So many things have been happening over the last couple of months that it’s been hard for me to keep up. I made a basic statement on the tariff situation when they first happened at the start of April.
Osiyo, friends. Not to make this all about Coyote & Crow, but yesterday’s news from the US Gov may have some devastating impacts on C&C Games as a whole. A cumulative 54% import tariff on goods from China will essentially kill my company (and the games industry). Sadly, it’s partially our own hobby’s fault that we’re in the worst position to weather this storm. For years, board games have operated on razor thin margins because many fans are resistant to price hikes. But even with the amazingly generous and awesome folks that support Coyote & Crow, we won’t survive this. I’m not going to ask anyone to “dig deep” or to in any way stretch themselves to support us. We’re /all/ going to be in bad shape in the coming months and years if this plays out like it look like it will. Instead, I’m going to do what Natives always do: we adapt, survive, and carry on. What that exactly means in this situation, I don’t know, but I have ideas and in the coming months, I’ll be working on those behind the scenes. For now, we have a “fair” amount of inventory of existing games here in the US and Canada, we’ll continue working with our digital partners, and we’ll be pushing on with Ahu Tiiko – if nothing else to at least get you the PDF. The fate of the print edition is up in the air for the moment, but I will get back to you and all of the backers as my options start to come into focus. I hope you all are planning for your own situations as best you can. We’re going to need community to get through this. Stiyu (stay strong).
Since then, there’s been layer upon layer of chaos. The tariffs shooting well past 150%, debates over what tariffs apply to what, how long they’ll last, if they’ll change. There’s all of the news coming from places like CMON, Greater Than Games, Diamond Comics/Alliance Distribution and now Polygon. I’ve got friends questioning whether they can stay in business. Companies canceling and delaying Kickstarter launches.
When I spoke about the Changing Face of Coyote & Crow a few months ago, I had some pretty big things on the horizon and lots of things I was shooting for. Some of those, like our consulting arm, my Alien adventure with Fria Ligan, our announcement of Primacy and other things landed successfully. On the other hand, other things, like our new t-shirts, completely fell through. Such is life.
But where does that leave us now? I can’t ignore the current state of the world. But I also have a deep connection to the gaming world and I believe in my mission to bring Native games, ideas, and representation to the hobby. While I have some plans in motion, nothing is concrete yet. It’s possible that I could sell Coyote & Crow. It’s possible that I could let it go quiet while I attempt to get another full time job. There are other options too. Ones I’m working on. I think the key to Coyote & Crow’s survival will hinge on the word “flexibility”.
But let’s get more specific. Lets talk about games and projects here at Coyote & Crow and where they stand.
Ahu Tiiko
Our horror & mystery expansion for Coyote & Crow the roleplaying game is getting close to completion. For the full breakdown, check out our most recent update. Our biggest challenge at the moment is figuring if and how we want to go ahead with a physical print run of the game and how that would all play out in a way that benefits backers, while not bankrupting C&C.
Primacy: A Coyote & Crow Card Game
Our two player, competitive, expandable card game has been on hold while we waited to see what was going on with tariffs. However, I’ve decided to go ahead with the crowdfunding and we’ll launch on May 27th. The game is basically ready to go and I feel confident that one way or another, we can get the game into fans hands.
Of course, the big question is, how will we deal with tariffs. Currently they stand at 154%. I’m not going to cover how tariffs work here or how they affect the game industry. You all can do your own homework on that. There are a ton of articles on it recently. Specifically for Primacy, what I’m going to do is crowdfund as normal. I may be modifying the stretch goals to include somethings like a mobile app version or a browser based version of the game. I’ll decide that over the next couple of weeks as we get closer to launch. Here’s the catch. We won’t know what the actual tariffs are for the game until they arrive in the US from our partners in China. I’m going to do my best to make sure everyone is getting the best deal they can, but in the end, backers will have to help cover that cost. Remember, Kickstarter isn’t a store. It’s an investment. Sometimes they don’t pay off. You’re investing in Coyote & Crow and your dividend is your reward. You can opt not to pay the tariffs. That is your call. If the tariffs are more than I can bear financially, I’ll lose the shipment and all of the money I spent on it. So it’s in my best interest to make sure the game arrives here in the US in a way that is doable for everyone.
And not to get hyperbolic here, but this crowdfunding effort will have a direct and immediate impact on the future of Coyote & Crow Games. We succeed? A way forward. We fail? Things will have to be reevaluated.
Other Games
I’ve got some other games in the wings, like Adela and Skoden!. I want to see those come to light, but at the moment, I’m keeping them on pause. Until we have a clearer production and financing route or another publishing partner, I don’t want to put more money into them.
Final Note: Everything I’ve written here is subject to change at any moment by any degree. Because that’s the world we’re living in. But I wanted to at least give you my perspective as of…May 1st, 2025. We’ll see what May 2nd brings.
I’ve been working with Friday Afternoon Tea, a fantastic small business, to create a Coyote & Crow tea that you all can enjoy while you play or whenever you’re in the mood for some Turtle Island tea. The Cahokia blend is avaible for pre-order now and will start shipping on 3/10. It’s a great blend of yaupon, chokeberry, and more. I’m really proud of this collaboration and the tea is delicious – but watch out, yaupon has a serious caffiene kick!
The reaction to my post about AI & Freelancers definitely stirred up some conversation. Honestly, far more than I thought it would. But here we are. And with a ton of things changing behind the scenes here at Coyote & Crow, and with 3+ games in development here, not to mention the insanity of the U.S. Government right now, I felt like it was time to try a new approach to my game art. Specifically, for my upcoming game, Primacy. The TLDR here is that I’m opening up Primacy to art submissions from anyone who would like to submit. For the details on this process, go see the actual submission page, HERE.
