Here is a list of all the fictions in "Spoiler" Free Reading order.
As someone new to FFG fictions this is the list I wish I had.

I've typed out the fictions that were included in the rulebook and packs to keep everything uniform and in the same PDF format.

A more detailed list of writers and chartacters etc can be found here (note I don't agree with this order)
Fiction Library

I've also included the Empire in turmoil from the "First Scroll" PDF as an introduction to "The Great Clans"
I've created these PDFs simply for my own collection for me to print it all into a binder, someone asked me to share so here everything is, I hope you enjoy and please point out any errors you might find in any of the PDFs that I made.

Note
33 and 35 are the novella
To avoid spoilers you need to read 34 before the epilogue in the book.
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01 - The Great Clans ...........(PDF Version)

02 - An Empire In Turmoil ...........(PDF Version)

03 - A Season Of War ...........(PDF Version)

04 - Her Fathers Daughter

05 - The Price Of War

06 - The Rising Wave

07 - Dark Hands Of Heaven

08 - Risen From The Flames

09 - Curved Blades

10 - Smokeless Fire

11 - The World, A Stage

12 - A Most Suitable Teacher

13 - In the Garden of Lies (Part 1)

14 - In the Garden of Lies (Part 2)

15 - To The South (Part 1)

16 - To The South (Part 2)

17 - The Fate of Flames

18 - Better To Be Certain

19 - The Fires of Justice

20 - The Stories We Tell

21 - Blind Ambition ...........(PDF Version)

22 - Service and Sacrifice

23 - A Difference Of Lanterns ...........(PDF Version)

24 - Family Duty ...........(PDF Version)

25 - Beneath, Below, Beyond

26 - Court Games ...........(PDF Version)

27 - Flying Chariot, Standing

28 - Honor, Loyalty, Duty

29 - The Bright Flame of the World's Glory ...........(PDF Version)

30 - Wildcats And Dragon Teeth

31 - Fireflies ...........(PDF Version)

32 - The Spectres of War

33 - The Sword And The Spirits - Chapters

34 - Repentance Does Not Come First

35 - The Sword And The Spirits - Epilogue

36 - Tempests and Tides ...........(PDF Version)

37 - A Crane Takes Flight

38 - Gaze Into Darkness ...........(PDF Version)

39 - Kurosunai Village

40 - Awakened ...........(PDF Version)

41 - Outsiders

42 - Dreams of Shadow ...........(PDF Version)

43 - Heart of the Garden

44 - Snow And Sun ...........(PDF Version)

45 - Between the Lines

46 - A Swift End ...........(PDF Version)

47 - Tiger Stalks His Prey

48 - A Simple Test

49 - A Call to Stewardship - Unicorn Clan Letter

50 - A Call to Leadership - Lion Clan Letter

51 - A Call to Witness - Dragon Clan Letter

52 - A Call for Diplomacy - Crane Clan Letter

53 - A Call for Unity - Phoenix Clan Letter

54 - A Call to Investigate - Crab Clan Letter

55 - A Call to Duty - Scorpion Clan Letter

56 - Small Mercies

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I'll try to keep this list up to date as new fictions get released.

I think it's sad FFG can't do this properly on their own, especially with how central the story of L5R is to so many players.

Thanks for making this! it's a huge help.

2 hours ago, Teslacrashed said:

I think it's sad FFG can't do this properly on their own, especially with how central the story of L5R is to so many players.

Thanks for making this! it's a huge help.

Since the only things they haven't converted to PDF themselves are the fictions that are included in the card packs I wouldn't exactly call it sad. Its a marketing ploy in that the stories were meant to be exclusive to the packs as incentives and reward people for buying the packs.

...

So, here I am, putting the final touches on an article which talks about each fiction, gives a quick review of it, and what the status of the storyline is at present. And then, along comes this post, and it is literally the single greatest resource I could have asked for.

Thank you.

2 hours ago, Schmoozies said:

Since the only things they haven't converted to PDF themselves are the fictions that are included in the card packs I wouldn't exactly call it sad. Its a marketing ploy in that the stories were meant to be exclusive to the packs as incentives and reward people for buying the packs. 

I kind of get that, but for fans who want to sit down and "brush up" on the lore it's nice to have a simple collection of PDFs so I can read it on my tablet (or laptop) while on a bus or whatever. Also it would be nice if they could give a very official order of all the fictions as well, even if they don't do their own digital omnibus versions of them.

