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Coyote & Crow the Role Playing Game

Created by Coyote & Crow RPG

A science fiction and fantasy tabletop RPG set in a near-future where the Americas were never colonized, created by a team of Natives.

Latest Updates from Our Project:

Indigenous People's Day Surprise!
over 2 years ago – Tue, Oct 12, 2021 at 09:27:00 PM

Today is Indigenous People’s Day in the United States, a day that can be tough for many of us, and I thought it would be nice to surprise all of you with a huge package of Coyote & Crow material. We don’t have the full game for you - yet. That’s still on track for November, along with some of the other stretch goals and rewards.

With that said, I’m so excited to share with all of you the results of endless hours of hard work, love and deep thought from so many of us behind the scenes at Coyote & Crow. Let’s jump into all the great stuff at your fingertips as of today!

→Our YouTube channel is live! Pe Metawe Consulting have dropped their first two videos, the World of Coyote & Crow and Character Creation! They’ll have more soon. These are great at helping ease folks into the game.

You can go directly to our channel, watch the videos and subscribe for more here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7BLqwZDsaB64aLYrwShG6w

→ Our website has undergone a huge upgrade! We have a host of new features available for you. We’ll break them down one by one here:

→ Our Chahi Character name generator is live! https://coyoteandcrow.net/chahi-name/

With this fantastic tool you can generate realistic names for your Characters and NPCs with millions of combinations and meanings!

→ Our official forums are live! https://coyoteandcrow.net/forum/

Here you can chat about many different C&C topics, interact with C&C writers and creators, post cosplay pics, discuss world building and rules, and even work on translations of the game into Indigenous languages!

→ Our official Wiki is live! https://coyoteandcrow.net/wiki/

Here you can browse through Chahi words and get their translations or lookup definitions of game terms. We’ll evolve this Wiki as the game and its world expands.

→ Our Resources Page is live! https://coyoteandcrow.net/gamefiles/

This page will house all of our future free downloadable resources. Currently, it has two versions of our official Character sheet. A fillable PDF, and a more print friendly version! Future free files will be available on this page.

But that’s not all!

→ Our official free mobile app is ready to go! Available for Android and iOS, this app will give you access to much of the website's functionality, including the name generator, news feed and link to the YouTube videos, but also gives folks access to a fully functioning d12 system dice generator. It will sort your d12 rolls, allowing you to make adjustments for Focus and takes into account Criticals. For those of you having a hard time corralling a sufficient pool of d12s to play C&C, this should make life a lot easier!

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.coyoteandcrow.mobile.android

iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/coyote-crow/id1586555365

We hope these tools are as exciting for you as they are for us. Our team worked very hard to push our timetable up on these and get them to you on this important date. We hope it brings a little joy into your day and your future games of Coyote & Crow.

Love,

The Coyote & Crow Team

Remember: Vaccinate, Mask Up, Be Safe

Update #16
over 2 years ago – Sun, Oct 03, 2021 at 11:55:45 PM

Hello Coyotes and Crows!

Sorry for the delay on the update. I’ve been traveling a bit on a vacation that’s been delayed for more than two years now. I’m sure we all have similar stories. But not to worry, things are progressing fantastically with the game and I’ve got nothing but good news for you.

Let’s start with progress on the core book. As I write this, the initial layouts for the first three sections of the books have been given to me for final tweaks. The final section will be started shortly. Our editing has almost wrapped and all of our core art is done. Really exciting times!

That means that we’re still on track to hopefully get the files to the printer by the end of this month. It also means that from there, the timeline gets a little more murky, but not much. Printing is expected to take 12-13 weeks. Then we have shipping from the printer to our warehouse, then staging and distribution out to all of you. What that translates to is that hopefully you’ll be receiving your physical books in February.

As far as digital rewards, those are all coming along nicely as well. Once we have final files, we’ll be getting them to Roll20 and other folks that need them asap. All of the other stretch goals, like the mobile app, are moving into their final stages on schedule. That means that we’re on target to bring you the PDF and other rewards some time in November. The Roll20 version is a little more of a moving target as we have to wait for their team to translate those files, but I’ve been assured that before the end of the year is an attainable goal.

In other news, we’re still making some tough choices about what we want to include in our next Kickstarter. The realities of everything from paper shortages, to shipping delays, freight costs and more is making us rethink some of our initial plans. My hope is that we can bring you an exciting follow up Kickstarter that will include all of the extras you’d want to help elevate your Coyote & Crow experience and get it to you very very shortly after the campaign wraps. Don’t hold me to this, but I’m really trying to see if we can make a January campaign happen with a May delivery to backers. I’m going to do my best. I may be biting off more than we can chew there.