But why this approach? Well, I have a ton of art for Coyote & Crow, overall. From the core RPG, all of the Stories of the Free Lands art, and everything else we’ve done, it’s a pretty big pile, some of which has never seen the light of day. But as I’m producing a card game that has over 150 different cards, I’d love to be able to offer folks even more fresh Indigenous Futurist visions. What I lack is the time, and frankly patience, to deal with 150 different artists, their contracts, their inevitable delays and blown contracts, and all of the money and time I would lose.
My solution to this is to offer an opt in situation. Between now and the next few months when we (hopefully) go to print, I welcome anyone to submit their card art through our web portal. If I like it and it works for the card, I’ll reach out to the artist, we’ll sign a contract, they can send in a high-res version of the piece, they’ll get paid and I’ll mark the card as no longer available. Again, see the submission page for details. Will this work? I have no idea. Maybe I’ll get hundreds of submissions, maybe I’ll get two. No clue. But here’s what I know. You can talk to anyone I’ve ever worked with, and even if they aren’t a fan of mine personally, they won’t be able to say that I didn’t stick to a contract or that I didn’t pay them. And if no one submits any art, I can still produce Primacy with all of the art that I currently have in my arsenal.
I think the time has come to address the changing landscape of our digital world. With Trump and his cronies in the White House, and his oligarch pals backing him up, I’ve decided that keeping our authentic voice is more important than ever. Very shortly, maybe within a week or so, I’m going to be completely disengaging (personally and professionally) from all products connected to Meta and Twitter/X(Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, Threads, Twitter/X). We’re also abandoning our TikTok profile, which never really got off the ground. The timing for this is a bit awkward because I also have a number of other announcements and updates to let you all know about that will likely be landing in the next few weeks. From a business standpoint, it likely makes sense for me to wait to leave Meta and X until after those announcements. But, I rarely do the smart thing. So, with that in mind, here are some of the things I’ll be talking about in the upcoming weeks:
Ahu Tiiko news, including stretch goals
Primacy news, including crowdfunding launch plans
New playable Story and Actual Play news
New partnerships
Convention appearances
So, if we’re leaving those other sites and services, where should you be looking for us, besides this website? First and foremost, we’ll always update our LinkTree. Beyond that, we’ll be focusing on the following sites and services:
Our partnerships with Roll20, DriveThruRPG, and Hero Forge are all intact and will only be growing. In fact, we’re going to be adding some new ones too!
Finally, we’ll also be exploring new social media options, like PixelHub.
This post is tough for me to write. It’s the sum of lessons learned over the last four years and it’s left me in a space where I’m having to make some pretty big changes in how I do business. But let’s start this post with a bit of brutal honesty (and this is something I’ve said in a previous post). I used AI for art as recently as 2022. Nothing that was for sale or publication and nothing where I would have hired an artist instead. I toyed with a few free programs in 2020 and made some ‘fan art’ for social media. I used it to create some placeholder cover imagery on Stories of the Free Lands. And I used it as the backgrounds for two of the ads for that same campaign. I already had a strong belief that I never wanted AI to take the place of a real human when it came to my games, but I thought, “What’s the harm is using it for other minor stuff?” It didn’t take long before I realized that was unethical, too, for many reasons. And since that campaign, I haven’t touched any program using scraped data for LLMs to generate art, writing or anything else. And I won’t.
And let me be really clear here. My previous post about this company’s stance on AI is still 100% in effect. I won’t use AI in any way, shape, or form, and that’s not changing. No exceptions, no buts, no maybes. Until the artists and originators of data that AI’s use are given the chance to control their content and get paid for it, and until AI processing is, at the very least, environmentally neutral, Coyote & Crow Games won’t be using it. It’s theft, it harms the environment, and it’s wrong. End of story.
So yeah, that’s the Rock in this story. AI is everywhere and growing fast, being used more often by game companies, and I won’t touch it. Despite how much time and money it might save me personally.
But there’s also the Hard Place: Freelancers; human beings who bring their skill sets to my project for a flat or hourly rate. Some of the freelancers I’ve hired have worked on multiple Coyote & Crow projects. Many are Native. Most live in North America. All of them work remotely. All of them sign a contract with me that has three critical components: 1) An amount they’ll be paid. 2) A description of the work expected of them (the number of art pieces, the number of words, etc.). 3) A deadline for submission to me. All of these things are things I discuss with my freelancers prior to writing up their contract. And I want to talk about each of the three in a little more detail before I get into why freelancers are the “Hard Place”.
As far as a pay schedule, when I started C&C, I paid half up front and half upon completion. This seemed reasonable because prior to Coyote & Crow, few people knew who I was or if I could be trusted to pay. I offered variable rates depending on how much I could afford at the time. Some of those rates were below industry standards, I’m sorry to say. From what I gather from talking with my peers and with freelancers since Coyote & Crow Games took off, my pay has exceeded the industry average for a smaller RPG company and I’m proud that through either a flat rate or an hourly rate, I never pay less than $25/hour, even if it’s just sitting in a booth at a con. I no longer pay half up front though. On larger projects, I’d sometimes do it in thirds, setting some mid-point date for a check in and another pay out. More recently, coming through on the tail end of Ahu Tiiko, I’ve changed to paying 100% of the contract only upon full completion of all deliverables at the end of the contract.
When it comes to deliverables, I’ve also evolved. When I started this, I didn’t know much about print publication, image standards, color palettes, really any of it. In fact, the core Coyote & Crow book is, to me, a miracle. I learned so much along the way and I’m so very proud of it. But if I were doing it over again, the book would look very different. My expectations for work flow, quality, and precision in what I expect from my freelancers is much more specific and informed now. I also don’t think you’ll find a single artist that I’ve worked with who will say that I wasn’t available or communicative or that I didn’t give useful feedback. Overall, I think I’m pretty easy to work with.
