Where is a good place to find lore on the Burning Sands section of the world? I have found my copy of the RPG and I would like to convert it to Genesys.
Burning Sands Lore?
By "your copy of the RPG" are you referring to this book ? Because, if so, it's probably one of the best, if not THE best references available on all aspects of the Burning Sands. If you're referring to another book...well, see my previous sentence.
That is the book indeed. Alright, thank you then.
Good luck finding it. As far as I can tell, it's no longer on DrivethruRPG, and FFG doesn't own it either.
I already own a physical copy. This whole thing started when I was looking through my collection.
I didn't know it's unavailable. Surely Legends Of The Burning Sands was part of the AEG to FFG sale right? It's clearly set in the same world and important since it is tied to the Unicorn and Scorpion clan histories. Luckily I already have a physical copy as well. I never actually ran a game using anything in the book, but it was fun to read and reference. I do see some second hand copies for sale on amazon US for pretty reasonable prices.
Edited by phillos2 hours ago, phillos said:I didn't know it's unavailable. Surely Legends Of The Burning Sands was part of the AEG to FFG sale right? It's clearly set in the same world and important since it is tied to the Unicorn and Scorpion clan histories. Luckily I already have a physical copy as well. I never actually ran a game using anything in the book, but it was fun to read and reference. I do see some second hand copies for sale on amazon US for pretty reasonable prices.
This has been gone over in several places, but the long story short is this: the Legend of the Burning Sands is considered a separate IP than Legend of the Five Rings. Fantasy Flight Games bought Legend of the Five Rings. It did not buy Legend of the Burning Sands. FFG can use the LBS setting in reference to L5R, but doing so likely involves a licensing fee.
This is probably due to Gamers 3: Hands of Fate and "Romance of the Nine Kingdoms" than anything else.
Edited by sndwurksThat's news to me. Thanks for the info. That's interesting. If it's true they need to pay a licensing fee to mention LBS stuff I wonder if they bother. That just adds baggage to the whole thing. Probably more likely they invent new stuff to fill in those gaps.
I guess so far they've said really nothing about the Burning Sands setting in any of the official materials (at least as far as I can recall).
Edited by phillos12 minutes ago, phillos said:That's news to me. Thanks for the info. That's interesting. If it's true they need to pay a licensing fee to mention LBS stuff I wonder if they bother. That just adds baggage to the whole thing. Probably more likely they invent new stuff to fill in those gaps.
I guess so far they've said really nothing about the Burning Sands setting in any of the official materials (at least as far as I can recall).
As I said, AEG probably pushed back on it because they wanted to keep the royalties from Gamers 3: Hands of Fate and the sales of "Romance of the Nine Kingdoms", whose mechanics are essentially just the Legend of the Burning Sands CCG. And FFG probably has a simple "$X when we publish the words the Burning Sands, and we do not get to use Senpet, Rashari, Ebonite, Qabal, or Ashalan", with the agreement to own the Ujik-hai (because, hey, technically they are L5R now).
I would expect to see the references to the Unicorn Clan's time abroad to be kept vague, and only go into specifics in the Ivory Kingdoms (which are entirely part of the L5R license) and Yobanjin lands.
Licensing agreements like this is how Fox has Quicksilver and Marvel / Disney has the Scarlet Witch, yet both characters have a super-powered sibling of the appropriate gender, who is either unimportant (Fox) or dies (Marvel). I am not an Intellectual Property lawyer, but this is a field you can specialize in.
It's entirely possible that with FFG having reset the timeline to around the Clan Wars, so it could be that information relating to Burning Sands could be retcon'd and replaced with something else entirely new and to which FFG owns the rights.
After all, sounds like they're deep-sixing the storyline that AEG developed, so why not chuck intellectual properties that they don't have the license to use while they're at it?
4 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:It's entirely possible that with FFG having reset the timeline to around the Clan Wars, so it could be that information relating to Burning Sands could be retcon'd and replaced with something else entirely new and to which FFG owns the rights.
After all, sounds like they're deep-sixing the storyline that AEG developed, so why not chuck intellectual properties that they don't have the license to use while they're at it?
If they do that, then hopefully they replace the Burning Sands with their own similar IP.
Hm, I think there were some different lands mentioned in the Sands in the Beta? But not 100% sure.
On 6/14/2018 at 11:08 AM, sndwurks said:This has been gone over in several places, but the long story short is this: the Legend of the Burning Sands is considered a separate IP than Legend of the Five Rings. Fantasy Flight Games bought Legend of the Five Rings. It did not buy Legend of the Burning Sands. FFG can use the LBS setting in reference to L5R, but doing so likely involves a licensing fee.