I’m not going to jump into any game details this month. Instead, I’m just going to leave you with this brilliant piece of art from Tate Allen. This is a yawpon tea ceremony (yawpon is the Chahi word for the real world yaupon tea). During the day, tea is often a ritualized social interaction and is about good company and conversation. At night however, the same tea houses infuse their drinks with various mind-altering substances and the tenor changes to something more introspective and sometimes even hedonistic.

Yawpon Tea Ceremony, by Tate Allen

Take care, get vaccinated, mask up, be kind.

Best,

Connor Alexander

Update #15
over 2 years ago – Fri, Sep 03, 2021 at 11:25:28 PM

Well, here we are again. Another month gone by! I hope you’re all safe and healthy. Things are becoming a bit of a blur for me personally. Between Covid skyrocketing once again and Hurricane Ida, my nerves are shot. But we’re still marching on over here at C&C.

So let’s get to the updates!

Core Rule Book

We’re down to just eight pieces of unfinished art work for the book as of the time of this writing and all eight are currently being worked on! Collecting the art for this book has been one of our biggest challenges and has been a two year journey for me personally. But we’re seeing the end of the tunnel. We ended with 24 total artists, 17 of them Indigenous. I’m really proud of that.

Our layout designer and our editor are hard at work assembling and finalizing the book. We’re hoping to have final files completed by around the middle of October. That’s great news for getting you the full PDF of the game in November. The bad news is that based on print time estimates, it means that physical books probably won’t arrive to our warehouse until the end of the year. That means it may realistically be February before backers receive their physical copies and March before the book reaches retailers. We’ll update these timelines as we go.

I guess overall, March is really only three months after when we originally wanted to get books to you, so that’s not too bad. In the world we’re all living in, I’m going to call that a win.

Other Rewards and Goals

Yesterday I picked up the limited prints that are going to be included with the Seeker Pledge level. They look beautiful! Other things are coming along as well!

  • The Character name generator is finished and it’s amazing
  • The forums are built
  • The Wiki is being built out and is looking good
  • Our fillable PDF character sheet is finished and is really cool
  • The mobile app is coming along nicely and I’m looking forward to the next build

As mentioned above, we’re also currently on track to deliver our digital rewards in November. This will include:

  • The full PDF of the game
  • All website upgrades (including forums, Wiki and more)
  • The mobile app
  • The character name generator
  • Our official Discord server
  • YouTube channel with ‘how to’ videos
  • The “Rules Light” PDF RPG intro game
  • An Actual Play series

Other products

  • Writer Shay Snow is working on the Roll20 Exclusive Story
  • Writer Derek Pounds is working on a new digital Story release that will hopefully be available in November after the full game PDF launches
  • We are officially working on the first Coyote & Crow novel! We’ll have a more formal announcement soon.
  • Two other games set in Coyote & Crow are currently in development
  • We’ve started a POD merch shop on RedBubble for now. The selection will expand over time and move to our own webstore eventually. In the meantime, you can shop here: https://www.redbubble.com/people/CoyoteAndCrow/shop
  • We’re about to dive into the initial steps of organizing our next Kickstarter. We don’t have a timeline yet, but we’re hoping we can launch it soon. We’ll have more information on that as it develops.
Average multi-generational home life in Cahokia. Art by Mackenzie Neal (Quapaw Nation)

Game Design

This month, I’d like to talk about Character progression in Coyote & Crow and what we call the Legendary system. We’re just going to cover it broadly here and leave the details for the book, but I thought it was important to cover a few aspects because they tie in closely with some of the overall themes of the game. Character progression is built around some core conceits:

  • We didn’t want it to be too mathy or point based
  • We didn’t want to reward violence or murder
  • We didn’t want to reward material gain or greed
  • We wanted progression to be easy to keep track of
  • We wanted it to be tied in with the concept that your characters aren’t just heroes but heroes whose legends will be told for generations to come

The whole process is measured in Sessions, where a Session is simply an instance where your play group gets together to play Coyote & Crow. Your Character can advance current Skills or gain new ones, they can increase, reduce, gain or lose Gifts and Burdens, increase their Stats, or obtain items outside of their normal financial means. A Character can pursue two Short Term Goals and one Long Term Goal all at the same time. After an appropriate number of Sessions, your Character simply makes the change to their Character and then they can give themselves a new goal.

