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Coyote & Crow Core Rulebook

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Coyote & Crow LLC

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$25.00

Science Fantasy Roleplaying in an Uncolonized Future

More than 700 years ago, a massive disaster changed the course of history. The world was plunged into centuries of darkness, but the event also introduced the Adanadi — the Gift — a strange mark that appeared on all life. This mark would have an enduring impact on humanity. Centuries later, the Earth is healing. New, advanced nations have risen. Ancient legends stir.

Coyote & Crow is a tabletop roleplaying game set in an alternate future where colonization of the Americas never happened. In this world that is both familiar and entirely new, you'll take on the role of heroic characters adventuring in a changing landscape.

Coyote & Crow is a bold look into a different future full of possibilities and fresh perspectives, created and developed by a diverse, Indigneous-led team.

Coyote & Crow in the Media

Coyote & Crow Social Media

Coyote & Crow Core Rulebook Credits

Created, Written and Developed by Connor Alexander (Cherokee Nation)

Additional Writing and Development
William McKay (Manitoba Métis Federation), Weyodi Oldbear (Numunu), Derek Pounds (Samish)

Additional Writing
Nico Albert (Cherokee Nation), Riana Elliot (Cherokee), Diogo Nogueira, William Thompson (Cherokee Nation)

Layouts and Graphic Design
John Simon

Editing
Em Matson (Sault Ste Marie Ojibwe)

Chahi Language Developer
William McKay (Manitoba Métis Federation)

Maps
Janice Sheen

Coyote & Crow Logo Design
Barabara Schelling (Assiniboine)

Sensitivity Consulting
Spider B. Perry

Additional Rules Development
Jade Wesley

Art
Tate Allen (Choctaw), Kyle Charles (Whitefish Lake First Nation), Phil Cohen, Dale Deforest (Diné), Jillian Dolan (Métis/Cree), Sadekaronhes Esquivel (Kanyen’kehá:ka/Mexican Indigenous), Emma Flowers (Crow), Elijah Forbes (Waganakising Oadawak), Al Harris (Lumbee), Amélie Hutt, Keith Jim (Navajo), Scot Kimberley, Jennifer Lange, Mackenzie Neal (Quapaw Nation), Brian Roanhorse (Navajo), Heather Snell (Lakota/Dakota), Jesse Thompson,Wolf Tomoyaketu (Comanche/Apache), Charles Utting, Jeffery Veregge (S’Klallam), Kameron White (Chahta/Tsalagi), Matthew Willetto (Navajo), Lawrence Willie (Paiute), Nala J.Wu

Website Design
Christopher Likins

Mobile App Developer
Jonathan Garnaas-Holmes

Lead Play Testers
Shay Snow (Caddo/Cree), Rebecca Demarest Panzer

Customers Who Bought this Title also Purchased

Reviews (2)

Discussions (7)

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Tiffanni R January 05, 2023 1:06 am UTC

I don't know if I want to get this book after reading the opening pages about Native and Non-Native players. As someone who has devoted years of study to the First Nations of the Americas and the animism of the pagan faiths of Europe such as the Asatru and the paganism of the Celts and Gaelic faiths of the Isles. It is quite an insulting opening to an RPG that I thought I would whole heartedly get behind only to find this section by far the worst.

Milton F January 07, 2023 1:54 am UTC

I just read the opener and I agree with you. It’s off putting. I really wanted to get this game but I’m going to pass.

Jakob S January 11, 2023 3:48 pm UTC

PURCHASER

I wasn't so much put-off by it, but still, I gave C&C a pass for quite some time because I was thinking "Gee, then I won't be able to use most of this book in good conscience, so what's the point?" Well, I finally bought C&C and learned that I'm totally mistaken. Tribes are very much not front and center of the setting, first and foremost, it's a really cool speculative science-fantasy-setting, and in that context, the opening pages totally make sense. They basically tell you: "Just approach this as you would any other RPG setting, and bring to it what is yours."
If C&C seems cool to you and you're just not buying it because that passage in the opening somehow hurts your pride, I'd advise you to reconsider, because C&C actually is pretty great.
The author also adresses the whole question here: https://coyoteandcrow.net/2022/04/23/an-important-message-from-connor/

Tiffanni R January 17, 2023 3:03 pm UTC

It is those 4 pages that I question and his response to it is the tone of his post that any non-First Nation is ignorant of the cultures that inspired the RPG and that is just not the case. I have no First Nation blood to have that first hand experience, I have tried to live my life as best that I can and learning all that I can from those First Nation people I have met in my life and through my own study. Or that my only impression of them would be racist connotations about them? Entirely wrong as well. That is my stance on this.