Finally, there are deadlines. I try to start by asking freelancers when they think they can get their work done. If it’s within my timeframe, I usually offer a week or two beyond the date they’ve given and use that for a deadline. In any case, the dates are always ones they agree to. I’m going to still use that process when I deal with deadlines in the future, but how they’ll be set and the penalties for missing them will be changing. Deadlines are at the heart of this post and my current predicament. The gross truth is, the vast majority of freelancers I work with cannot make their deadlines. I know, I know, not you. Or your friend. But those other freelancers? They can’t do it. I won’t name anyone in this post. That’s not what it is about. But I need to get into why my current model of hiring freelancers is actually worse than using AI – at least, worse for me from a productivity standpoint.
As a company with one full time employee – me – all of my projects are built to help keep Coyote & Crow Games in business. While I try to run my company like a non-profit, it isn’t, really. And that means that to pay my salary, my health insurance, my accountant, my attorney, and all of the other monthly fees that I incur, just to keep my doors open, I need to have sales. And more than just sales, as a board game company I need new games to stay competitive. As a side note, I hate that about the capitalist hellscape we live in. Sadly, that’s the system I have to work within at the moment. I’d love to be in a position to hire folks on permanently. To give some of the amazing creatives who have helped me over the last four years a full-time job with benefits. I’d weep with joy if I could make that happen.
But here’s the rub. If my projects, my games, are the top priority for my business and I cannot complete them without freelancers, and for those freelancers my project is their third or seventh or twelfth priority, well then, my projects won’t be getting done on time or maybe at all. And I get it, especially right now., we’re all hurting. Life is throwing us all under the bus on a daily basis. And sometimes when someone is broke or down or dealing with their kids or their day job, those creative juices don’t flow like they want them to. I truly do get it. Sometimes, a person just can’t hit a deadline. Having said that, I want to throw out a number to you all. It’s 90. That’s the percent of my freelancers who miss their deadlines. 90%. Those missed deadlines have probably cost me more than a full year in development across my games in the last four years. And because I’m a finite resource, when my freelancers miss a deadline, I have to push all of my projects back. For example, the card game I’m currently developing called Primacy? I brought on my first contractor for that in 2021. It’s been pushed back and deprioritized so many times that I can’t even keep track. And much of that is due to freelancers missing deadlines on other projects.
So what’s up with that 90%? Well, I’m hiring folks who don’t do this for a full time job. Part of that is that I rarely have a full-time job’s worth of work for them. But I’m also trying to hire from a very small pool of folks. Many of them are marginalized and often in more ways than one. They’re dealing with all the challenges that most of us face with some extra helpings of bullshit piled on top. I’m sure they take a gig with me with the best of intentions. They honestly think they can get the work done in the time they’ve agreed to. But not only do they not get it done by the deadline, they often don’t tell me that they can’t get it done by the deadline until it’s too late.
But it’s not just about one artist doing one piece missing a deadline. Or taking money and then delivering nothing. And it’s not even just about freelancers collectively missing deadlines. Although that’s a big part of it. If it were just a day here or week there of time lost, I might be okay. But it goes way beyond time and into money, inventory, reputation and more. I’ll give you four quick examples.
The Art Director: I hired someone on as an art director who started out as an artist. They literally did nothing and after two months of paying them extra money, I had to terminate them and take on the role myself.
The Event Manager: I hired someone to handle my conventions and outreach projects. They crashed and burned two straight conventions, cost me thousands of dollars, stole a mobile payment system and thousands of dollars worth of inventory, a month’s pay, then ghosted me.
The Project Manager: I hired a writer on a project to take over as project lead. They slowed the project down so badly that we lost three months of time on it and they changed writers’ work without notifying them. Then they ghosted me, taking pay with them and didn’t turn over any files or correspondence, costing me even more time.
Part 2: The Resolution
If you made it through all that, it’s important that I call out something here. I’m the captain of this ship. I hired these people. I can blame them for being flakey jerks, for stealing from me, for being unprofessional, unnecessarily mean spirited, and for doing real harm to a fledgling company that was trying to do right by them. But I’m the owner of Coyote & Crow Games and I made those calls. Most of the freelancers I work with just miss their deadlines. I say “just” only to compare it to what the three folks above did. It still stings, every time. It still hurts me and the company. But many of these writers and artists I also consider friends and colleagues. I want to see them shine and prosper. I want to promote their work, so I make allowances.
But those days are gone. I’m going to be drawing some very hard boundaries now when it comes to outside workers. Some of these are going to seem tough or strict. Certainly many of them won’t conform to mainstream game publisher practices. But I’m not a mainstream game publisher. I’ve tasked myself with keeping Coyote & Crow Games going not just to have a job and to make games, but to make a statement and right now that means being a hard ass and thinking about how I keep my doors open, my mental health on the right track, and my games continuing to flow. There will be complaints and there will be blowback, I’m sure. Just this post alone probably ensures that a number of freelancers, maybe ones I’ve worked with in the past, will never work with me again.
So when publishers, artists and other creatives rail against AI art, I get it. I agree 100%. But if my policy is no AI and I’m also spending hundreds, and even thousands of dollars – and worse, months of time – for art or writing that either arrives late or not at all, what am I left with? If I farm out my image needs to an overseas agency, am I doing justice to my goals of raising up Indigenous creatives? If I always write all of my content from here on out personally, am I helping Native writers or giving my customers the broad and culturally rich perspective they deserve? Do I just keep my principles and let Coyote & Crow Games slowly fail because I can’t operate at the same speed as other publishers who aren’t trying to do what I am?
I realize that this post has a ton of tea, a ton of drama. My point here is not to call any one person out. It’s that I think very few folks – whether they work in the hobby games industry or not – have a full view of what publishers my size are working with and how hard we have to fight for every inch of space, every sale, every print run. Wizards of the Coast is embracing AI. Other game publishers have begun using it and technology rarely gets put back in the closet. With Trump’s presidency imminent, I’m also likely facing massive tariffs on any imports. My costs will go up and my prices will have to go up with them.
