The game takes
choices away.
Most writing about this mode treats it as the Rift with the interesting parts removed. That view is common, it is wrong, and correcting it is the whole purpose of the course.
What the mode removes
The four constraints
- 01
No pick
You do not choose your champion. The bench narrows the loss; it does not restore the choice.
- 02
One lane
There is no map to rotate around. Every decision happens in the same corridor, in front of everyone.
- 03
No recall
You cannot retreat and reset at will. Spending is coupled to dying, which prices every death twice.
- 04
Forced contact
You cannot decline the fight. Disengagement buys seconds, not the ten minutes a Rift player can spend elsewhere.
So where does
skill go?
Every decision the mode removes at the point of selection reappears, harder, at the point of interpretation. You are handed a champion and must work out what it can be made to do for this team, against this enemy, with the augments you happen to be offered.
That is not less strategic than drafting. It is strategy without the comfort of having chosen the problem — and it is the only part of this mode that rewards knowing more than the population-level answer.
Twelve weeks, one game
The course is ordered by the decisions the game forces, not by difficulty.
- 01Rollthe hand you are dealt
- 02Readwhat the champion can be made to do
- 03Rerollwhether to trade what you hold
- 04Augmentwhich offered option fits this game
- 05Buildwhat to buy before you can buy again
- 06Composethe win condition nobody drafted
- 07Positionspace in a single lane
- 08Committhe fight you cannot decline
- 09Diewhen death buys more than it costs
- 10Adaptwhen the plan stops being right
- 11Surviveplaying from behind
- 12Questionwhether the mode is well designed
Sometimes the game
changes the rules.
Augments hand you power you did not build toward, on a timer you do not control. A statistically stronger augment can still be the wrong pick in this game — and telling those apart is week 4's whole subject.
Who it is for
Postgraduate, and not a course in improving your rank.
Offered as SLOP8223 and, at undergraduate level, as SLOP4223. The prerequisite is SLOP6108 — League of Legends: Mechanics and Systems: you are assumed to know how damage, itemisation, levelling and objectives work, and the course does not re-teach them.
It will not tell you which champion or augment to take. If what you want is the current strongest option, that information is free and current on Hexdata, and this course spends twelve weeks explaining why it is not the same thing as the right decision.
What you leave with
- Evaluate a randomly assigned champion against the needs of a specific game rather than a fixed build identity
- Assess rerolls, augments and items as contextual trade-offs rather than isolated rankings
- Identify the functional strengths, weaknesses and win conditions of a composition nobody drafted
- Analyse positioning, engagement timing, death timing and tempo inside a single-lane environment
- Revise a plan when enemy builds, augments, threats or game state invalidate its assumptions
- Distinguish optimisation within the mode from the design decisions that shaped the mode
Assessment
Three written accounts of decisions. Marked on the argument, never the outcome.
- 25%Assignment 1: One roll, explainedDue 28 August 2026
- 25%Assignment 2: Read the GameDue 9 October 2026
- 50%Final: One Game, Twelve DecisionsDue 13 November 2026
All three are marked on the same four criteria: quality of reasoning under uncertainty 40, identification of the real trade-off 30, use of evidence 20, clarity of the account 10. A well-argued defence of a choice that lost the game earns full marks.
Convened by
Spike
Game Systems & Decision-Making Lecturer. Argues that the interesting part of any game is the part the player was not allowed to choose.
League of Legends is © Riot Games, Inc. This course is not endorsed by, affiliated with, or produced by Riot Games.