Legend of the 5 Rings

[fuleng]

"typing all i did
changing what i saw
finished now it seems"

With this very bad Haiku i offer you all the small L5R ruleset/chari-sheet i made. It has a L5R theme, working character and npc sheet, a simple combat tracker and working exploding d10.
I also added 2 modules: some L5R Basics about the Clans and the families and an index of the Creatures of Rokugan book; a starter adventure (the Topaz Championship). Also added some simple japanese tokens and some portraits which fit the theme. ok thats all . hope you like it.
Fuleng

new link (https://www.mediafire.com/?nuizjbolznt)

[Tokuriku]

Wow!

Thanks a lot for this.... Fuleng! (never tought I'd say that one day... Fuleng and all).
I think it's perfect!
The main thing about a ruleset are the character sheets and going trough the process of placing the scores to keep the feel of the original.
I'll probably mod this and if I do I'll make it availlable to you, if you want that is.

As for the Haiku...
A haiku is suppsed to be:
5,
7,
5 syllables, but great effort :D

Thanks again and be sure that your work will not go to waste and will be appreciated!

[GoOrange]

Thank you very much! That looks awesome. I'm glad you were able to share your hard work.

[Oberoten]

Review Time

Graphics : 7/10
The graphics are clear and crisp, at times there are a few nits to pick. Like the black line on the chatwindow that partially obscures the first pixel of the fonts. But it works and sets the mood quite nicely. The nit is more than weighted up by the nice ligh-settings icons that are really moody and thematic.

Scripting : 8/10
There is little scripting on the character-sheet, but that is not necesarily a bad thing. I *DO* however like the combat tracker that divides PCs from the NPCs, it makes things easier to track. The personalities work nicely and perhaps the one little nit to pick here is on the items sheet where the first line of text partially overlaps the heading.

System... Well, I can't really grade the system since I have never played L5R, but it does seem like fun. :) (Hey, it is skillbased, how can it be anything but fun? ... don't answer that. We do not REMEMBER those games, we do NOT. ;) )

Overall, if you want to play the game, it is a notch up from pen and paper and quite a few notches up over AIM. :)
I'd love to see how it all handles in the heat of gaming.

[DarkStar]

Hm... Any chance anyone is running L5R with FG? That's one of the systems I want to play. Let me know if you have free slots in a L5R campaign.

[Tokuriku]

If I had the time, you'd have a game tommorrow :(
Unfortunatly, I have none...
But hey, I have a game that may be dying... so if that's the case, I'll probably make an L5R one!!!

[Ram Tyr]

I haven't had a chance to take a peek at your creation, but I wanted to thank you for sharing your creation. Well done!

Later.

[Thore_Ironrock]

I hate to rain on eveyone's parade here, especially since I too am an L5R fan, but you can't post this content for download. It is a copyright violation. Please take the link down. If you want to share this off the boards that's fine, but don't post this link publically.

Sorry guys ...

[fuleng]

I hate to rain on eveyone's parade here, especially since I too am an L5R fan, but you can't post this content for download. It is a copyright violation. Please take the link down. If you want to share this off the boards that's fine, but don't post this link publically.

Sorry guys ...

Why.......?

[Ram Tyr]

Therefore, I suggest that in the future if the discussion on some topic inspires some views on copyright or other legal issues, consider creating another thread and link to that from the original thread just dropping a short message such as "As indicated here [url], I think you should not distribute the token pack publicly" so that both discussions can go on in parallel.
Just a reminder on board etiquette as set out by Ged (https://forums.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showpost.php?p=24244&postcount=13) for these kinds of discussions.

Later.

[Thore_Ironrock]

Why.......?

The material you've posted for a free download does not belong to you, it belongs to AEG. If you post this information for download without their permission it is a copyright violation of their material. While the information is not a complete version of their game, it contains material found *only* in a purchased product (in this case, basic clan information and Topaz adventure, though I haven't looked at the entire package just yet) and it thus protected. The legal rights to the material do not belong to you, and thus you cannot put it up for download online.

Now, if you took this information copyright protected material out and just went with the graphics and character sheet, I think you would be fine. We've often talked about "Character Sheet Rulesets" in the forums, and although I personally would still like to see such items officially sanctioned by the publisher, I think that posting them would be OK.

One of the things I personally have feared for early on is that FG would be used as a "copyright infringement tool" against publishers. Since I believe that publisher involvement in Fantasy Grounds is one of the keys to it's future, it is best to get a publisher's permission to put their material into FG and online.

[Thore_Ironrock]

Just a reminder on board etiquette as set out by Ged (https://forums.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showpost.php?p=24244&postcount=13) for these kinds of discussions.