I won’t use AI. But things need to change. And that means either finding a different path or letting Coyote & Crow Games die.
This post has been a long time coming and involves some rehashing of old news and bits of drama. But more than anything, this is a positive post about where Coyote & Crow Games started, where it is heading and what we’ll be unveiling in the months and years to come. If you want to skip the history and get to the news & announcements you can just jump down to that section.
When I launched the Kickstarter for Coyote & Crow in March of 2021, I hoped to make the money back I’d invested and to secure enough money for my print run of the book. I honestly thought I’d be printing a few hundred books and donating a couple of dozen. Of course, things got a little…bigger.
About half way into the campaign, and we were passing half a million dollars, I began to consider whether or not I could stay at my day job. This was a tough call for me as I’d been with PSI for five years, I had a good, secure salary, a role I liked, health benefits, and a good reputation with the game publishers I worked with. But putting together a larger, more expansive book, dealing with all of the stretch goals? It was more than I could deal with while also working fifty hours a week.
Additionally, I had a number of industry friends advise me that taking the money from the Kickstarter, completing my rewards, and then walking away from the situation clean and clear was the best route to take – for my sanity and my heart. But I began to understand that the success of the roleplaying game pointed to a greater need. If the impetus for launching Coyote & Crow was my feeling that the game industry needed a better example of Indigenous representation behind the scenes as well as more positive portrayals of Native Americans, then didn’t I have a rare opportunity to not just throw out an example and walk away, but instead, open a door, hold it open for others and use Coyote & Crow as a way to truly blaze a new trail?
But as you can see in my last post, just because Coyote & Crow raised over $1 million, didn’t make me a millionaire. That little nest egg had a lot of heavy lifting to do. While I have a bit of experience in a wide range of skills, I wouldn’t really call myself more than an “adequate” at business. So right away I began looking for attorneys, tax experts, web developers and others to help me go beyond just creating the Kickstarter rewards and actually start forming a company.
Of course, the first question I had to ask myself creatively was, “What next?” So while I worked on assembling the business side of things and the Kickstarter rewards and all of the stretch goals, I also started planning on things like our custom dice, the story guide screen, merchandise and more. And I began thinking about what I needed to do to attend conventions once I had something to sell.
Simultaneously, I also knew that I was going to need help. I just couldn’t wear all of the hats and even if I had the time, I don’t have all of the skills or the bandwidth to learn everything on the fly. This brings me to some of my hardest lessons and ones that are at the core of what my big changes are about. It was time for me to start hiring some help.
Here’s where I made some mistakes. I try not to be too hard on myself because unlike a traditional game publisher who can model themselves after any number of other different game publishers out there, I had given myself the added challenge of trying to create an ethical, environmentally friendly company that focused on philanthropy, bringing fresh Native creatives into the hobby and putting out content that specifically gave an accurate and positive portrayal of Native Americans. This meant that I had to hire Native American folks where possible. It also meant not always doing the cheap way or the easy or established way.
To be specific about my mistake, what I did was, I envisioned a normal board game company as I knew it – how they operated, their staff, their work flow, all of it. Then I tried to take that model and heap all of my ideas on top of it, all of those added challenges I mentioned. I basically set myself up to fail. Boardgames and RPGs aren’t a high margin operation on the best of days. There aren’t many millionaires coming out of the gaming world.
Sure enough, I’ve lost thousands upon thousands of dollars and worse months and months of time. Without question, every single project has fallen behind my internal schedules and has gone way over my initial budgets. And while I can point fingers at the long list of folks who have taken initial payment from me for something only to miss deadlines, delay projects and eventually disappear with my money without ever delivering or who have even stolen inventory, the reality is, I’m the captain of this ship. I’m responsible for Coyote & Crow Games. And if I had to give myself a grade for how I’ve been running the company? I’d probably give myself a C-.
My doors are still open though. Things are still happening. In fact, the thrust of this post is that so much is happening that I can barely manage, or more accurately, I can no longer continue on the way I have been.
So, here we go.
News & Announcements
I had already been thinking big picture about how I could change things and still keep the company afloat and get my rent paid. But this year’s trip to Gen Con, last minute as it was, led to some fantastic meetings and conversations with incredible game industry folks like Ami Baio, Helaina Cappel, Geoff Englestein, James Lowder, and others. And while their advice and thoughts were varied, they all gave me some fantastic perspective that worked to bring my whole situation into focus.
Below, I’m going to actually talk about some announcements and partnerships that are coming. Some I’m going to tease, and certainly each thing in this list will get it’s own full announcement down the line.
But more importantly, all of these announcements and partnerships are moving the company toward a specific direction. One I hope let’s Coyote & Crow go its own way, rather than trying to make a traditional board game company model do all of the work that I need it to do.
Our New Structure And Goals
First up, I’m currently working on creating a major and lasting partnership with another publisher. The goal is that partner will take on some of the larger, more complex parts of Coyote & Crow – layouts, printing and manufacturing, crowdfunding, conventions, and more. The hope is that with these things moved to my daily margins, I can concentrate on the creative end of things more and give you all more than one new title per year. Even if that specific partnership doesn’t work out, I’ll be changing how my warehousing, fulfillment, and webstore are being handled within the year with the same goals in mind.
Second, going forward, Coyote & Crow Games, as a company, will only be producing things that exist within the Coyote & Crow universe. These may be RPG supplements, board games and other media outside of games, like comics and novels. Like it or not, Coyote & Crow Games has become synonymous with the fictional world I built for the RPG, meaning games like Wolves or others I’m working on that can exist outside of that world won’t get the attention they deserve because of Coyote & Crow’s shadow.