While this is probably true for the card game and most of the story. I would think that since the Legends of the Burning Sands RPG was published as a supplement to Legend of the Five Rings RPG and not a separate RPG licence. I would think it would be included in the RPG IP. Now that would not give FFG the rights to make any new book for Legends of the Burning Sands, but would give then the rights to sell PDF of or reprint this book.
Edited by tenchi2aThe Burning Sands is a separate IP from that of L5R, and still belongs to AEG.
Does AEG still exist?
18 hours ago, tenchi2a said:While this is probably true for the card game and most of the story. I would think that since the Legends of the Burning Sands RPG was published as a supplement to Legend of the Five Rings RPG and not a separate RPG licence. I would think it would be included in the RPG IP. Now that would not give FFG the rights to make any new book for Legends of the Burning Sands, but would give then the rights to sell PDF of or reprint this book.
Not necessarily. Licensing agreements can be fickle and funny things, all dependent upon what terms the license seller/holder puts down and the buyer/signer agrees to.
For instance, one would think (to use your words) that being able to sell PDFs of the Star Wars RPG books would be included as part of the license to publish RPG books in general. Except its not, due to how the licensing was split up back in the days of WEG, so PDFs fall under "electronic media" which is itself a separate license. The only PDFs that FFG can offer for their Star Wars line are free ones that fall under the header of "RPG support material" such as the errata/faq documents and supplementary adventures for their beginner box sets.
Another instance would be the distribution rights of the Hulk. Unless there's a major change, you won't be seeing the Hulk in a stand-alone film anytime soon, because Paramount has the distribution rights for the character, even if Marvel Studios otherwise owns the film rights to the Hulk. So instead, the only time we'll see Hulk on the big screen is when he's part of an ensemble cast, such as Avengers or even Thor: Ragnarok.
And one relevant to AEG and L5R, John Wick's original notion for 7th Sea was that it was going to be part of the same setting as Rokugan, both games taking place in different parts of the same world. However, WotC had the licensing rights to L5R at the time that 7th Sea was being produced, so even though L5R pretty much belonged to AEG, they couldn't combine the two settings, thus 7th Sea had Not!China added in Rokugan's place.
Given that the Burning Sands has had minimal impact on the L5R RPG and CCGs, I wouldn't be surprised that if AEG tried to sell Burning Sands as a separate IP, FFG simply said "no thanks" and left that IP with AEG to do with as they will.
Edited by Donovan MorningfireI bought Burning Sands from DriveThruRPG back before FFG bought the LoFR IP. The PDF is still in my library. It has FFG's name in the company column. They may not have the right to sell it any more, but they appear to be the custodian of it now. I do not know the details of it.
A lot of licensed properties have changed hands recently and the company names have changed on them in my library.
Edited by Torg SmithClerification
8 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:Not necessarily. Licensing agreements can be fickle and funny things, all dependent upon what terms the license seller/holder puts down and the buyer/signer agrees to.
This is not a Licensing agreement. This was a sale of Intellectual property outright. There is no time-limit or other provisions. FFG owns the IP for L5R.
QuoteFor instance, one would think (to use your words) that being able to sell PDFs of the Star Wars RPG books would be included as part of the license to publish RPG books in general. Except its not, due to how the licensing was split up back in the days of WEG, so PDFs fall under "electronic media" which is itself a separate license. The only PDFs that FFG can offer for their Star Wars line are free ones that fall under the header of "RPG support material" such as the errata/faq documents and supplementary adventures for their beginner box sets.
Again this deals with the separation of rights within a IP not ownership said IP. Since Lucas arts sold the "electronic media" rights to another company they don't have these right, and such can't licence them to other. For Disney, since Lucas arts had already sold off these right. Disney never revived these rights when they purchased the IP.
QuoteAnother instance would be the distribution rights of the Hulk. Unless there's a major change, you won't be seeing the Hulk in a stand-alone film anytime soon, because Paramount has the distribution rights for the character, even if Marvel Studios otherwise owns the film rights to the Hulk. So instead, the only time we'll see Hulk on the big screen is when he's part of an ensemble cast, such as Avengers or even Thor: Ragnarok.
Again this is about separate rights from the overall IP due to sales of right before the IP changed owners. So does not play any part here.
QuoteAnd one relevant to AEG and L5R, John Wick's original notion for 7th Sea was that it was going to be part of the same setting as Rokugan, both games taking place in different parts of the same world. However, WotC had the licensing rights to L5R at the time that 7th Sea was being produced, so even though L5R pretty much belonged to AEG, they couldn't combine the two settings, thus 7th Sea had Not!China added in Rokugan's place.
According to Wick he had never intended for 7th Sea to have anything to do with L5R, and was forced by the company to make the game mechanics close to L5R because of its popularity.
