Hi all,
I'm wondering what veterans of L5R think about reading the older novels and books on all things Rokugan.
Are they relevant still with the LCG's timeline? If so, which series do you recommend? Which of the series do you find to be the best?
Thank you for your thoughts, and I apologize if this question has been asked 12517512875 times before.
Story has been restarted by FFG, so I would not spend too much time on the old fictions (unless you just want to have fun, some of them are pretty good, but quality may vary..a lot).
My suggestion is to start reading the new fictions, beginning with the clan ones.
Cielago did a great job listing them all here:
The only missing ones are the last two (To the South part I and II), that you can find in L5R newsfeed:
https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/tag/legend-of-the-five-rings-the-card-game/?
Edited by franzvong
There's nothing whatsoever "wrong" with reading and enjoying any of the existing fiction for the game. There are some great characters and stories in the rather MASSIVE volume of fiction that came out from AEG.
However, anything set during or after the Scorpion Clan Coup--which is the overwhelming majority of that older fiction, including the various novels that came out--is no longer relevant to the setting being established by FFG. As for the material set before that, the closer it is to the Coup, the more likely it's been superseded in some way by FFG's canon. The relatively small amount of stuff dealing with the 1200 years or so between the Dawn of the Empire and the present (in FFG's version of Rokugan) could be considered canon, unless something in the new FFG fictions overrides it.
In other words, you should consider the older material to be a sort of "alternate world" version of Rokugan, with the new stuff coming from FFG the starting point for a whole new version of the setting.
All new fiction is posted on the product page as well:
https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/legend-of-the-five-rings-the-card-game/
Just scroll down to the bottom where they have the expandable sections. There are 3 different sections of stories currently.
Has anyone started tracking the reading order anywhere? Like that the GenCon stories happen before the Imperial Cycle?
I feel like there is going to end up being a lot of links and it will be confusing to people to start reading it.
Thank you for the replies.
As a new arrival to Rokugan, I appreciate that FFG is restarting the series.
It'd be hectic to track down the older books.
If you like, some of of the Pre-Scorpion Clan Coup fictions from the 1st Edition RPG related to the Crane Clan can be found here:
http://craneclan.weebly.com/stories-of-the-crane-from-the-rpg.html
I think the novels are great material. If you like the RPG - the old Way Of books from 1st ed are still solid.
The story is different though - and I wouldn't expect the stuff though
Some of the old fiction was terrible. It's usually the early stuff that was really good.
It seems, the new story will be ours to shape a bit again, which is good. It was time for new tales to be made.
15 hours ago, SideshowLucifer said:Some of the old fiction was terrible. It's usually the early stuff that was really good.
It seems, the new story will be ours to shape a bit again, which is good. It was time for new tales to be made.
I think the less obvious benefit of resetting the timeline (aside from making newcomers not feel lost) is that we are back to Rokugan as it was more or less first envisioned, as a brewing struggle between samurai clans that may or may not erupt into a full-scale, very multiplayer war. Over the course of the CCG's career, player interaction, shifts in the Story Team, and indeed the misperception that the brand would not continue for multiple decades gradually moved the setting away from this core concept. This is why I am liking the hard limit on player choices: just enough to let the community feel involved in the setting, without giving free reign. It will give FFG's Story Team the ability to plan and prepare branching story trees that can bend and shift as needed, via reader feedback, choices of Role Cards for each faction, and so forth. I'm eager to see where this leads.
Edited by Ide Yoshiya