Since the posting contained a direct link to a download, I think it more than fair the issue be brought up here. I would rather the poster remove the link rather than have the entire thread yanked.

The link you've so graciously provided does not address the reasons "why" his link is not appropriate. I've also messaged fuleng personally to explain the issue in addition to my other posting, and offered to help. There are several new people on the boards, and many of them may not understand the reasons for why posting this copyrighted material is not legal.

In some cases it is best to address the issue rather than sidestepping it to another post. My posting is not to argue the wills and wherefors of FG and copyright infringement, but to say that the material in the link is clearly a violation and should probably be removed. Better that then consequences from AEG I think.

[fuleng]

Sorry Thore
for my early very short question, but i was at work and not able to write a long explaining post, which i will therefore do now. From the beginning of my work on the ruleset i was aware of possible legal problems. For this reason i contacted AEG three times (because i sent the last email with read confirmation on, i am know that at least he last one was read). I explained everything to them and offered to send them the whole work so they can check it. Unfortunately i did not get any answer. Not even a simple yes or no. Thats one point. On the other hand i did not include one single line of text which can only be found in books or ebooks you have to buy. Everything can be found on the web if you frequent the official AEG L5R forum. Most of the stuff comes from this webpage:
https://kuroiban.net/files/9/default.aspx
which is listed in this thread on the L5R forum
https://www.alderac.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=49926
The rest of the texts and images are from stuff from the official webpage, like free previews and character sheets. Whereever possible i tried to credit the original creator.
So i dont not really see, how i violate any legal rights more than the people who posted the stuff in the first place. Ans those links are operate since december 2006. If AEG dont want those, it would have been deleted ages ago. And i dont make any money with this. Maybe Smitework will because some L5R fan will buy the product so he can play again with his friends from far away. But AEG would not sue a paper manufacturer, because the same guy downloaded those free stuff and printeted on paper? And all those people who can now play F5R again, will probably buy new AEG products, because now they can use it again.
I hope i could convince you and everybody else that the link can stay and we can stop thinking about those legal nitpicks and go on playing :D

FuLeng

[Thore_Ironrock]

Sorry Thore
for my early very short question, but i was at work and not able to write a long explaining post, which i will therefore do now. From the beginning of my work on the ruleset i was aware of possible legal problems. For this reason i contacted AEG three times (because i sent the last email with read confirmation on, i am know that at least he last one was read). I explained everything to them and offered to send them the whole work so they can check it. Unfortunately i did not get any answer. Not even a simple yes or no. Thats one point. On the other hand i did not include one single line of text which can only be found in books or ebooks you have to buy. Everything can be found on the web if you frequent the official AEG L5R forum. Most of the stuff comes from this webpage:
https://kuroiban.net/files/9/default.aspx
which is listed in this thread on the L5R forum
https://www.alderac.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=49926
The rest of the texts and images are from stuff from the official webpage, like free previews and character sheets. Whereever possible i tried to credit the original creator.
So i dont not really see, how i violate any legal rights more than the people who posted the stuff in the first place. Ans those links are operate since december 2006. If AEG dont want those, it would have been deleted ages ago. And i dont make any money with this. Maybe Smitework will because some L5R fan will buy the product so he can play again with his friends from far away. But AEG would not sue a paper manufacturer, because the same guy downloaded those free stuff and printeted on paper? And all those people who can now play F5R again, will probably buy new AEG products, because now they can use it again.
I hope i could convince you and everybody else that the link can stay and we can stop thinking about those legal nitpicks and go on playing :D

FuLeng

Just because you "tried" to contact them and they did not reply doesn't mean you can use the material, I'm sorry to say. The material in the links you provided is still copyrighted, and requires permission to use, plain and simple. It isn't a question of convincing me or anyone else, that is a fact. In this case no reply would be the same as no.

Since these are not my forums I'll default to SW on how to handle your posting. My thoughts on this are clear I think -- if you violate a publisher's copyrights then they, and perhaps other publishers as well, will refuse to work with SmiteWorks and my company in the future to get their products legally online. This was a HUGE question from every publisher I spoke with at Gen Con, and if people want to see their fav gaming worlds in Fantasy Grounds then I would ask the community to think twice before posting said material. There is so much very cool stuff we as a community can do with FG, especially with WOTC's future plans now made public, but not if we skirt the law by ignoring copyrights.

As I've said, I love the setting and would like nothing more than to see it in FG, but you cannot put material up for download when it doesn't belong to you -- and just because someone else is doing it does not make it right. Doing what you are doing is technically not illegal, but posting it for a free download is.