So what about games like Adela, the bead crafting game I’m working on? Where do they go? Well, games that don’t sit in the actual Coyote & Crow universe, like Adela, I’ll be pitching those to other game companies. Ones that have a better production pipeline and a wider audience but similar goals of diversity and sustainability. This will help games like Adela reach a wider audience – both more Natives and more non-Native folks who need to see what good Native representation looks like.
Next up is something that’s long overdue. I’m starting a division of Coyote & Crow Games that will be a consulting firm for Indigenous representation in games. We’ll have a number of Natives, myself included, that can act as design consultants, sensitivity readers and more. What’s more important though is that we’ll do the legwork of making sure publishers have specific, accurate, and helpful information for including Native elements in their game. I want people to know that if a game says “Coyote & Crow Consulting” in the credits, that they can be sure what they’re seeing is done right.
I’ve also recognized a need to work cooperatively with other Native publishers and entrepreneurs when it comes to conventions. With costs rising, staffing issues, and other specific needs or hurdles, it makes sense that we don’t try to go things solo every time. So I’m speaking with a number of folks about how we might tackle that and do something different for everyone’s benefit. That won’t be a Coyote & Crow Games initiative, but something I hope becomes it’s own flourishing entity.
I’m also working on licensing out Coyote & Crow to some other publishing partners for various C&C related things that they can produce better than I can. We already have great relationships with folks like Roll20, DriveThruRPG, and Hero Forge, and Qworkshop, but I think we’re ready for more. We’ve got a few that we’ll be announcing very soon. Here’s everything on the horizon. Again, we’ll have specific full announcements for each of these as they solidify.
Partnerships
Co-Publisher Partnership: Announcement Coming Very Soon – working on details
Publisher Licensing Partnership #1: Deal signed, working on announcement date
Publisher Licensing Partnership #2: Working on project details, no announcement date estimate yet
Merchandise Partnership: We’re going to have new shirts soon! We may be able to drop this announcement with links any day now.
Announcements
New Project #1: Early October 2024. We’ll unveil our new crowdfunding effort, which will hopefully be launching in November of this year. 11/1 if I can manage it. This is something that has developed quickly and suddenly, but I’m really excited about.
Coyote & Crow Consulting: Early 2025.
11/1 Announcement – Surprise for Native American Heritage Month
Native Creative Collective: We might have news about this in time for PAX Unplugged, but it may have to wait until early 2025.
Primacy: The Coyote & Crow Card Game is coming. We’re well into development, graphics, testing and more. However, because of New Project #1, we’ll be pushing back the crowdfunding for it to early 2025.
Coyote & Crow RPG Major Secret Project: Announcement in 2025
Connor’s Secret Project with another publisher: Announcement coming very soon
I have some very mixed feelings about Kahori, Marvel’s new animated Mohawk character and Echo, Marvel’s live action Choctaw hero. I thought I’d write about them here in the hopes of maybe giving some folks a new perspective to chew on. I’ve never read any comics with Echo in them and Kahori is new, so my thoughts here are going to be based only on what I saw on the screen this week.
I signed up for Disney+ solely for these two shows – What If, Season 2 and Echo – and my plan is to deactivate now that I’m finished. With Reservation Dogs wrapping and the recent, incredible, Killers of the Flower Moon, I was excited to see where we might go with Indigenous characters in speculative fiction stories. Even the title of Kahori’s episode, “What If Kahori Reshaped the World” got me all worked up as it sounded like it could be close to some of the ideas I put forth in Coyote & Crow. And while the Hawkeye series where Alaqua Cox debuted as Echo wasn’t my favorite, she was certainly a bright spot in the show.
I’m sorry to say though, that both series, and their respective Native characters, were really a pretty big let down. I know that’s probably going to rile some feathers, but please hear me out.
Let’s start with Kahori and What If…?. As with season 1, I like the premise of the show, the voice acting is top notch, the animation style is fun.
——– SPOILERS FROM HERE OUT ———
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SPOILERS
SPOILERS
Many of the specific characters from the first season are present as carry overs into this season. And in fact, two of the “main characters” are from the previous season. While there were episodes in this run that didn’t connect to the final episode (I thought the “What If…Hela Found the Ten Rings?” was a lot of fun), the set up for the season immediately made me think that Kahori’s episode would somehow be a major turning point for the season or, at the very least, a major plot point for the arc of the finale and where it was headed.
But we’ll get to the season finale in a minute. Let’s start with Kahori’s episode. I’m not going to do a recap here. Instead, I’ll just dive in to my criticisms. I think the MCU has a longstanding tradition of making the Infinity Stones do whatever they need them to in service of a plot. I’m happy to give them some latitude. But creating a pocket dimension where people go there and get powers because they are there and then when they leave they get to keep their powers? I just wasn’t in on it. Especially when the powers are the worst kind of extension of the Infinity Stone Deus Ex Machina. What is it that Kahori can actually do? According to the MCU fandom wiki she has: Superhuman strength, durability, speed, agility, stamina, reflexes, a healing ability, extended longevity, cosmic energy manipulation, forcefields, telekinesis, teleportation portals, elemental manipulation, and flight. So….everything?
I liked her setup. I liked her background and the idea of a cursed lake. I didn’t mind the conquistadors (always down for some colonizer villains). I was really engaged when Kahori was working to convince the others within the Tesseract to come back with her to help her people. That was some great writing and lovely tension. I liked that, like many heroes, she starts as just a normal person with a good heart, thrust into unusual circumstances.
As we got to the point where she and her allies were defeating the conquistadors, I got really excited. I had no idea where the story would go. And I could tell by the run time that the episode was almost over. I thought, “Oh my gosh, we’re about to get a whole season of Marvel heroes influenced by the changes Kahori makes during the Columbian exchange.” But no. She goes over and puts the queen of Spain in her place (Cool, cool). But then it just sums things up. ‘Kahori brings about world peace.’ The end.