Matthew K February 22, 2023 5:57 am UTC

White person asked not to do something white person get mad.

Chelsea B March 20, 2023 10:57 am UTC

PURCHASER

I'm just wondering, though, is this advisement of theirs necessary? It is useful in any way? Serious questions.
If they want to make a hypersigil, they should start with answering these questions, I believe.

Ni C July 04, 2022 7:10 pm UTC

Honest questions: Can this game be run and played by white people ? How would it not then be considered as cultural appropriation or exploitation ?

Arthur M July 04, 2022 7:49 pm UTC

Connor addressed this on the game's news page
https://coyoteandcrow.net/2022/04/23/an-important-message-from-connor/#more-510

Suzene C July 04, 2022 7:54 pm UTC

PURCHASER

It's a game made by Indigenous folks specifically to be shared with a larger audience. It's not appropriation if you're literally being invited to take part in what they built.

Ramsey E July 13, 2022 5:18 pm UTC

Connor is hilarious

Scott B August 15, 2022 5:23 am UTC

Imagine asking for permission to read/use a book that is publicly available for sale and that you spent money on.

Charles H July 04, 2022 11:29 am UTC

PURCHASER

I bought this game and read the book in a single night. I speak with a voice for a family of families for generations, three living, of Natives who never sold nor surrendered French Deed to Sovereign Land older than the Declaration of Independence. Take that as you will. My people would in this world be down in the bayous and want no part of things like permanent buildings and people paying taxes or government approvals of market economies (in a NonColonial World, no less!)

If you want a post apocalypse pseudo-utopian cyber/aethyrPunk AltNative setting, this is as good as you could hope for. It is pretty good for that. Don’t look too hard at the paint or you see how thin it is in some places. The “Science” is too fluffy hydroelectric is HORRIBLE for fishable waters and wind power only works on deforested lands. should be “All Adanadi”. That is how I going to run it. I mean it is fiction, and supposed to be representative on ideas without colonialism, and not one mention of talking...See more to water. The treatment of resources as nonliving things is distinctly nonNative. The food section is barely useful or more detailed than the CSB (Corn Squash and Beans) history project every native kid gets assigned in school. And yet, Paw-Paw which everybody everywhere ate is not mentioned. This was like a whole layer of the food pyramid for months of the year. I wonder if they even had pine nettle tea (which was the only way to get vitamin C in some parts of the native world during winter months). They also had fermented drinks, but not as strong as European ones. We had and have muscadine wine and corn sippins, both which are older than colonial presence and have native names. Fermented Muscadines and peppers were the basis of the traditional jelly I ate as a kid.

I would augment the advice to Nonnatives and suggest IF you want explore animism in the game and add personal depth, do so from your own rich culture which likely has some animistic backgrounds. Find some ways to make this world a place where YOU have some connection, because your table is your universe. The Native elements are there but so homogenized in places that there is plenty of room for your authentic ideas there is a space where any idea can fit in a world where Animism is an Applicable Science and people are so diverse and coexisting out of necessity. You will fit on that world where adoption into a tribe was often a stronger bond than who is related to who got your mother pregnant.

The idea of the continent and setting are compelling but some of the ideas about the world very much feel connected to colonial ideas and sci fantasy tropes, which honestly, is fine and expected. It suffers from some utopism in places, but is interestingly authentic to my own tribal heritage and maternal lineage in others, and differs in ways that I did not expect where it clearly is deriving ideas that are more connected to RezLife or ideas from groups that rely heavily upon Dawe’s Roll legitimacy based Heritage over pre/Colonial Tribal established ideas of Lineage.

By the way, NONE of my criticism is on it being “woke” - My people and my family have views that are incompatible with argument of sexual identity, but no consensual acts were seen as an issue. I grew up with strong ties to people who would be considered LGBTQ+, but to me were just family. That for us was ancestral. The book makes it clear that is pretty much the norm. Glad to see that.