But there’s also a Story Guide aspect to this. They get to create a secret Long Term Goal for the whole group. Normally, it’s the culmination of the Story arc that the Guide has the Characters on. We’ll have advice in the book for the average number of Sessions and how to craft a meaningful Long Term Goal.

The difference between the group Long Term Goal and the individual Character Long Term Goals is that when the Characters complete this goal, they gain a Legendary Rank and get to create a Tale. Each Legendary Rank allows Players to manipulate a single die value by 1, changing any one die roll during a Check, up or down by one.

But even better, in my humble opinion, is that each Player is encouraged to craft a Tale, a summary of the events of the Story that got them the Rank. Players write them in isolation and are encouraged to embellish, enhance and straight up fabricate the actual events of the Story and can make them a short story, poem, song lyrics, whatever they’d like. The idea is that these Tales are the events retold generations later around a late night fire with the Player’s Character as the central hero of the Story. The next time you all get together to play your next Session, players can then share their Tales with each other.

And as much as I’m looking forward to hearing about your actual Stories and Characters and Sagas, I’m really excited to hear your individual Tales. In fact, let’s lay stake to the hashtag now:  #CoyoteAndCrowTales. When you’re at that point, share your Tales with all of us on social media. Let out your inner storyteller!

That’s it for now folks!

Update #14 - and a big announcement!
over 2 years ago – Tue, Aug 03, 2021 at 12:32:48 AM

It’s been a busy month! I hope you’re all well, safe, and vaccinated. There are a ton of things going on over here at Coyote & Crow. Let’s jump into news about the core rule book development first, then we’ll talk about other C&C products, drop a big announcement, and lastly get into some details on Gifts and Burdens, my favorite game mechanic within Coyote & Crow.


Coyote & Crow Development

I’m really pleased to report that our core writing is done! We’re also mostly wrapped on our sensitivity edit and our copy edit is well underway. As chapters are finished and we collect art assets, those chapters are being passed along to our layout designer. We’re also in the process of incorporating the last bits of feedback from our play testing processes. Things are coming into sharper focus every day.

Our one hang up is, of course, art. However, we have made good strides. As I write this we have only sixteen pieces of art left that are unassigned to an artist. We also have 77(!) pieces of completed art from more than 20 artists. I’m so proud of the work they’re doing.

Overall, things are coming along smashingly and I’m so excited for you all to see the thing of beauty we’re assembling. There is however, one big blot on all of this and it’s definitely something I want to explain to everyone. It concerns the price of the game. Before anyone gets their hackles up, no, we aren’t going to be asking backers for more money. Your games are fine and locked in.

However, we’ve officially made the decision to change the retail price of the game from $50 to $60. It was tough to do, but there was some really sound logic behind it and I want folks to understand all of the reasons and how it may affect things going forward.

When I was a naïve young man back in March of 2021, I priced Coyote & Crow’s core rule book at $50 and set up our shipping costs for the Kickstarter based on a few assumptions. First, it was an ‘average’ price of a hardback RPG core book. I assumed our book would come in at about 350 pages and had gotten manufacturing quotes based around that. I also expected to do no more than about about $25,000 total on our Kickstarter if it went well. Meaning I expected to be shipping around 500 books. We subsidized our shipping costs into part of the price in order to make shipping an easier calculation for everyone, even though it was going to potentially eat into our margins if shipping costs increased at all. What’s the worst that could happen, I thought?

So here we are in July and we’re facing a huge materials shortage, world wide, including paper. We’re dealing with huge increases in shipping and freight costs. Instead of 500 books, I’m delivering 17000. Instead of 350 pages, we’re coming in at over 400.

Things have changed. And likely the game industry as a whole, will never go back to the way it was. I may talk more about the overall situation on our development blog, but the point is, changing Coyote & Crow from $50 to $60 at retail isn’t an outlier situation. Instead, it’s likely indicative of an industry wide shift to an increase in prices for games. Again, if you backed Coyote & Crow, or did a late pledge, your games are locked in and you’re good. We’re not asking you for more money.

But starting on August 15th, we’ll be raising the prices of the book on the late pledge page of our BackerKit to $60 and investigating an increase to our shipping rates.  So if you haven’t backed and are thinking about it, you may want to do that soon if money is an issue for you. It’s also likely that we’ll be looking at an increase in prices in all future Coyote & Crow products too, especially if they contain plastic or have to come from overseas.


