and enters a deep calm visualizing a new character being played in-game. Using this vision, Guinsoo pieces together spell building blocks and design ideas to bring the character to life.

Richard Hough hails from the chilly hills of central NY, the frozen winters having driven him from his parallel processor engineering Ph.D. at Cornell University into sunny California. Much of his time is spent causing trouble for both the engineering and design departments at Riot, using his role as liaison between the two as a means to sneak awesome features into the product. He holds a Masters in Computer Engineering from Washington University in St. Louis, and is the co-founder of Proper Walrus LLC. He spends much of his free time playing extremely obscure budget and indie games, and has been known to rant for hours about the finer points of God Hand's and Deadly Premonition's designs.

Richard's constant exposure to video games allows him to always pick the best door of a group of five, use stellar converters for point defense, and impersonate New Orleans police officers with nothing more than a hat, jacket, and fake mustache.

After graduating from USC with a BS from the Music Industry Program, Jay worked as content manager / editor for a music website while performing in three Los Angeles based bands. After nearly losing his soul to the world of music journalism, he escaped to the video game industry with a sound designer position at Riot Games.

Along with crafting sounds, supervising VO and overseeing audio as a whole at Riot, Jay remains part of the Los Angeles music scene as a member of the art and music collective HEARD and the band Random Patterns.

By devising a barrage of awesome sound effects, Jay persuades LoL players to reduce their techno playing in the background by 75%, thereby doubling game immersion.

Colt hails from San Diego, California where he grew up playing every competitive game possible. Over time, Colt's gaming tastes shifted from tabletop strategy games like Warhammer 40k to online competitive games like Starcraft. As a diehard DotA-Allstars fanatic, he has been playing Defense of the Ancients since its humble Starcraft beginnings in the Aeon of Strife map. Prior to coming to Riot, Colt graduated from the Claremont Colleges where he studied Psychology and Organizational Economics, all the while working on passion projects in game design including mods of Half-Life and Neverwinter Nights, or joining a pickup game of Ultimate Frisbee.

Gifted with nerd references, Colt can create 45 shadow Colt clones, allowing him to manage game balance, create video references for the art department, and design new characters with amazing efficiency.

Steven lived in Arizona where he worked at MSI Orthotic Lab prior to joining Riot. In the past, he worked on mods, including Wizards' Islands for Morrowind and maps for Unreal Tournament. Steven has a hardcore MMO background dating back to Everquest, and raiding with Afterlife in World of Warcraft.

Thorough years of training in MMOs, Steven is able grind through any volume of work that needs to be done.

Kevin's path to game design took a more circuitous route than most. After high school, Kevin enrolled in the Wexford University of Combat Butlery in Kilkenny, IE. Unfortunately, he failed his advanced cutlery combat course on the basis of stylist approach. While his "2 sporks, 4 threats" style did allow him to destroy all opponents in the in-class tournament, the spork was deemed ineligible for use on the basis of it being an unsophisticated weapon inappropriate for a high-class combatant. He then enrolled at Cal State Stanlisaus, earning a bachelor's degree in Psychology, which he put to good use by supporting himself through online poker.

When he feels as though his integrity has come under undue scrutiny, Kevin's European education will take over. Instinctively, he will select the nearest offending target and proclaim: "You, sir, have sullied my honor! I challenge you to fisticuffs!" It has been said that Kevin's unarmed combat skills rival those of even the famed brawler Russell Crowe.

Ryan “Morello” Scott began his game career at the ground floor of Microsoft Game Studios’ QA, actually delaying the Xbox™ release by catching a dev kit (and then the QA area) on fire, delaying QA operations until the hazmat team could clean out the toxic residue (Washington state has strict OSHA-like laws). After his eyebrows grew back, Ryan moved on to do QA and eventually design at ArenaNet, doing content creation and balance design on the original Guild Wars, and helping create the framework for Guild Wars 2. An incorrigible Seattlite, Ryan brings his near-clinical caffeine addiction, fear of the sun and endless awe about good Mexican food to the office -- where he comes from, Mexico is definitely considered a foreign country and exotic. His gaming background spans mostly competitive multiplayer games, including tournament play in Guild Wars, Natural Selection, Battlefield 1942 and Tekken Tag Tournament.

Whenever Ryan is involved in a discussion, his voice carries through the room, walls, buildings and county lines to ensure everyone everywhere hears him. This ability deafens nearby allies for 2-5 seconds. Scales on blood alcohol content (+10DB per .1% BAC).

Kuo's foray into design began at an early age, where he forged humble ascii creations from archaic systems known now only to myth and legend. Eventually, he persued more noble goals such as the craft of working on mods that never see the light of day though he assures us they were amazing. Following this, he pursued computer science degree at UCLA, doing both his undergraduate and graduate degrees there. His gaming background mostly includes twitch action, single player immersion games as well as the fine art of filling bars by clicking the same button repeatedly.

Once a day when faced with an debate, you may roll 2 d6's. You may choose either result. For the effects of this die roll, consult the ability "Circuitous Logic" found in page 42 of your manual.

David has a B.S. in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University, and was President of the Stanford Gaming Society for two years. While at Stanford, David worked at serious games start-up Seriosity, researching leadership and social behaviors in multiplayer online games. After college, he joined neuroscience-based market research firm EmSense, where he analyzed emotional and cognitive responses to games and other media. When he’s not playing League of Legends, David enjoys MMOs, real-time strategy games, tabletop games, and collectible card games.

David lacks the ability to hear ridiculous statements or obvious trolling, causing him to ignore them so he can stay focused on critical tasks. This ability blocks the application of mind-affecting slows and stuns and each time it does so it increases his movement and speaking speed by 50% for 4 seconds.