Legend of the Five Rings

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Legend of the Five Rings
Image:Legend of the Five Rings Logo.jpg
Where Honor is Stronger than Steel
Designer Bryan Reese, Lead Designer. Shawn Carman, Lead Writer. Todd Rowland, Brand Management.
Publisher Alderac Entertainment Group
Publication date 1995-present
Genre(s) Asian Fantasy Game

Legend of the Five Rings (often abbreviated L5R) is a fictional setting created by Alderac Entertainment Group in 1995. The setting covers in detail the fictional land of Rokugan, and briefly many other lands and nations in the same world. Rokugan is based on feudal Japan with influences from other East Asian cultures. The setting is the basis for the Legend of the Five Rings Collectible Card Game as well as the Legend of the Five Rings Role-Playing Game. Legend of the Five Rings was also the "featured campaign setting" of the Oriental Adventures expansion to the third edition of Dungeons & Dragons, but this book is now out of print.

The deep, evolving story of Legend of the Five Rings is one of the features that sets it apart from most game settings. Players of the collectible card game, and to a lesser extent the role-playing game, can influence this story as it progresses by participating in sanctioned tournaments. The winners of major tournaments make pivotal decisions that can influence the storyline for years to come, with winners of minor tournaments influencing the storyline in lesser ways.

Legend of the Five Rings has broken new ground in player interaction in hobby gaming with the Race for the Throne. This mega-event takes place over 2007 and 2008, where players of both the collectible card game and the role-playing game can affect the storyline of their Clan by earning points in various Spheres of influence. These Spheres will determine the new Emperor of Rokugan in 2008.

Contents

[edit] The Games

[edit] The Legend of the Five Rings Collectible Card Game

The Legend of the Five Rings collectible card game is a collectible card game for two or more players (in tournaments, generally two), each with two decks of at least 40 cards each (formerly at least 30 cards each). The game continues until a player has reached one of several different victory conditions, at which point that player is declared the winner.

In the game's tournaments players can affect the storyline of the game, their deck construction directly contributing to the lives (or deaths) of the characters involved. This is in turn reflected in future expansions of the game, and the mechanics of the cards therein. The full current rules of the collectible card game can be found at the Comprehensive Rules Site.

[edit] Player-Influenced Cards

Legend of the Five Rings has many cards that are directly influenced by players and their actions. These cards often feature an attribution on the vertical right side of the card, which includes the name of the player, the event, and the date involved in the creation of the card or theme behind the card. Having your name on a card is a goal of many players of Legend of the Five Rings.

[edit] Banzai

A long running tradition in the L5R CCG is the Banzai shout during tournaments. To fire up the players before the rounds begin, the tournament organizer, special guest, or a selected player gives a short rousing speech restating what the players are fighting for in the storyline, followed the shout of "Utz" followed by the player's response "Banzai!" three times. This is in homage to traditional samurai battle cries.

[edit] Translations

The L5R CCG is currently published in English, French, and Spanish. Previously the game was also published in German.

[edit] The Legend of the Five Rings Role-Playing Game

The Legend of the Five Rings Role-Playing Game is a role-playing game that requires one person to be game master and any number of other people to play different characters. As with all role-playing games, there is no "winner" or "loser", and the players do not generally compete against each other. Instead, the players work together to find a solution to some problem which the game master has presented their characters.

The Legend of the Five Rings Role-Playing Game is currently in its third version. All three versions used an original ruleset designed specifically for the setting. The rulesets are all very similar, allowing active games to transition relatively easily between the three. To distinguish this game system from the d20 System mechanics (see below), it is often referred to as the d10, "classic", or the "Roll & Keep" ("R&K") system.

[edit] Translations

The Legend of the Five Rings Role-Playing Game is published in English, French, and Spanish.

[edit] Lethality

The Legend of the Five Rings Role-Playing Game is renowned for its lethality[citation needed]. Players who charge into combat unaware will often find their characters killed in the first session. Proper role-playing is encouraged to avoid combat when unnecessary, but the characters do have requisite abilities to survive if combat is forced in the early stages[citation needed].