Wait, what? I don’t blame writer Ryan Little for this. I think he did a great job within the parameters he was probably given. And none of the voice actors or animators are to blame here. They did a wonderful job. Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs voices Kahori and I could see the actor playing her in live action, easily (although, my vote would be for an older Kahori, played by someone like Julia Jones. YMMV). But if how she ‘reshaped the world’ amounted to no more than a few throw away lines, what we really have is just an origin story here. Kahori gets to exist, but we learned so little about her or to understand her powers or her relationship to her clan or to the Tesseract, that the whole episode felt like setup without payoff.
I’d heard through the grapevine that Kahori returned in a later episode of the season though, so I withheld my judgment. As the season progressed I became positive that it was going to become a situation where the modern MCU heroes involved would have to tap into Kahori’s world, her different timeline, to fix some sort of problem. And that we’d get to see the world that Kahori had helped make.
But no. In the end, Kahori was just…there. I mean, was there anything Kahori specifically brought to the table that the writers could not have easily swapped for a Dr. Strange variant, or Captain Marvel, or a Scarlet Witch variant? It was nice to see the character again, but there was no reason it had to be her.
And I think that’s my real issue with the character. Kahori is a great idea. Beautifully drawn and acted. And made from a place of care and thoughtfulness. But there were so many opportunities missed here to tell a really cool story. How about basing Kahori’s powers on her beliefs and culture? Or making those beliefs key to some sort of understanding how the Tesseract worked, allowing her to tap into it when the conquistadors could not? How about showing why Kahori, specifically, needed to be the one to change the world? And other than ‘peace’, what did this new world look like? What was that world like when Strange Supreme stepped into it to bring her into the wider story? Did none of the other Marvel characters exist? Did Odin see Kahori as a threat the same way he saw Hela and the Ten Rings? Did Asgard and Kahori clash? Did Kahori and the Eternals work together to end the Celestial threat?
I don’t necessarily need answers to all of those questions. But I think if you title an episode “What If…Kahori Reshaped the World?” and then carry that character over into an epic finale episode, you should probably have thought some of this through and covered it somewhat in one or more episodes.
So yeah. If we see more Kahori, I’d like some definitions put on her powers and why she’s so different from Carol Danvers power-wise. I’d also really like to see some more of how she reshaped the world. And at least a line or two to explain why she’s so good at speaking English. Like…that requires some leaps. Making an alternate history character where they are never colonized speak the language of a country that’s just a tiny island with no real influence in this alternate world? *side eye*
Maybe I’m being picky here. I don’t know. Let’s move on to Echo.
How about that cast! Tantoo Cardinal, Graham Greene, Zahn Mclarnon, Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs, and even Dallas Goldtooth, Julia Jones, Tatanka Means, and Jana Schmieding got some cameos. This cast was full of Native acting royalty. I squeed more than a few times when I got to see these folks in an MCU show. And Vincent D’Onofrio is just always a joy as Wilson Fisk. He just has that character down in a way that few other actors have ever been able to capture the spirit of their character.
And while I didn’t grow up in Oklahoma and haven’t spent anytime in the Choctaw nation, my sense from friends is that they did a pretty good job of capturing Tamaha and the local vibe and culture.
Sadly, those are all the positive things I can muster to say about the Echo series. I’m just going to be blunt here. I’m not sure Marvel knew what to do with her character. She had a simple, satisfying arc in Hawkeye that left her with some closure. But the only thing Marvel could think of for Maya was to undo that arc and then replay it over five episodes? Frankly, very little happened in this show. This could have been a 90 minute movie with no problem.
Don’t get me wrong. I LOVED the creation scene in the first episode. So cool! And that got me excited. But over the course of the show, there was so, so little given to Alaqua Cox to work with. It’s hard for me to judge her as an actor because I haven’t seen her in anything besides Hawkeye. But even there, she seemed to have more to work with. And frankly, if you’re going to put an actor up against the likes of Tantoo Cardinal or Graham Greene? You better bring your writing A Game. It was tough for me to watch Cox in scenes with them because they felt like more well rounded characters than Maya. There was more life in the relationship between Chula and Skully than there was between Maya and Fisk.
And after five episodes, I’m still not sure what the plot or goal of the series was. I’m not sure what that ending scene was about. I’m not sure what Maya did to Fisk or why he walked away from her afterward or what the effect was. The whole finale was so ‘What the Fuck?’ that I honestly said that outloud when the credits rolled.
Is Maya a hero? A villain? Neither? Something else? What drives her? What does she want? What’s her next move? These are all questions that should have been answered, hinted at, or addressed during the course of this show. Instead, I feel like I know Maya less than I did when the show began. Worst was that they made out her relationship with Bonnie as something so important and vital and yet, I never saw evidence of that on the screen. And at the end, there was no dialogue, no scene between them, no closure or growth. We got a one second glance that – based on their lack of development together over the course of the show – really didn’t mean anything.
Frankly, I could go through episode by episode and gripe about plot holes, inconsistenices, poor character motivation, and on and on. So many missed opportunties (we haven’t even touched on her deafness or prosthetic leg, which could have been so much more interesting or integral to the plot). But instead, I’m going to say this. I appreciate Marvel giving us two Native American characters in the span of a month. I appreciate that they did at least a decent job, if not a good job, of not villainizing or fetishizing Native American cultures and beliefs and portraying us as complex humans. I appreciate that so many incredible Native actors got a chance to shine or pop into the MCU for a moment.
But frankly, both of these characters deserved more. Because what I saw in these two shows is the symptom of a larger issue I’ve had with the MCU for a while. There’s a laziness there that is built on some sort of formula they think they’ve cracked. Certainly there have been some decent movies from Marvel since Avenger’s Endgame, especially Gaurdians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Overall though, the MCU’s biggest sin, in my opinion, is that it has gotten boring and predictable.