Upcoming Products

Okay, with that out of the way, let’s talk about other upcoming products!

  • We’re in discussion with a Native author to write a novel set in the world of Coyote & Crow! We're already excitedly discussing basic character concepts and an overall theme and plot.
  • We have an up and coming Native game designer working with a well known hobby game designer and they’re developing a tabletop game set in Coyote & Crow. That's likely something for 2023.
  • We’re almost finished with development on a dice based game set in Coyote & Crow. Hoping that's something for 2022 but a lot of that depends on the freight and manufacturing situation.
  • We’re organizing ourselves to be ready for our next Kickstarter for the RPG, which will likely happen right around the time we’re delivering digital rewards to folks and we think you’re going to love what we have planned. Timing is TBD still as we want to make sure people feel like they aren’t backing another Kickstarter before they’ve gotten their first one.
  • We’re going to have our first POD merch available very soon! Keep an eye on our social media for that announcement and link
  • Work is proceeding on our mobile app, our website upgrades and our name generator and Wiki.
  • We have a few other digital products that are in the wings that we’re working to release at the same time as our other digital rewards. More soon!

Our Big Announcement

Coyote & Crow is overjoyed to announce that we’ve entered into a partnership with Pe Metawe Consulting! Pe Metawe is an Edmonton based, Indigenous owned and operated firm that offers a large array of consulting services and workshops. They also own a retail game shop!

As Coyote & Crow began to grow, we realized that we didn’t really have either the expertise or the bandwidth needed to handle some of our social media challenges. The folks at Pe Metawe have enthusiastically stepped up to help us plan and organize some incredible tools and services for all of you. I’m so excited to see everything they’ll be doing to help grow the Coyote & Crow community.

So what is it that Pe Metawe will be doing for us? This is just a brief outline of the things they’ll be bringing to you all in the coming months:

  • A series of videos on a dedicated Coyote & Crow YouTube channel, including things like ‘how to run an encounter’, ‘how our dice mechanics work’, ‘how to build a character’ and more.
  • Hosting and moderating our official Discord Channel, coming soon
  • Helping to moderate our official website forums at coyoteandcrow.net, also coming soon
  • Organizing and producing an ongoing actual play series with an original Coyote & Crow Saga.

You  can find out more about Pe Metawe Consulting and Pe Metawe Games at:

Pe Metawe Games and Consulting
Art Interlude - A Character using the Far Sight Ability By Mackenzie Neal (Quapaw Nation)

Gifts and Burdens

This mechanic might be my favorite thing we developed for the game. While Stats and Skills and Abilities are all well and good and add a ton of mechanical value, Gifts and Burdens are what really make a Character feel realized. At least, that’s my strongly held belief. They make Characters feel more like real people and give them ways to shine and struggle that make them relatable.

The concept for Gifts and Burdens was certainly inspired by Merits & Flaws from Vampire the Masquerade. One of the things that I never really liked about that system though was that values were objectively attached to each of the merits and flaws. The overall idea is still fantastic but its implementation hasn’t aged well. Revamping it required some key changes. Foremost among those is the concept that whether any particular thing is a Gift or a Burden is decided by how your Character views it.

But before we jump into further explanations and examples, let’s define what a Gift or Burden is. These are things that a Player chooses for their Character or can be assigned by Story Guides that add flavor or distinction to your Character and also have a mechanical effect on game play. That last part is key and I’ll explain why in just a second. Gifts and Burdens are also Ranked, from Level 1 to Level 3. Level 1 is minor or trivial while Level 3 is pervasive or critical. Often, each Level equates to a modification to a Character’s Success Number on a Skill Check.

So how does it all work? Let’s use an example that we use in the core book as well. Let’s say you are building your Character and you decide that you want them to have a sister. Great! You can just include that in your Background section. Done. But wait, you decide that the relationship with the sister is important enough to your Character that you want it to have a mechanical effect in the game. That’s where your Character’s point of view comes into play. Do they see their sister as a positive or negative effect on their life? Or both? Maybe they’re a little sister who is always getting into trouble, causing you to divert time and energy to get her out of situations. Maybe she’s a scientist who is always there to help you solve technical challenges that your Character isn’t skilled at. Maybe she’s someone who is always causing you problems, but is also there whenever you really need her. You’ll decide whether your sister is a Gift, Burden, or both as well as what Level.