I just think the effort it would take to do something like this on their own would be fairly small compared to what it would mean for the community. They already have everything written and proofed, it's just a matter of making a single PDF and updating it every X months.

8 minutes ago, Teslacrashed said:

I kind of get that, but for fans who want to sit down and "brush up" on the lore it's nice to have a simple collection of PDFs so I can read it on my tablet (or laptop) while on a bus or whatever. Also it would be nice if they could give a very official order of all the fictions as well, even if they don't do their own digital omnibus versions of them.

I just think the effort it would take to do something like this on their own would be fairly small compared to what it would mean for the community. They already have everything written and proofed, it's just a matter of making a single PDF and updating it every X months.

We saw that they did do a PDF compilation of the First stories that were a lead up to the release of the game so wouldn't surprise me if we see something similar down the road, likely once they have a bigger pool of fiction to work with for those stories and the expect sales period for the cycle has wrapped up. As to reading order, the suggested order was always the intended release order and all the ones that they have hosted on their site do have the release dates included so its not that hard to establish that order.

At some point I feel like FFG could easily sell their own hardcover omnibus of all of the stories collected up to a certain point.

21 minutes ago, ElSuave said:

At some point I feel like FFG could easily sell their own hardcover omnibus of all of the stories collected up to a certain point.

I'm hoping for that too.

But as seen as the old story is finished and all the old cards are now obselete I'd really like an omnibus archive of all the old stuff. A complete collection of all the old stories with all the cards added at the correct points.

I started doing this using Kaze no shiro and the oracle as my resources.

I did the first story of age of darkness but realised the enormity of the task.

So kinda put it all on hold.

Here's the thing, putting a pdf together with text and pictures is quite time consuming as the text on each page is independent from text on the next page. So adding images needs to be planned out first. What I mean is that you can't go back and add another image without having to reshuffle the text on every single page that follows.

So the first task is to locate where all 18 thousand cards are going to be in the text. Having made notes of that then putting the pdfs together inserting the cards at the correct points.

Id like to break the story arcs down into volumes and have the stories make up books inside each volume.

I came to the conclusion that it's not a 1 man job and would easily be completed by teams of people each doing a story arc each.

But I wouldn't start until I had notes for where I'm putting all the cards.

The idea would be as a complete archive for all the old fictions and all the old cards combined into 9 volumes. As its all obselete now it would allow people to enjoy everything without it all just being lost.

I never played the original game and just read the original 12 novels and would love to know what happened next.

Here's a link to the pdf i made testing out the idea of combining the old fictions with the all old cards
01 - Dawn Of The Empire part 1

Note this is pretty badly formatted with bold and different fonts all over the place (seems locked like that now and I cant change it)

I was going to try and do the whole kaze no shiro site but far too much for just me

If you are going to be printing all of the fiction created under the AEG incarnation of the setting, you are facing an ENORMOUS amount of printing...and I mean ENORMOUS (especially if you include flavor text from cards). I looked at that (briefly) when I was Brand Lead for L5R for AEG, and it simply wasn't a task that could be done in a reasonable time for a reasonable amount of money. Now, I suppose a group of dedicated folks doing it as a labor of love could get it done...eventually...but I'll use that word ENORMOUS again. AEG produced a metric crap-ton of fiction over 20 years...by my rough estimate, the word count was similar to G.R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" as that series currently sits.

14 minutes ago, DGLaderoute said:

If you are going to be printing all of the fiction created under the AEG incarnation of the setting, you are facing an ENORMOUS amount of printing...and I mean ENORMOUS (especially if you include flavor text from cards). I looked at that (briefly) when I was Brand Lead for L5R for AEG, and it simply wasn't a task that could be done in a reasonable time for a reasonable amount of money. Now, I suppose a group of dedicated folks doing it as a labor of love could get it done...eventually...but I'll use that word ENORMOUS again. AEG produced a metric crap-ton of fiction over 20 years...by my rough estimate, the word count was similar to G.R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" as that series currently sits.

Weekly fictions for, what, about 10 years straight?

3 minutes ago, Hida Jitenno said:

Weekly fictions for, what, about 10 years straight?