As for the WOTC deal, Five Rings Publishing Group owned the IP to L5R after they purchased it from AEG and Isomedia. In this deal 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. Then WOTC purchased FRPG. So at the time they owned the IP, it was not licensed to them. WOTC continued the deal that had existed between FRPG and AEG as part of the purchase wanting for the license to expire so they could take full ownership of the property. It was not until Hasbro, who had purchased WOTC decided to sell the IP that AEG won the bid and got L5R back.
So there was a lot more involved in this then you would think, and has nothing in common with the current sale as it was AEG that was acting under license not WOTC.
QuoteGiven that the Burning Sands has had minimal impact on the L5R RPG and CCGs , I wouldn't be surprised that if AEG tried to sell Burning Sands as a separate IP, FFG simply said "no thanks" and left that IP with AEG to do with as they will.
This is incorrect, as the Burning Sands and L5R have been linked from the start. The Burning Sands is an expansion of the L5R world not a separate entity. It was created from the history of the Unicorn clans travels and not as a separate story created on it own and shoehorned into L5R.
As I have said above there is a big difference between a licensing agreement and the sale of an IP.
Heres where it get complicated.
Is Burning Sands its own IP. Well that would depend on a great many things.
1. How it was copy-written.
2. IF it has anything that is exclusive to it as an IP.
3. If all items within it where separately copy-written or blanket copy-written under the AEG banner.
Since LBS was an off-shoot of L5R and not a separate story, and at the time of the FFG purchase under the same company which gives then full rights to integrate the stories. Only items that where exclusive to it as an IP would not be usable by FFG.
So thing like the; LBS CCG mechanics, exclusive names and places, story elements that where not included in the L5R story, and any other items that where exclusive to it as an IP.
Now this would allow FFG to use anything and everything from LBS that was already included in the L5R story.
And as Torg Smith has said the Burning Sands RPG supplement from DriveThruRPG now has FFG's name in the company column. which would show that either it is under the L5R IP or there is no LBS IP and it falls under L5R's.
As to why this book is no longer available. Well the most likely reasons are
1. Its from a side story that is now two editions out, and holds no relevance anymore.
2. LBS was never really that popular to begin with. Don't get me wrong I played it and it had a cool and unique system, but the failure of the Rolling Thunder system and the long brake between the "Black Hand, Black Heart" and "The Awakening" killed the CCG.
3. The marketing deal between FFG and Drivethrurpg may be different from the one they had with AEG.
example: AEG's deal may have been a package deal where FFG charged for each book. So if LBS did not sell well Drivethrurpg may have chosen to not carry it.
4. Muddy waters on what parts of LBS are part of the L5R IP and what parts are not.
5. FFG's new storyline may have completely removed the LBS story so there is no real need for it.
could be one, some or all of the above.
Edited by tenchi2a
@tenchi2a - An excellent write up and good points all around. However, I would point out one thing up thread. @DGLaderoute is the handle for D G Laderoute who was the brand manager of Legend of the Five Rings during the sale of the IP from AEG to FFG. And his statement is, simply:
On 6/16/2018 at 11:21 AM, DGLaderoute said:The Burning Sands is a separate IP from that of L5R, and still belongs to AEG.
He was a part of this negotiation, and would know better than most about the details of the deal.
On 6/14/2018 at 2:33 PM, Nohwear said:Where is a good place to find lore on the Burning Sands section of the world? I have found my copy of the RPG and I would like to convert it to Genesys.
There was also The Complete Exotic Arms Guide for the d20/L5R2E edition of the game which gave some info about the world beyond Rokugan and, of course, the Second City boxset had a lot of info about the Ivory Kingdoms.
On 6/14/2018 at 2:56 PM, Donovan Morningfire said:Burning Sands could be retcon'd and replaced with something else entirely new and to which FFG owns the rights.
Like Gungans! Rokugan gets invaded Oppa Gungan Style !
On 6/15/2018 at 3:24 PM, tenchi2a said:While this is probably true for the card game and most of the story. I would think that since the Legends of the Burning Sands RPG was published as a supplement to Legend of the Five Rings RPG and not a separate RPG licence. I would think it would be included in the RPG IP. Now that would not give FFG the rights to make any new book for Legends of the Burning Sands, but would give then the rights to sell PDF of or reprint this book.
It was a standalone game, not a supplement.
Likewise, 7th Sea was a standalone.
LBS was mechanically very close to L5R 3.1.
28 minutes ago, AK_Aramis said:It was a standalone game, not a supplement.
Likewise, 7th Sea was a standalone.
LBS was mechanically very close to L5R 3.1.
LBS, however, is set in the same world as L5R, unlike 7th Sea. There was a 4th ed update for LBS and the rules were compatible with L5R and your L5R characters could theoretically visit the Burning Sands, and vice versa.
Of course, the LBS IP (both the game and the RPG) are not part of what FFG bought.