You might be asking why you’d ever give your Character a Burden. Besides the fun of it and the depth it brings to your Characters, it also supplies you with a few extra points to play with during your Character creation process, allowing you more points for Skills and Stats. In addition, there are other ways that your Character may receive Burdens during game play from the Story Guide (we’ll get into that another time).

So let’s say you’ve chosen to give your Character a little sister. You’ve written her down as a Level 2 Burden, which is pretty involved. Maybe she needs to be with you often and you struggle to find ways to leave her at home instead of bringing her along on your adventures. You’ll work with your Story Guide to set up the exact situation. From there, the Story Guide will decide when this Burden comes into play. A standard effect might be a modification to your needed Success Numbers on Checks. And any time you need to make Dice Checks and your little sister is involved, you’ll receive a +2 penalty to your Success Number. Meaning that if you’d normally need to roll a 6 or higher for a Success, you’d now need an 8. There could be other ways to define the mechanical effect as well and you the Story Guide are encouraged to do so.

Keep in mind that your sister being a Burden, doesn’t automatically mean she’s annoying or cruel or careless, etc. It may mean that your Character cares deeply about her well-being and is often distracted by her presence or puts her above your Character’s own needs.

You’re also welcome to take a Gift or Burden more than once. Or the same thing is both a Gift and Burden. Maybe that same sister is a resource or source of strength for your Character. Or maybe you have two sisters that are important enough to your Character to have a mechanical effect on the game. The combinations are vast and the point is that you and your Story Guide should collaborate to ensure that you’re taking Gifts and Burdens that not only help round out your Character, but are able to be integrated into your Saga and don’t overburden your Story Guide.

There are a number of basic categories we list out in the core book to help you get started on creating your Gifts and Burdens, but you aren’t restricted to them. Some can only be taken as Burdens. Some have special rules or qualifications. You’re also encouraged to work with your Story Guide to create new categories if you have ideas. Here are the categories we offer in the core book:

  • Family
  • Allies and Opponents
  • Financial
  • Spirit World Connection
  • Animal Connection
  • Fears
  • Secrets
  • Quirks
  • Curses and Blessings
  • Addictions
  • Notoriety
  • Companions

As you can see, there’s a lot to choose from and within each category, a multitude of possibilities. The goal is to give you a wide variety of ways to shape and refine your Character to anything you can imagine. And as your game evolves and your Character progresses, you’ll gain Gifts and Burdens, lose them, and change them.

In our next update, we’ll discuss the Legendary System, which is our answer to experience and Character progression. Part of this includes the evolution of Gifts and Burdens.

That’s all for now. I hope you have a great week. Please be careful and kind. Get vaccinated, mask up. Oh, and if you haven’t filled out your backer survey yet(I’m looking at all 908 of you), get it done, please!

Connor Alexander

Update #13
over 2 years ago – Sun, Jul 04, 2021 at 02:17:26 AM

We’re marching ever forward, folks. Let’s jump right into all of the news.

First, based on the overwhelmingly supportive comments from our last update, we’re taking our foot off of the gas a bit and adjusting our timelines. While we still technically might get physical books to people by December, that’s looking less likely every day. Our biggest slow down at this point is art. Currently, we have about two thirds of our art either complete or in progress and about one third to go. We’ve currently got art from 18 different artists and likely at least three more coming on board. If you’re an experienced artist, and you’d like to contribute, it’s not too late if you can work on a clock. See our job listing for more ( https://coyoteandcrow.net/2021/05/09/coyote-crow-creative-opportunities/)

Our writing is about 96% done and we’ll hopefully be wrapping the last of it in the next week or so. Our editor has already started tuning up our finished chapters. Play testing is under way and we’re going to be working on final tweaks in the development process over the next month.

We also have a special treat for you. While this isn’t 100% locked in yet, this should give you a really clear sample of how our layouts are going to look. And oh my, do I love them. I hope you do as well.

Sample Layout

These pages come from the chapter, “Waya’s Lesson”, which is a short story at the start of the book that helps sets the tone for the game and is a soft introduction to this really big world.

All in all, everything we need for the PDF and physical book are not that far off of our original timeline. However, assuming we wrap everything and have files ready for the printer by September, we’re still looking at least 13 weeks for the printing process, plus shipping time to our warehouse. Then, allowing for time for backers to get their individual books shipped out, we’re looking at the end of the year already. This puts us in a situation where what will likely happen will be a late 2021 delivery for digital rewards, early 2022 (January or February) for the physical book and a month or two after that for a retail release of the game.