It’s like growing up KNOWING death is not the end of life because of a near death experience that intentionally occurred and was carried out by my family. Or going out at the age of 8 for the first time with a snare, knife, and a club to go hunting alone. Probably not something easy to relate to unless you did it, and certainly not if you were born after the internet. Especially because the stigma of a “club” as a weapon being a brutish primitive tool. I would have loved to see some more weapons that are not just derived from the European norms. I want a whole chapter on the superiority of the spear and club and innocations of those in this magitech world.

Last, the Character Generation and mechanics are, for me, too arbitrary and unnecessarily complex. Their claim to want to do something new to make it feel different may have been their intent but they made something that just doesn’t do that to me. It just becomes cumbersome and familiar from games that tried to do dicepools but based on older editions of classic RPGs. They have a free app (ios and android) that made the dice rolling easier and includes a Name Generator. That is because there are so very few who will have enough d12’s to play this easily.

A better dice system would reflect the rich history of the use of numbers in Native games and cosmology in native cultures- which varies from people to people, and be simple enough to not feel so rigid as this does in places. I have one I developed and use and it is super simple like most Native stick and dice games that were pre- or post- colonial.

Robert R July 04, 2022 10:45 am UTC

I do like this, but if you are into the standard D&D type Tolkienesque setting, this might not be your thing.
Then again, if you're tired of hobbits... err... halflings trying to steal treasure from a monster (or party member), then give this a whirl.

Yes, it's based on the indigenous native American cultures and myths, with a lot of creativity thrown in.
Apparently some have tried to slander it saying it's "woke", and I won't bore you with my opinion of those narrowminded ignorant fools, I'll just point out it's all based on a different viewpoint than that of those fascists, and instead, I'll say this once more, based on indigenous native American cultures and myths. Yes, that's right, there are multiple cultures in the world, and they all have creative people in them.
Most of the readers here are well aware of that and didn't need reminding, but there are some who need that reality check for our fantasy games. ("Our" as in gamers)

So this...See more is an alternate history where the European expansionism in the age of exploration never happened. Add to that a global disaster that caused an ice age, and gave a form of magic to the world, and focus on the survivors who are rebuilding civilization in the Americas (though it has a different name of course), and you've got this setting. (They've done a lot of reclamation, but there's still plenty to go, and the oceans are apparently still unnavigable, so who knows what the rest of the world is like.)

It's advanced in ways our world hasn't, and has technology designed for their culture and ideals, not the Eurocentric/Western viewpoint. Also, they've got magic, but it's not like the usual glass cannon character type, so you can have plenty of fun, even if you can't level an entire city with a meteor shower spell.

The makers of this have videos on youtube as well, and if you have any interest, that might be a good thing to check out.

As to why I've been stressing that this isn't your run of the mill ripped from Tolkien or Baewulf, and that's because it isn't.
It's a breath of fresh air in a musty dungeon just waiting to be explored.

Now for those that are real fans of noir dark and gritty dystopias where everyone is dirty type of campaigns, then it's not for you.
On the other hand, if you are willing try something with a touch of color and vague sense of a better future than that dark stuff, here's your chance. By the way, it's not like things are all peaches and cream, there are plenty of issues, nasties, and things to be discovered in this setting to which civilization has returned to.

PS: for those that don't know their history, the Americas are one of the oldest cradles of civilization in history, and even had the most populous city of those times. As archaeologist continue examining sites, more and more amazing things are found that keep getting older and older. The trade systems they had in place make the silk road look down right basic as well.
This kind of reality is wonderful imagination fodder for gaming and fiction, so if you're ears aren't permanently elf ears, give it a shot :D

Hmmm.... Maybe I should have written some about the system and some of it's components... Oh well, someone else can do that, it's almost 4am here.

Joseph S July 04, 2022 2:08 am UTC

PURCHASER

I have the physical book but decided to snag digital too. This is such an interested product and I hope to get to play it someday soon.

d0g B March 28, 2022 1:00 am UTC

PURCHASER

I have indigenous heritage, my children and their mother are members of a tribe. This is an amazing product for indigenous people, for the non indigenous give it a try and take the instruction in stride, everyone can learn something here.

Paolo M July 03, 2022 4:57 pm UTC

Have you bought it? May I suggest you wrote an actual review? Your point of view will be very interesting to read.

Yann E July 04, 2022 10:47 am UTC

Any review not-homophobic is welcome :)

James R March 24, 2022 1:37 am UTC

This sounds amazing - is there somewhere I can see a preview, or get a better handle on the setting and system?
EDIT: Turns out the kickstarter page has what I wanted :)