I know it’s been a minute since our last news update. Honestly, I try not to flood folks with trivial stuff or news that doesn’t include something that you all can take action on. But, I’ve got so much great stuff piling up that I just couldn’t wait any longer. Let’s get into it!
Wolves
Wolves is coming to Kickstarter in June 2023! We’ll have more details soon, but for now here’s the skinny. This stand alone, tabletop board game is for 3-6 players. It’s semi-cooperative and is designed by myself (Connor Alexander) and features art from Sadekaronhes Esquivel and Ovila Mailhot. While the game is called Wolves, the theme is cooperative community survival amongst humans. Players will take on the roles of leaders of their own communities, each of which generates resources and needs them to last through winter. But here’s the catch, if any community fails to meet its basic resource needs, all players lose the game. Consequently, players will be able to gift other communities their excess resources each turn, helping ensure everyone gets their needs met. Along the way, players will gain status by either gifting resources or giving excess to their own people. At the end of the game, if all players have survived the winter, the player with the most status is elected chief of all of the communities and is granted an additional victory. The game takes anywhere from 45-100 minutes, depending on the number of players. It incorporates some push-your-luck elements, hand management, and concepts centered around gifting economies.
In addition, we’re planning on producing this entire game using wood, recycled cardboard, and compostable materials where ever possible. And our goal is to use zero plastics in this game. Not even shrink wrap.
The game is technically set in the world of Coyote & Crow, but no knowledge of C&C is required. The events in the game take place after the Awis, but long before advanced technologies have been developed. So the resources in the game are connected to more traditional ones.
Look for the pre-launch Kickstarter page soon! And in case you’re wondering, after having some great conversations with Kickstarter and BackerKit, we’re going to be moving back to Kickstarter for this next round of crowdfunding. We’ll still be using BackerKit as a pledge manager. You’ll want to sign up for our newsletter and join our Discord to make sure you’re on board for all of the early pledge bennies.
Stories of the Free Lands
Great news on Stories of the Free Lands. We’re currently on track to have these incredible adventures delivered to backers by the end of April. I am so excited to be able to get these all into your hands. We’ll be fulfilling them through BackerKit and folks will get them in two zipped files, each containing one volume of the stories, plus the additional splash art file.
The bonus story from Allen Turner and Tate Allen will be released about a month after that to backers. Following that we’ll release eight of the stories, plus the Allen Turner story, to our website as well as DriveThruRPG and Roll20.
Other News
The rest of my news is a little more vague but I still think it’s worth sharing.
- We’re very close to being able to announce our partnership with another tabletop game company who is going to be bringing something very different to the world of Coyote & Crow.
- We’re dialing in a partnership with an Indigenous owned manufacturer here in the US that will be able to produce some very cool print-on-demand fancy merch for Coyote & Crow that I think you’re all going to be amazed with. I’ve seen the prototypes and they are phenomenal.
- We’re finishing up an agreement with a Canadian library book distributor who is going to help us get donation books to Canadian outlets.
- We’re finalizing our partnership with Pe Metawe Games in Edmonton, who will be acting as a distribution partner for us in Canada, allowing us to ship C&C games to Canadian customers (and maybe future crowdfunding backers too!)
- Our organized play efforts, called Akinana Circle, are coalescing. Greatest thanks to those who filled out the pre-launch survey! Your input gives us excellent guidance as we move forward in our planning. We are excited to bring you all content as well as a place to play the game together. Please keep an eye out for Coyote & Crow games being run at local cons. We are reaching out and trying to set up as many as we can. If you’re interested in knowing more, check out our Discord and the Akinana Circle channel there.
- I am currently hard at work writing the next full Coyote & Crow RPG book. I’ll have more info soon, but what I can share now is that it is a setting book, set in a small fictional town and chock full of mysteries, stories, characters and ideas that will be worth a read even for folks who don’t play the game. This is a passion project for me that will hopefully go to crowdfunding toward the end of the year.
- We have three other games tabletop games in the wings in various stages of development. We’ll have more on those soon.
- I’ll be appearing at Big Bad Con this fall. Outside of that Coyote & Crow Games will be limiting their conventions to panel and speaking appearances by myself (and writers and artists), and organized play events run by Akinana Circle.
- We’ve got some other partnerships in the wings that are really exciting. We want to wait until we have some really exciting things to show you before we announce them, but they are in the works!