Legend of the Five Rings Gets a Board Game

A new game studio owned by Asmodee is publishing a new Legend of the Five Rings board game. This week, Asmodee announced River of Gold, one of three games set to be published by its Office Dog game studio. The new game is a Euro-style game where players build locations and deliver goods on the River of Gold, an iconic river in the land of Rokugan, where Legend of the Five Rings is set. The game is described as a "medium-weight" Euro game that features fast turns and quick decisions. River of Gold was designed by Keith Piggott, the designer of Drawn to Adventure. 

The game announcement is a somewhat surprising direction for Legend of the Five Rings, a franchise centered on the feudal Japan-inspired land of Rokugan. Legend of the Five Rings has primarily been used as a collectible card game and an RPG setting, but hasn't been used as the inspiration for a non-combat focused board game in its nearly 20 year history. However, Legend of the Five Rings hasn't been used much in recent years despite its purchase by Fantasy Flight Games back in 2015. A Living Card Game for Legend of the Five Rings was discontinued in 2021 and an Adventures in Rokugan RPG was published in 2022 with 5E compatible rules by Edge Studios, a subsidiary of Asmodee, but no other plans have been announced for the franchise recently until River of Gold. 

Office Dog will release two other games in the coming months - Word Traveler by Decrypto creator Thomas Dagenais-Lespérance, and Crafting the Cosmos, from co-designers David Gordon and TAM. The former is a word game where players try to travel to different cities by decoding words, while the latter is a city building-style game that involves building a universe by utilizing the fundamental forces of nature. Office Dog's aim is to utilize freelance game designers and support various Asmodee IPs, so we could see more game similar to River of Gold in the future.