Its not even just the weeklies, its the flavor text from cards, the clan letters, the story inserts in rule books (where yes for a while each expansion that featured a new set of strongholds came with its own rulebook that had a unique fiction for that set).

Yeah I realized that too when I set out on the mission.
I turned Kaze no Shiro into Pdf and ended up with 1,850 of them then I downloaded scans of every card released to use as pictures in the pdfs. this also has the added bonus of adding the flavour text into the fictions in an elegant way.

But here we hit another problem, there are 18,000+ cards and as an ultimate archive i'd want to include every single card, linking them into the text by artwork or flavour text or title. I have however run every card image through a photo editing program and removed the white corners so that the cards look nice in the pdfs

18 teams could do 100 pdfs each. 5 in a team is only 20 pdfs per person . but 90 people could be hard to find

first we'd need to note the card location in the text in a checklist so that each team knows which cards they will be adding into their story part.

Here a checklist for every card they ever released
All the old legend of the five rings cards listed by set in PDF

At this point, is it not easier to lay the AEG story to rest, but add FFg cards to their fiction?

If you use a publishing program like InDesign dropping images into text is no easy.

I literally have zero interest in the AEG story at this point. For me it all went off the rails in Gold Edition and anything after the Second Day of Thunder is just about okay.

Although I appreciate not everyone feels this way. ?

1 minute ago, DWRR said:

I literally have zero interest in the AEG story at this point. For me it all went off the rails in Gold Edition and anything after the Second Day of Thunder is just about okay.

Well I only read the 7 clan wars novels and the 5 wind novels and after all those years I did a google search for new novels a few moths back and now i've got hooked on FFGs take over having bought all the cards and folders to put them in and just finished their fictions so I'm completely up to date.

I just think it's a shame that all the old stories will be lost. bear in mind i've never read them so have no idea if it's even worth keeping.
but them there 12 novels were mighty good.

Also I note that there was a graphic novel that i'd like to get but by looking at kaze no shiro that would be well into the old storyline

I don't think the old stories will be "lost". I realize that Kaze no Shiro is probably the only publicly-accessible place where the old stories can currently be found (AFAIK, at least), but they ARE available there, and they have been backed up (again, when I was with AEG, I made a point of making a complete back-up of all of the old fictions). The bigger issue is that the story basically "accreted" over 20 years, so the quality is up and down, there are a whole bunch of story products (weekly fictions, card flavor text, rulebook fictions, stuff written on the backs of Stronghold cards, Clan letters, etc.) and, given that this stuff was written by many different writers over a long period of time, there are inconsistencies, gaps and overlaps. It makes reading the "old fiction" a formidable task. But it is all there to be read!

1 hour ago, DGLaderoute said:

I was     Brand Lead for L5R for AEG, 

Omg I've just noticed your name.

You wrote the Dream of Shadow fiction.

One of my favorite so far. I loved the way you flicked back and forth between the 2 perspectives.

18 hours ago, Maffster said:

Omg I've just noticed your name.

You wrote the Dream of Shadow fiction.

One of my favorite so far. I loved the way you flicked back and forth between the 2 perspectives.

Thank you! And yeah, that's why I pointed out errors in..."The World, A Stage", I think or whichever one it was...I'm already keenly aware of the errors that, between me and the FFG editors, we happened to let slip through into the final versions of fictions. There aren't very many, but they are there and they pluck at me like a chipped tooth every time I see them ? Don't need to introduce even more!

The latest story says sotorii is sitting next to the emperor. That means the story takes place before the emperor and toturi talked (since his decree would be announced at the next meeting), doesnt it?

1 minute ago, RafaelNN said:

The latest story says sotorii is sitting next to the emperor. That means the story takes place before the emperor and toturi talked (since his decree would be announced at the next meeting), doesnt it?

It would be assumed that yes, this is taking place before/or possibly at the same time as Tiger Stalks Its Prey. The question will likely be answered by the novel as this is essentially a prologue for it.

Excellent resource! You should link up with the Kaze No Shiro folks to get it all hosted and archived!

On 10/1/2018 at 3:33 PM, Maffster said:

Here a checklist for every card they ever released
All the old legend of the five rings cards listed by set in PDF

I'll do you one better.

Downloads for every card ever RELEASED (missing The Blackest Storm, Onyx, and additional playtest stuff...if anyone happens to have them....)

http://vutallindustries.com/l5rdatabases/