[edit] Oriental Adventures

Oriental Adventures was published originally in 1985 by TSR, Inc. as an expansion for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and was set in a land called Kara-Tur. In 2001, Wizards of the Coast re-released Oriental Adventures as an expansion for the prior year's re-release of Dungeons & Dragons after a decade-long lack of any official support for the Oriental Adventures product line. It was decided to make this new version of Oriental Adventures a showcase for their recently acquired Legend of the Five Rings.

For the entirety of its Second Edition, with the exception of the Player's Guide and Game Master's Guide, books published for the Legend of the Five Rings Role-Playing Game had two different sets of game mechanics: the mechanics from the Legend of the Five Rings Second Edition Player's Guide and corresponding mechanics for d20 System, such as those presented in Oriental Adventures. With the current, Third Edition of the Legend of the Five Rings Role-Playing Game, and because of the lack of availability of the now out of print Oriental Adventures, the d20 System rules have been dropped from current Legend of the Five Rings Role-Playing Game books.

[edit] Live-Action Roleplaying

In 2004 a Live-action roleplay version of the game was released. Live-Action roleplaying has long been a major part of Legend of the Five Rings at events such as Gencon.

[edit] Clan War

Clan War was a miniature based model strategy game produced by AEG, whose story line is derived from the Legend of the Five Rings setting. This game itself is no longer produced but the loyal fandom has a strong presence in its continued existence. The metal miniatures used to play the game are still in production, now licensed and sold by the miniatures production company, Magnificent Egos. New L5R miniatures are reported to be in development.

[edit] Graphic Novel

AEG recently announced the upcoming release of a Graphic Novel for L5R in late 2008. This will be the first graphic novel in the property's history.

[edit] Board Game

A L5R Board Game has been in the works for several years, and despite delays and release pushbacks, AEG has said the game will release in 2008.

[edit] Race for the Throne

The Race for the Throne is L5R's new "mega-game" where players from all the various Clans compete across various "spheres", to earn points for their Clans. These points are earned by tournament wins, charitable work, online contests and many other methods. The Clan that ultimately wins the Race will put a new Emperor on the throne of the Emerald Empire.

[edit] Current Promotions

Legend of the Five Rings currently supports the Dojo Days store program. This program allows stores to receive benefits based on the number of Imperial Assembly registered players at their store. The players are also rewarded for bringing in new players as part of their Clan. These stores are also able to qualify to host official Storyline Events should their dedicated player base grow to 30 or more players.

[edit] Rokugan

Legend of the Five Rings is set primarily in the fictional land of Rokugan (also known as the Emerald Empire), based on feudal Japan with influences from other East Asian cultures, where samurai, shugenja, and trained courtiers vie for control of the noble courts. Rokugan itself is home to mostly humans, divided into a society based on clans, with eight Great Clans and various minor ones, all under the rule of Emperor Toturi III. They are regularly threatened by evil plots from within, but the main threat still lies to the southwest of Rokugan: The deadly wastes of the Shadowlands, where demonic hordes roam.

The world of L5R, which contains Rokugan also contains the nations of the Burning Sands as well as the Ivory Kingdoms. A few foreign visitors from these lands have been featured in Legend of the Five Rings, but have not played a major role in the storyline. Much is unknown of these lands, mostly due to the extreme xenophobia of the Rokugani, shown in the story by an Imperial mandate of non-interaction with Gaijin.

See the article on Rokugan for more information on Rokugan, the Great Clans, and other story aspects of Legend of the Five Rings.

[edit] Ownership

The following is from D. J. Trindle's post to the L5R e-mail newsgroups regarding the future – and the past – of the role-playing game. It was entitled "Whither the L5R RPG?" and is archived in full at http://l5r.alderac.com/rpg/whither_l5rrpg.html

Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG), in partnership with Isomedia, first designed and published the L5R collectible card game in 1995. Eventually, it became obvious that L5R would greatly benefit from the sort of promotion, marketing, and production that costs a lot of money. Some of the original AEG and Isomedia folks found interested investors and formed the Five Rings Publishing Group (FRPG), which purchased the intellectual property (IP) that is L5R.

FRPG took over production and marketing, while AEG continued to design the game. In 1997, AEG licensed the role-playing publication rights for L5R from FRPG, and published the first edition of the L5R RPG. The fans liked it enough to vote it the Best RPG of 1997 at the Origins Awards, and the core book went through four printings while spawning two dozen sourcebooks and add-on products.

