It seems that until recently, if you wished to slake your thirst for accessories for Legend of the Five Rings, you were limited to the fine products of Kirby Signcraft. Although these honor counters were useful and aesthetically appealing, when you were done purchasing counters, what were you going to do? Recently Wizards of the Coast (the people that own Legend of the Five Rings) have licensed images and rights to those images to two other companies.

Activision, an old pro in the computer game field, has obtained the rights to produce a Legend of the Five Rings computer game. Although the game's release has been delayed as the company works on a new engine to drive it, company representatives questioned at Dragon Con seemed very excited about the project and its possibilities.

Kamwied Inc. has obtained the rights to produce numerous items related to Legend of the Five Rings, Legend of the Burning Sands and Doomtown. These items include clan mon baseball caps, a five coins cap, embroidered polo- style shirts, key rings (which they call "Ki-Rin Key Rings"), bumper stickers and window decals.

Company executives were seen talking to people at Pinnacle, White Wolf and FASA. Will Rage, Battletech and Doomtown faction hats be far behind? When speaking to Ian McGuigan, of Kamwied, he told us that although Kamwied might look at a small line of products outside of the L5R family, Kamwied is and will remain dedicated to producing the highest quality merchandise possible for games produced by Alderac Entertainment Group. L5R is and will remain our passion, professionally and recreationally."

It seems that Kamwied has invested a significant amount of time and energy into creating a web site that is not just a center for L5R sales, but a resource for the players. Mr. McGuigan showed us what was currently on the site and what was to be expected. "We plan on having regular articles by writers such as Eric Devlin, who has written for Duellist, Garner, Scrye and other magazines, David La, this year's Gen Con winner, Chris Bergstrom, last year's winner and others. We currently have an article that Dave Williams was kind enough to write for us. We will also have short fiction set in Rokugan or the Burning Sands and convention and tournament updates. We want the L5R player to feel comfortable coming to us whether they buy something or not."

When talking to representatives of all three companies (Kamwied, Kirby Signcraft and Activision) at Dragon Con, it seemed that the overriding concern was not profit but quality. Activision could have released the L511 game earlier with a lesser end result, but preferred tc invest the time and resources to ensure the game is top quality. Although the public is very satisfied with the products he produces, Kevin Kirby is looking at a new manufacturing method to tweak the quality of his beautiful counters. Kamwied Inc. is currently switching ha manufacturers to ensure a higher quality of fit and to ensure that child, slave or prison labor is not used in the creation of their hats.

You can contact Kamwied Inc. at their web site (www.kamwied.com) or you can call them at (516) 5492564. Kirby Signcraft can be reached by calling (937) 2530869 and their web site can be accessed through Kamwied's.

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