A New Era for Legend of the Five Rings – Purchase of the L5R Brand by Fantasy Flight Games
For twenty years, Legend of the Five Rings has held a unique place among Collectible Card Games (CCGs) and Role Playing Games (RPGs). It is not only one of the oldest around, it stands out by being driven by its story…a story that has, in turn, been driven by legions of devoted fans over the past two decades. We at AEG are thankful beyond words to all of the awesome players of our games for making these past twenty years so special.
The time comes, however, when any healthy enterprise has to take a step back and look hard and critically at itself. We’ve now reached that time in the life of the L5R Brand. The focus of AEG has progressively shifted toward other types of games over recent years, so, after some hard and detailed analysis (and, yes, some deep soul-searching), we’ve concluded that it’s time to start a new chapter in the story of L5R. Accordingly, the upcoming Evil Portents expansion for the CCG, and the “Atlas of Rokugan” for the RPG, will be the final products for L5R produced by AEG. The L5R Brand will continue under a new owner, Fantasy Flight Games (FFG). We believe that the good folks at FFG, some of whom have themselves been involved with the L5R Brand for many years, will do an excellent job of carrying the L5R Brand and the story of Rokugan on into its next twenty years. Fantasy Flight Games anticipates that its first L5R product will be a relaunch of the card game as a Living Card Game (LCG), with a debut event at Gen Con 2017.
One major implication of all this is that our staffing will be dramatically changed. Many of our current members of the L5R Brand Team will be leaving us either immediately, or in the near future. We want to express our most sincere gratitude to these awesome people, who have helped bring L5R to where it is today.
Of course, many questions will almost certainly occur to you as you read this. Foremost among them, you are probably wondering what will happen to our upcoming events, including the Fall Kotei Season and the European Championships. All of these events currently scheduled will go on as planned, as CCG events. We’ll continue collecting the results, and will add those to our list of all currently outstanding tournament and event results. All of this will be provided to FFG, who will do their best to incorporate it into L5R and its setting once they’ve relaunched the Brand.
You will also have noted that Evil Portents will be the last CCG product, and would reasonably ask, why would I want to spend money on a product that’s essentially obsolete the moment it hits store shelves? Why would any retailer even bother carrying it? Well, we’re going to be making Evil Portents available to retailers and players through a pretty remarkable deal–essentially, we’ll be virtually giving it away for free. Details of this will be forthcoming shortly.
We realize that these are probably only a few of your questions. We will be sharing more information with you about the transition of the Brand in the coming days. In the meantime, you can direct your enquiries to
L5RBrandLead@alderac.com and we’ll do our best to answer them. Again, all of us at AEG want to thank all of YOU for your dedication to the L5R CCG, the RPG, and the story of Rokugan for the past twenty years. We can’t wait to see how L5R evolves under the stewardship of its new owners at Fantasy Flight Games!
For enquiries regarding the above, please contact: Cynthia Hornbeck, Fantasy Flight Games (chornbeck@fantasyflightgames.com) or Dave Laderoute, Alderac Entertainment Group (L5RBrandLead@alderac.com.)