In 1997, FRPG was purchased by Wizards of the Coast. The existing licenses remained in place, so the same creative team continued work on Legend of the Five Rings, AEG continued publishing the RPG, and Wizards began publishing the card game (although AEG was still designing it). In 1999, Legend of the Five Rings changed hands once more when Wizards was purchased by toy making giant Hasbro. The previous licenses were still in effect, so changes to the games and the development teams as a result were unnoticeable.

In late 2000, however, speculation about the future of Legend of the Five Rings – especially the RPG – began to run rampant after Hasbro, during a string of decisions that greatly upset the leadership at Wizards, decided to sell Legend of the Five Rings two years before AEG's long-standing license was due to expire. Any fears turned out to be unfounded when, less than half a year later, AEG won the bidding war for Legend of the Five Rings.

Today, AEG owns the intellectual property of Legend of the Five Rings and still designs and publishes the card game and the role-playing game. AEG released Lotus Edition for the CCG in late 2005, beginning the Age of Enlightenment story arc. The new Samurai Edition was released in July 2007, and includes the Race for the Throne story arc.

[edit] Fiction Novels

There have been twelve fiction novels published by Wizards of the Coast. They were penned by a number of different writers and they stray from the official canon to varying extents.

Shorter novellas have been released by AEG to compile the stories of the 2007 Test of the Jade Champion and the 2008 Kotei tournament season.

[edit] Story Team

There have been four 'eras' when it comes to the L5R Story Lead/Team.

The previous lead was Rich Wulf, assisted by Shawn Carman. Wulf's works include Way of the Wolf, Bells of the Dead, Rokugan, and many other Legend of the Five Rings products. Large contributions to the Legend of the Five Rings series were also made by Ree Soesbee, who was lead writer of Legend of the Five Rings prior to Rich Wulf, and John Wick before her who along with the founding members of Five Rings Publishing Group created the world.

Currently, Shawn Carman is the head of the Legend of the Five Rings Story Team. He has had great success at incorporating player effects into the game in a smooth manner, regardless of how odd the results of a tournament may be to the setting of the game. His team includes Rusty Priske, Nancy Sauer, Brian Yoon with Fred Wan acting as co-lead and continuity editor.

[edit] International Olympic Committee

One legal issue for Legend of the Five Rings involved the use of a symbol that consisted of five interlocking rings, arranged in essentially a star pattern. This symbol was used for several years in the role-playing game and featured prominently on the backings of the cards in the collectible card game. The United States Olympic Committee sued Wizards of the Coast, who at that time owned Legend of the Five Rings, over the logo, because a special Act of the U.S. Congress gave them the exclusive rights to any symbol consisting of five interlocking rings.

The only way to completely resolve the issue was to quit using the symbol. For the role-playing game this meant very little, but for the collectible card game it meant that the backing of the cards had to be redesigned, which left players with a mix of cards that essentially resulted in marked decks. In an attempt to appease the players, Wizards released the first set with the different backs – Spirit Wars – bundled with opaque sleeves that would obscure the designs on the backs of the cards, allowing players to use any mix of cards in their decks.

[edit] See also

See also Legend of the Five Rings (disambiguation) for other articles which share this name.

[edit] External links

  • Alderac Entertainment Group - The publishers of Legend of the Five Rings.
  • Legend of the Five Rings - The official Legend of the Five Rings home page.
  • Comprehensive Rules - The full rules of the Legend of the Five Rings CCG.
  • Wikia has a wiki on this subject: L5R - The unofficial Legend of the Five Rings wiki.
  • Kaze no Shiro - Castle of the Wind - A website dedicated to collecting all canon Fiction of L5R.
  • The official AEG Forums - The official AEG Forums for L5R (and their other games)
  • Daigotsu.com - Unofficial, popular fan-made website with forums for players, a searchable card database, a listing of past fictions and a trading utility all made for and by fans of the Legend of the Five Rings CCG.
  • Meridian Games - L5R online chat-based game, with two settings to play in. Also offers Exalted, LBS, and 7th Sea, among other games.
  • Five Rings Online - Five years standing L5R online digichat based game, currently in its 3rd story arc.
  • Gijon Shiro - Fan-made website about the city of Gijon (Asturias, Spain) in L5R.