[fuleng]

Kevin
can you point out for me with what exactly i broke any copyright law, when the stuff which is in the ruleset was given out for free from AEG to everybody? When i create a L5R fan homepage and a make the free character sheet or free adventure downloadable from that page (like people do at kuroiban.net), do i violate any copyright? Would the official publisher link to that page (like AEG does from its forum)? All what i did was transfer the content from the pdf format to the FG format (instead of maybe to the .doc format). if i would charge money for it, it would be law breaking. But it was a free download before and it is still a free download.

[Thore_Ironrock]

Kevin
can you point out for me with what exactly i broke any copyright law, when the stuff which is in the ruleset was given out for free from AEG to everybody? When i create a L5R fan homepage and a make the free character sheet or free adventure downloadable from that page (like people do at kuroiban.net), do i violate any copyright? Would the official publisher link to that page (like AEG does from its forum)? All what i did was transfer the content from the pdf format to the FG format (instead of maybe to the .doc format). if i would charge money for it, it would be law breaking. But it was a free download before and it is still a free download.

In the first PDF I looked at the material was taken directly from the book. Legally, that means this material is applied to the copyright statement in the original product, which I'm sure says you need their permission. Again, just because someone else breaks the law doesn't mean it is OK. As I've also said, character sheets are one thing, but copying material directly from the printed product is another. Also, if the material is linked from AEG's site, then it is technically covered by whatever copyright statement is indicated there.

I did notice he put in this lame copyright statement in the PDFs I looked at:

This file is not intended to replace any of the books of the L5R game. Nor do I claim any ownership of the images or terms used here. I intend no infringement of copyrights. It is meant merely as a tool to help GMs introduce players to the game and help navigate in its supplements. If the people at AEG feel that this file has infringed in any way on their rights, please inform me and I will rectify the situation.

The fact is his posting of the material may be sanctioned by AEG, but by your own words yours is not. Again, I'm not exactly sure what AEG's policy is on stuff like this, but in my world no reply means no.

I've already had three publishers flat out tell me "no" because they think FG is too great a risk to copyrights, for the exact reasons I see right here. I really can't make it anymore black and white than that.

Again, it is up to SW to whether or not they keep your download link live in their forums. It is my belief that doing things like this without a publisher's permission invites problems. The matra of "I'll take it down if they complain" is not good enough in my world, which is what that lame copyright statement above says to me.

I'm sorry if this puts a damper on your work, which does look nice, but as a defender of publisher rights in this community I feel the need to point this all out.

[fuleng]

ok
i deleted the questionable module from the zip file and updated my post with the new link. Hope you like it now. the module now only exists on my harddrive ;)

[GoOrange]

Well, better safe than sorry, and while the matter is much grayer than some make it out to be, it's easy enough to take out the module with the setting info.

The screen graphics, character sheet and combat tracker mods are impressive by themselves, and are what really matters. Don't worry about the other stuff, you've made an awesome fan conversion!

[Ram Tyr]

Well, better safe than sorry, and while the matter is much grayer than some make it out to be, it's easy enough to take out the module with the setting info.

The screen graphics, character sheet and combat tracker mods are impressive by themselves, and are what really matters. Don't worry about the other stuff, you've made an awesome fan conversion!
Quoted for truth.

I want to emphasize the sentiment from my first post in this thread...how happy I am to see a community member freely sharing! Thanks.

Later.

[sondermann]

Thanks for this great Ruleset. It was the only reason for me buying Fantasy Grounds.

Now I just have to prepare my City of Lies Campaign and start playing. :)

[fuleng]

Nice to see that people like it and use it.
Maybe if you short of a player in your City of Lies campaign you can inform me. I would like to play again some L5R.

[sondermann]

Meanwhile most of my players bought themselves a license and we started tinkering with your ruleset and campaign prep.

We are going for "thrid editon rules and first edition feel" (I wonder where I heard this before :)). The campaign will take the players from "Ceremonies of the Samurai" (1st edition rulebook) to Ryoko Owari, culminating with the "Tomb of Iuchiban".

We don't need new players right now, but if you can play in german (we use skype for our comunication needs) and are able to make it to a european game (time-wise), than we'll see how you might join the game.

One of my players (BadElvis on this forum) is working on a dicerolling mechanic that emulates the R&K system.

I am busy creating the first adventure module "Ceremonies of the Samurai" using Xorns video tutorial as a starting point. Next I need to build several library modules ("rulebook", "setting glossary", "named NPCs", "generic NPCs", "Spells"(?)), any idea how to do this?

[neonbasschild]

Does anyone have a copy of this ruleset to download?

[DissenterKnight]

Does any version of this module remain? Working on a 4E game.

[damned]

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?55139-Legend-of-the-Rings-5E-(WiP-Beta-Many-incomplete-things)&highlight=legend+rings