Coyote & Crow: The Role Playing Game

by Connor Alexander

Coyote & Crow the roleplaying game, is a sci-fi and fantasy tabletop role playing game set in a First Nations alternate future where colonization never happened. This game is being created and lead by an all Native team. In March 2021, Coyote & Crow became one of the most successful role playing games to ever fund on Kickstarter, raising more than $1 million dollars.

Genres: Games, Role Playing Games

484 pages, ebook

About the author

Connor leads an eclectic and story filled life that has taken him from Naval Intelligence to nightclub owner, from New Orleans to Seattle. Having left behind a career in film and television, he's recently taken up both writing and photography. He currently resides in the Emerald City and is working on his third novel, a sequel to Five's Fate.

Reviews

[Ian Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Astoundingly deep and broad for a first release. This volume charts a single city in its alternate-history America where colonialism never happened, averted by a global catastrophe, as well as rules and system information RE: how to actually play. I'll be very interested to see how it works live, but character creation is robust and enjoyable (just the right amount of math required to make characters feel unique).

Also contains great notes for how to play respectfully as a non-Native (I'm white, but my character isn't and can't be) and how to engage with Native identities respectfully (I'm nonbinary, as is my character, but thanks to a number of helpful side-boxes on gender I've avoided the disrespectful choice to play them as two-spirit). Included on the opposite side are notes for those with Indigenous heritage on how to incorporate their history, traditions, and beliefs in a way that meshes with the setting and works for everyone.

Looking forward to expansion books on other settings and language down the road!

[Jolabrese · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an amazing effort and cannot wait to play. The art is solid, the world building is what we have been missing, and the mechanics are solid.

[Kholan ᎪᎳᏄ · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good start to a much needed genre of Indigenous focused roleplaying games but more cultural consultants or sensitivity readers should have been hired, especially Degiha folks. Even the name for Cahokia is contentious, and the assumption that this could be a "neutral ground" that contemporary communities don't trace back to seems prevalent in the choice of setting.

There is so much good language revitalization work going on all over, including the communities that trace their roots directly back to the mounds. It's upsetting to me that no awake Indigenous language was used.

I could go on but I have so many issues related to sensitivity. This book is not horrible. It is a good example of a deconstructionist approach to building something. For example the map was turned on its head but all it did was flip the positioning, rather than center Indigenous positionality (eg focusing on the East). We need an Indigenous centered game rather than a non-settler game, which is 100% how this comes across.
This book was written for non-cultural Indigenous folks and well meaning white folks.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ Do better