Coyote & Crow, an indigenous-grown and focused tabletop game, has recovered after earning over $1 million on Kickstarter.
Connor Alexander, a Seattle-based Cherokee designer, has recently launched a Kickstarter for a collection of adventures inspired by indigenous voices called Stories of the Free Lands. Naasii, a standalone push-your-luck dice game, is also featured in the Coyote & Crows sourcebook.
In an interview, Alexander told Dicebreaker that Stories of the Free Lands will not necessarily be Native stories in the sense that tabletops are largely white and Western playerbase might expect. ten writers whose stories will fill two separate volumes received creative leeway to write murder mysteries, detective stories, noir, political intrigue, and anything else they could not. Alexander wanted pulpy genre fiction that indigenous people rarely learn to tell without being pigeon-holed by their cultural backgrounds.
I look at a city like Kahokia and the game that the core RPG is focused on, and I think about New York or a city out of Blade Runner in a near future where all of these millions of people will be told interesting stories. They don''t have to be about monsters and ghosts. They can also be about everything.
When playing in Stories of the Free Lands, players should still expect a strong take on well-established science fantasy theories. Alexander likens them to the best episodes of The X-Files, a healthy scepticism mixed with science-meeting-magic in a grey area, which gives rise to some truly unique narratives and expands the world of Coyote & Crow, both literally and thematically.
As he and the team dealt with production delays, material shortages, and a dramatically increased shipping economy, it was always the intention to branch out from behind the GM screen and character sheets. However, starting a business off a single product - no matter how successful.
Alexander said that he would distribute the adventure volumes and dice game only in the United States, knowing that many would be disappointed. If I dropped a $50 or $60 price tag on shipping for $40 worth of items, it would be unacceptable to them. I''d rather have them wait a few extra weeks and get it through normal hobby distribution - buy it off the retailers shelves. That''s the sad truth.
Coyote & Crow''s unscheduled success shifted it beyond the usual for indie titles. Alexander is still trying to distribute the 5,000 donated copies of the book to reservation libraries, public libraries, and other organizations that would offer it to them for free. (He originally anticipated about 50 books to be donated.)
Makasing''s alt-history, post-apocalyptic future is also a platform for comic books, animated shows, board games, and more. Alexander said there are a lot of people out there who will experiment with Coyote & Crow but have never played a tabletop RPG. Constructing as wide a door as possible allows the best chance it will find its audience, both within indigenous communities throughout the Western hemisphere as the traditional tabletop market.
To accomplish this, Alexander and the company responsible for Coyote & Crow have revealed two upcoming projects. The first is a modular card game developed by an indigenous creator and a former designer with Fantasy Flight Games. The second is an expanded card game that will support two to four players. Expected to launch on crowdfunding platforms early next year.
The other is a board game that Alexander claims to be a noodling for a while, a approach to gifting economies native to the Pacific Northwest cultures. Unlike other players, members of a community gain a lot of prestige when they provide gifts, but also when receiving them. At the end of the game, the player with the most respect becomes the region''s leader, owing to their own strengths and the magnanimity of their neighbors. Almost everyone will likely fail.
Alexander wants to enlarge new ideologies into a tabletop that will transform what could be a dark, shady design environment based on European ideas of victory. Naasii, which was designed for the Backerkit campaign, keeps its rules simple but engaging. It also provides players with a full set of 12-sided dice used by the Coyote & Crows system.
Alexander said that we wanted something that would help bridge the divide between the indigenous non-gamer community and current gamers. I wanted a game that would be beneficial to individuals who are similar to myself and might develop into games like Yahtzee.
The Stories of the Free Lands campaign, which runs until October 14th, has successfully funded and is working through stretch goals that award all contributors a 10% pay bonus per tier, something Alexander was particularly keen about baking as the base of all future crowdfunding endeavors.