And as someone who desperately wants to see more Native representation in speculative storytelling, boring and predicatable is just not something I can tolerate. I don’t think any of these criticisms fall on the writers or the actors. In the end, they don’t always have a ton of control over what ends up in the final piece of media on our screens. But I think both series underscore the fact that if we want to see more and better Native representation on our screens, we’re going to have to dig in and put more Natives in showrunner and producer roles and take a top down approach to our stories.
Despite all of the above, congrats to everyone who worked on these shows and I hope they are a huge successes and that they propel you all on to greater things. Wado.
It’s been a hectic year for all of us. So for this Native November, I want to take some time to celebrate everyone in Coyote & Crow’s orbit. I want to acknowledge my business partners, the artists I get to work with, the fans, the super fans, the volunteers, the writers – many of whom are Native.
Over the course of this month, we’ll be adding tons of new things to this list. We’ll publicize each thing as they happen on social media as well as updating this post here. There are going to be sales, contests, announcements, shout outs, and more.
November 1st
Native November begins! All month long, Coyote & Crow games and accessories will be on sale in our webstore and on Amazon! There are huge savings across the board.
If Amazon is your go to, head over to our Amazon page to see all the sales!
Otherwise, head over to our Webstore, where almost everything is on sale, including:
Our “Decolonize Your Gaming” t-shirts
Coyote & Crow core rulebooks
Stories of the Free Lands Adventures
Hemlock & Sage, a novel set in Coyote & Crow
& more!
NOTE: THE DISCOUNTS WILL APPLY ONCE ITEMS ARE IN YOUR CART!
November 2nd
Hero Forge Actual Play!
We’re excited to announce that Hero Forge, will be premiering a Coyote & Crow actual play series, Chaos in Cahokia, on their channel: twitch.tv/heroforge. You can catch the first episode at 2pm PST on Tuesday 11/7! There’s an amazing cast – Anica Seelie, Joey Clift, Kelly D’Angelo, Kitty Heite, and Matt Joro! If you want to see a fun (and funny!) play through of Coyote & Crow, this is going to be the one to watch.
November 3rd
Parternship with Start Playing to Raise Money For Illuminative
We’ve partnered with Start Playing to raise money all month for Illuminative, an Indigneous non-profit focused on social justice issues. You can learn more about the event HERE. This is a great opportunity for Story Guides to run sessions of Coyote & Crow online and raise money at the same time. It’s also a great chance for folks new to Coyote & Crow to jump into a game, make new friends, and learn to play.
November 6th
Today we launch a month long sale through our partners at Drive Thru RPG! You can get all of our digital products – the core book, Roll20VTT, Stories of the Free Lands, and our novel, Hemlock & Sage – at hugely reduced prices. Most more than 50% off!
The Hero Forge actual play campaign of Coyote & Crow, “Chaos in Cahokia” launches on twitch.tv! You can find the episode HERE.
November 8th
We have launched our Moon Six & Hero Forge miniatures contest. You can read more The Moon Six, or head on over to our Native November Contest Channel on our Discord for the full rules and details. You can win free painted minis and you don’t have to buy anything to enter!
November 10th
Throughout Native American Heritage Month, we’ll be spotlighting various Indigenous creatives and their endeavors. Today, we’re focusing on Indiginerds: Tales From Modern Indigenous Life, a comic anthology from tons of great Native writers and artists, and edited by the super talented Alina Pete. Give it a look and support them if you can. They’ve only got a week left to crowdfund!
November 17th
We’ve partnered with POEM, a Native-owned merchandise company to launch some fantastic new products. Three acrylic 3D prints, and a metal sign based on our logo. The Jeffrey Veregge print is a little extra special as we’ll be donating all profits from it to benefit the GoFundMe page for Jeffrey, which is raising money for his fight against Lupus. Check out the new merch in our SHOP. You can also go directly donate to Jeffrey’s GoFundMe.
November 20th
We’ve got brand new Hanawi Sakpi art from resident Coyote & Crow artists Sadekaronhes Esquivel!
November 24th
We’ve made an exciting update to our donation program for Coyote & Crow. For the full details, see our blog post about it!
Thank you so much to everyone who has helped make Coyote & Crow what it is. Let’s spread that love by supporting Native artists, writers, creatives, small businesses and non-profits throughout this month.
Some of our amazing Coyote & Crow crew at Big Bad ConWith my Chief, Chief Hoskin, and his daughter, at a Cherokee Nation at-large gatheringCoyote And Crow News ||
Buckle up folks because this is going to be a long one. But if you’re interested in seeing – or helping create – expansions and sourcebooks for the Coyote & Crow RPG, this post might be worth your time.
How We Got Here
When I started seriously writing and crafting C&C back in 2018, it was just me at first. Eventually, I brought on a few writers and a few artists. By the time we delivered the game in 2021, there were well over 40 people involved in the creation, not counting all of our play testers.
Once the game took off, Coyote & Crow went from being just an RPG to being an entire game company. And while I want to write more RPG material, A) I also want to produce a range of accessible games for the whole family, and B) I’m not in a position where I have the right voice to be writing many of these books.
So while I’ve been developing other games, individual stories for C&C, and doing lots of other things, regional expansion books have kind of taken a back seat.
What I’m Aiming For
When we’re talking about expansions, my primary goal is to have Native authors and artists feel like they have a direct say in creating regional books that help tell the stories of the fictional nations in Coyote & Crow. I want those books to feel radically different from the core book. In their layout and style, but also in their content. Indigenous Americans are not monolithic, not by a long shot, and I want every region of both continents to feel like they have a chance to really shine and bring their own flavor to this alternate future.
