Setting LoL in-house rules — draft, bans, and disputes

Most arguments don't come from having no rules — they come from writing the rule after the situation happened. Once somebody has already lost out, every ruling looks biased.

Settle the following once, before your first night, and you'll rarely revisit them.

• Tournament draft — bans plus alternating picks. Closest to a real match.
• Blind pick — fast, but both sides can end up on the same champion.
• All random — some groups use it for fun even outside ARAM.

If the goal is more games, cut draft time. If the goal is serious games, draft properly. Changing format mid-night guarantees complaints about that game's result.

Blanket champion bans get introduced for fun and come with side effects: whoever mains that champion loses interest, and ban lists only ever grow.

If you do restrict something, say why and say when you'll review it. Deciding it by group vote leaves the least resentment.

Someone will disconnect early. Without a standard, it's a fresh debate every time.

• Before what minute does leaving mean the game is replayed?
• On a replay, do you redraft or keep the same picks?
• If a player can't come back, do you sub someone in or scrap the game?

Records need a rule too. Remade games distort the stats, so as a default it's better not to register them.

A pinned chat message gets buried, and nobody joining later scrolls up to find it. Keep the rules somewhere inside the group and edit that one place when they change.