The mobile app development and website are coming along and we’re going to be able to release those alongside all of our digital rewards, as planned, in November.

We have some pre-news to share. This information is subject to change and isn’t official yet, but I want to keep everyone as up to date as I can.

  • We’re currently working on TWO tabletop games that are set in the Coyote & Crow universe. I’ll have more to say about those as they become more “official”.
  • We have an opportunity for an Ojibwe game designer. This would be a co-design role for a tabletop game that C&C LLC would publish but is NOT set in the Coyote & Crow universe. Please see this post for more: https://coyoteandcrow.net/2021/05/09/coyote-crow-creative-opportunities/
  • We’re developing our next Kickstarter for Coyote & Crow which will have a TON of cool stuff to add to your Coyote & Crow TTRPG experience.
  • We’re also taking applications for a Native writer with publishing experience to write a novel set in the world of Coyote & Crow. For more, go here: https://coyoteandcrow.net/2021/05/09/coyote-crow-creative-opportunities/

So, that’s where everything is at as far as production and timelines.

Now, let’s talk about the game! In this update, I’d like to transition from Paths, which we discussed last time, over to Abilities. Abilities in Coyote & Crow are the true leap from science fiction to fantasy for your characters, allowing them to do things that normal human beings can’t do. All humans who undergo the Adahnehdi choose a Path, but only 20% of people gain an Ability. In the case of Player Characters, all of them fall into that 20% and get an Ability. But that means that one in five people walking down the street has an Ability as well.

These Abilities can be very potent, but none of them are so powerful, rare, or encompassing that they turn the person who possesses them into a god or a superhero. And as utilitarian and cool as they can be, they can also be sources of social concern and societal friction.

Abilities are tied to Stats. Each Stat has three related Abilities. There are nine Stats, so in the core book there are 27 Abilities. The ones listed in this core book are only the most common ones found in Cahokia. There are plenty of other Abilities that will be discussed in future. Every Player Character gets one Ability to start and can gain further Abilities as part of Character progression. Players can choose from any of the Abilities that are tied to the Stat related to their Path. So for example, if you’ve chosen the Path of the Snake, which is tied to Spirit and Endurance. The Player can choose any of the Abilities that are tied to Spirit and Endurance.

Abilities have costs to activate as well, so that that can’t be used endlessly.  Additionally, some take a full action, while others take a secondary action to use, leaving the Character free to do something else.  Some require a Dice Check, others are simply on or off. Almost all Abilities though have some sort of cost paid by either Mind or Soul, which are limited point pools that have other uses as well. Spending these to activate your Abilities means that your Character needs to be smart about when they use them or they may end up exhausted at an inopportune time!

So what are some examples of these Abilities? I’m so glad you asked. Each Ability ties thematically and mechanically into the Stat it is connected to. There is also a mix of defensive, offensive and utilitarian flavored Abilities.

Eagle’s Insight, linked to Intelligence, allows players to substitute their Intelligence for any other Stat during a Skill check. It displays itself as a sudden and sharp intuitive understanding of a situation, allowing the Character to adapt quickly. During Encounters, Characters can use this Ability to suss out the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of foes.

Chameleon’s Shine allows Characters to become semi-invisible to natural eye sight, only able to be seen by others in their peripheral vision or with technological assists. This is an example of a power that costs a point of Soul to activate and an additional one every hour the Character keeps it active.

Ancestor’s Storm gives the Ability for a Character to give points of Mind and Soul to their allies during an Encounter at a lesser cost to themselves. The Character trills, shouts, chants, sings, or prays, empowering their friends, lifting their spirits and renewing their focus.

These are just shortened descriptions to give you a little bit of flavor and feel. Again, there are 27 of these Abilities in the core book and they cover a wide range of effects and concepts.

To recap a bit, this means that you pick your Archetype, which is more of a general job or role description than a ‘character class’, a Path, which determines your Stat bonus and animal connection, and your Abilities, based on your Path which give you a superhuman power. These all give you a decent idea (along with Skills) of what your Character can do. But it doesn’t really tell you who they are, which I think is far more important.

In our next update, I’m going to discuss Gifts and Burdens, which is one of my favorite aspects of Characters in Coyote & Crow and is a big part of crafting out who your character is and what drives them.

And I’ll leave you with a great piece of art from Kameron White!

Art from Kameron White