Here are the books that I’d like to see at a bare minimum:
One book for each of the four fictional nations around the Free Lands:
Ti’Swaq
Keetoowagi
Haudenosaunee
Dine’
A Mesoamerica book that covers:
The Ezcan Empire
The Raramuri
The Taino
A South America Book that covers:
Tawantin
Cambaba
Aniil
United Tupi States
Confederacy of Bocata e Hunza
Just that list is six full books. And if we add in a full Free Lands book and made books for each of the Mesoamerican and South American nations, it’s double that. And that’s without even getting into conversations around localization for the core book or translations for any of these into languages that would be serving the communities we’re writing fictionalized versions of. Is the Ezcan Empire book published in the U.S., in English? Or do we publish through a Mexican partner in Spanish and then have it localized?
And which book should be done first? How do we choose an order for these books to be made in? If we make two of them and the third one fails to crowdfund, do we stop, leaving all of the other nations without source material?
The Hole I’ve Dug For Myself
Here’s an entirely self-created problem. I decided I want to be a game designer. Cool. I’ve also taken on the role of being a game publisher. Cool. Except that I really don’t want to be a publisher. It’s not where my strengths lie and frankly, it’s exhausting. I am not a Lord Business type. The reason I decided to become a publisher is that I didn’t trust anyone else (non-Native publishers) to handle the little seedling that is Coyote & Crow. Not that there aren’t good people out there. There are. But they are game companies first, and Native representation probably isn’t even a tertiary priority for them. Let alone having that be a focus for their games. “Coyote & Crow” brought to you by <Insert White-Owned Company X Here> just isn’t a good look.
Having a full time day job allowed me to work on Coyote & Crow for years in my spare time. But now, as a game publisher with a staff of one (me), if I want to be around in ten years time to publish the 6th Coyote & Crow expansion book, I have to focus on the things that will ensure my company doors stay open.
So, once again, I’m going to toss the traditional (game company) way of doing things out the window and I’m going to try to approach this from a different angle, a community angle.
You’re Going To Create Our Next Coyote & Crow Book
Which brings me to how we’re going to proceed. Coyote & Crow Games – as of now – is taking submissions for Coyote & Crow regional expansion books. Please read through this carefully if you’re interested because it’s closer to the idea of how a game designer might pitch a brand new game to a game publisher than it is how most RPGs are handled.
What I’m looking for specifically is a supplement for Coyote & Crow suitable to go to crowdfunding and focusing on one of the following:
The Dine’ Republic
The Keetoowagi Federation
Haudenosaunee
Ti’Swaq Alliance
Mesoamerica (Ezcan, Raramuri, Taino)
South America (incl. the 5 fictional nations)
If you are interested in creating one of these supplements, you’ll need to be prepared to submit the following to Coyote & Crow Games:
A comprehensive chapter breakdown of the supplement that includes outlines of alternate history for the region, ideas for different Abilities and Paths, Icons & Legends and more (pre-gen NPCs, one shots, new equipment, etc).
At least 10,000 words of edited sample text
At least 12 original illustrations that you would expect to go into print in the book
In addition, when I say “you”, what I mean is that each submission will need to be compiled by a team, organized by and amongst yourselves. The team will need to meet the following minimum standards:
Minimum of 3 writers
All writers must have Indigenous heritage from the region they are writing about
The writing team must be of a diverse background outside of their Indigenous heritage
Minimum of 2 illustrators
The illustrations must not use AI in any way
While you can have non-Native illustrators involved, the plurality of your illustrations must come from Native illustrators, preferably from the regions you are writing about
Let me be clear that this is not a job opening. You aren’t applying for me to give you work. Don’t ask me to find you artists or ask me what you should write. What I want is for you and your team to present me with enough ready-to-go material that I can make a decision on whether to invest further in it and take it to crowdfunding.
So what do you get out of this? Well, to put it bluntly, whatever you want. When you submit the materials, you’re welcome to add in your budget to finish the project. How much do you and your team need to get this book finished? I’ll need a full breakdown of your costs and plans. While you don’t need to submit that to me at the time of your primary submission, it’s something we’d need to hash out before we go to crowdfunding. You’ll need to asses your time and effort and what value that has for all of you. Be realistic. Be fair to yourself. If you don’t have a clue, that’s okay. We can have frank conversations about that.
But it doesn’t end there. Because if you submit something and we come to an agreement on how to take it across the finish line, that means that you (either a single person or the entire team you collaborated with) will be responsible for putting together the rest of the book and getting it ready for crowdfunding. That will mean writing, working with editors and layout specialists, all of the things that go into putting that book together.
Make no mistake. This would be an enormous undertaking. But you have some things going for you too! First, having done this myself the first time around, I can help you avoid easy mistakes. You have a huge and excitable fan base to recruit from and for play testing. You don’t have to build out a new rules set and you have your setting already primed and ready to go. And when it comes to crowdfunding, publishing, sales, marketing etc., I’ve got all of that already covered and in place and you don’t have to manage that at all.
One final suggestion. If you’re interested in doing this, hop over to our Discord (https://discord.com/invite/CGGbwNBRDD ) And join the “Expansion Book” channel. This way you can find others to collaborate with. I’d hate for two groups of people who aren’t communicating with each other at all, each submit two separate proposals for the same regional book when they could have been working together from the start.
When you’re ready to submit, please send an email with a zipped folder or a link to a folder on the cloud with your materials. In the email, please include the names and background of everyone who worked on the materials and identify who your project lead is. Email that all to: connor at coyoteandcrow.net and use the subject line “Expansion Submission” please.
Wrapping It Up
I realize this is an unconventional way to do things. And it may not work at all. I get it. But I’d rather do this than wait until some magical day comes along when I can afford the time and money to hire a project lead and start on one new regional book, 3 years from now, just to have the majority of you annoyed that I didn’t pick a different region to start with. The power is in your hands now. You’re going to tell me what you all want and I’ll try to make it happen.
In the meantime, I’m going to continue to expand the Coyote & Crow universe in ways that play to my strengths and heritage. Help me if you feel inspired to.
