Hey folks! I'm so excited to announce that we've released our stretch goal story from Allen Turner, Creep. It's a dark, twisted tale and our grimmest yet and I love it! You should receive an email notifying you of the download shortly if you haven't already. Regardless, you can always find all the downloads on your BackerKit pledge page.
I'm also excited to say that today is first day of a week full of daily announcements, going through Gen Con and ending with the last day of our crowdfunding of Wolves.
Speaking of Wolves, we're down to our last seven days for our new tabletop board game. We'd love it if you could take a look at our campaign and if you can't back it, please share the link around to your friends, family and social media circles. It would really help us.
If you don't follow us on social media, you can get all of our exciting news updates over this next week in a collected email by signing up for our newsletter at: https://coyoteandcrow.net/newsletter/
And with that...we say goodbye to this campaign on BackerKit. Thank you so much for your support and for helping us expand our world and help it grow. We've got so many great new things on the way that I think you're going to love.
It's been a bit, but I wanted to let you know that our next game, Wolves, has just gone live on Kickstarter. I'm really proud of this game. It's a semi-cooperative game about community survival and features gorgeous art from Native artists, gifting economies, no plastics (and is FSC certified) and options to donate copies to schools and libraries.
If you are enjoying the Coyote & Crow Roleplaying Game and what our company is trying to do, I'd ask that you check out our new Kickstarter and see if it's something that speaks to you. You'll find it here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/coyoteandcrow/wolves-0
I also understand that times are tough for many folks. If backing isn't an option for you, but you'd like to help, you can do so by letting other folks know about the project - through social media or any other forums you feel comfortable with.
Wolves, a semi-cooperative game for 3-6 players
Thank you again for all you have done to help sustain Coyote & Crow Games. This new game wouldn't have been possible without your enthusiastic support and love.
I am so excited to announce the launch of our new stand alone board game, Wolves. It's a family friendly, semi-cooperative game for 3-6 players.
We've decided to return to Kickstarter for this campaign after long discussions with both Kickstarter and Backerkit. As Coyote & Crow was done through my personal Kickstarter account, we've moved over to an official Coyote & Crow Games account. You can sign up to be notified of our launch here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/coyoteandcrow/wolves-0
We hope you'll continue to follow us on our journey to bring fresh perspectives and diverse ideas to the gaming space. Wolves will launch on July 10th!
The day has finally arrived. You should all be receiving an email notice soon that Stories of the Free Lands Volumes 1 and 2 have been delivered.
In each of the two zipped folders I just sent out links to, you'll find five playable PDF Stories, along with the bonus cover art, the art from our fan art contest, and a bonus motion graphic from artists Seth Rutledge.
I owe some thanks. Obviously to all of the writers and artists who contributed to Stories of the Free Lands. But also a big thank you to Rachel Savicki and Francita Soto. Francita did the layouts and she was so gracious about taking direction over a period of time that was so far out from our original estimates. And Rachel was originally hired to just be a copy editor. But when we had to change up our original project lead, she stepped in and developed the HECK out of these Stories.
For everyone involved, this was supposed to be a small scale, yet unusual challenge. After all, most artists were only contributing one stories worth of pieces, each writer only had to put together around 5000 words each. When I set this project in motion, we were originally planning on these releasing at the same time as the Coyote & Crow RPG was supposed to be hitting retail shelves.
But writing for even an RPG with an established history can be a challenge and the uncomfortable truth was that none of us, even me, had extensive experience writing or playing Coyote & Crow. We were all green when it came to the nuances of what makes a good playable Story in Coyote & Crow.
And now, here we are. Volume 1 & 2 are done. Let me be a little open with you here. This project nearly broke me, nearly broke my spirit. The damage that that our previous project lead and our event coordinator caused wasn't just financial, or just time. It was an emotional whiplash that really sapped me for quite a long time. The delays in putting this project together were just an endless string of paper cuts between my fingers. No one thing that would have stopped me, but in total, there were so many that I almost couldn't continue.
Yet, there were some things that helped me keep moving forward and I want to mention them here.
The amazing fans on our Discord
The progress we've made with our new tabletop game, Wolves
The tireless work from Francita and Rachel
The incredible time I had at Indigipop X and getting to be around so many funny, kind, creative Natives
Getting nominated for a Nebula Award and winning TWO Tabletop Awards
Starting work on the next Coyote & Crow book
Along with a slew of slowly evolving positive things in my personal life.
So yeah, we made it! And now that you have them, I'm so excited for you all to start playing them. For all of the writers and artists of these stories to get the accolades they deserve. I hope you like them. They're funny, and scary, and exciting, and intriguing, and sweet. There's a wealth of Indigenous knowledge in these stories - often hidden between the lines. I hope you absorb it, without even knowing you have. I hope these Stories launch or grow your Coyote & Crow Sagas and that they help you start writing your own Stories.
But we're not done!
Coming soon, we'll have another Story for you from Allen Turner featuring art from Tate Allen. That should be arriving in your in boxes in just a few weeks.
And Wolves, our new board game, is going to be coming to Kickstarter in just a couple of months! I'm really proud of this game and what we're bringing to tabletop.
There's more as well. Partnerships we'll be announcing in the coming weeks and months, new merch, another game, organized play - so much! The takeaway is that the future is looking bright for Coyote & Crow. Your support of Stories of the Free Lands helped make that possible.
Osiyo folks! (Hello!) Great news to report. Based on our current projections, we're going to be able to deliver Stories of the Free Lands to backers by the end of April. That's right, both Volumes are heading into the final stages, and I'm feeling good about being able to hand them over to you all by the end of this month.
What you'll be receiving is a notification from BackerKit that your downloads are available. You'll come back to your pledge page here on BackerKit and you'll find your download available. If you ever lose it for some reason, you can always come back to the page and download it again.
Each Volume will be a separate zipped file and contain the following:
Five playable stories in PDF format
1 piece of art that act as 'covers' for the volume in JPG format
A copy of the fan art that won our fan art contest in JPG format
The bonus story from Allen Turner is coming shortly after that and will be a separate download. We'll have a separate notification and download link for that story, which will come as a single PDF.
Once that happens, we'll be moving on to our next campaign for our new board game Wolves. For the handful of stragglers (a surprisingly small number of backers - thank you!) that haven't filled out your surveys yet, we'll check back here monthly to see if you've completed them. Remember, you only have through August of this year to fill them out and then we'll consider your pledge abandoned.
I'm so excited to get these stories to you all. We've put a lot of love and effort into them and now we just need you to tell us all how these stories end.
Best wishes, Connor Alexander
A Scene From "Whispers From The Well"
