Congratulations to Kenna Alexander and the Coyote & Crow team!
On February 10, 2026, the team behind the groundbreaking and award-winning TTRPG, Coyote & Crow, launched a Kickstarter campaign for Legends & Icons, a new sourcebook to help players take their gaming to the next level. Within 24 hours, the campaign was fully funded, raising over $40,000 to give them a head start on their first stretch goal of $60,000. To date, they have raised $64,724 with 18 days left in their campaign.
Since the release of Coyote & Crow in 2021, creator Kenna Alexander and team have expanded the reach of Indigenous TTRPGs with Coyote & Crow expansions Ahu Tiiko, a horror and mystery setting book, Stories of the Free Lands, and, of course, the tabletop game, Wolves. The growing popularity and success of Coyote & Crow prove that their success is not a fluke and that there is demand and space for originality in an industry that still relies heavily on recycled medieval European and colonial fantasy tropes.
Aside from being created by Native designers and written by an all-Native team, what made Coyote & Crow unique is that the world they created wasn’t a remix of someone else’s canon. What they created was a game based on a world shaped by Indigenous governance, science, spirituality, and innovation.
It is set in a new timeline that breaks around 1400, when the Awis drives the world into centuries of darkness and cold, forcing nations to adapt, migrate, reorganize, and survive on their own terms. In the aftermath of the darkness, Makasing is born. It isn’t a land with the same empires we’re familiar with, just set in a different time with a new aesthetic or location.
Makasing evolves from Indigenous continuity rather than from the disruption of colonization, because colonization never happened. As a result, new centralized powers, alliances, and conflicts arise over the control of resources and the responsibilities that come with power. There is also Adanadi, a force that redefines what technology and ability can look like when they evolve alongside spirit rather than replace it. It’s not the typical post-apocalyptic wasteland, with survivors struggling to rebuild or heal. It’s a thriving world.
Ironically, what makes Coyote & Crow unique is also what makes it challenging, even for the most experienced of Game Masters.
Most TTRPG games and campaigns are typically based on feudal hierarchies, conquest-as-adventure, “civilization” versus “wilderness,” with histories that normalize conquest. But with Coyote & Crow, Game Masters and players can’t rely on the typical moral defaults, the familiar “band of outsiders fixing a broken kingdom” arc, or map logic that treats land as empty until someone claims it. The learning curve isn’t about the rules; it’s about changing your worldview.
This can be daunting when playing TTPRGs that also require improvisation when players make unexpected choices that alter the game’s entire ecosystem. With Legends & Icons, Coyote & Crow Games is solving that problem by giving people what they’ve been asking for since day one: a reference book that actually respects how TTRPGs actually get played.
Coyote & Crow makes a clear distinction between the two halves of the title, as it is more than mere wordplay. Legends are the larger forces, groups, organizations, species, the kinds of presences that can tilt a region’s politics or rewrite the local rules of survival. Icons are singular, unique individuals, the one-offs that do not behave, do not assimilate, and do not fit neatly into anyone’s belief system.
There is also a cultural note that some entries are inspired by real-world Indigenous myths, with the promise that each one is adapted for Makasing to honor the original stories and the communities that they come from. It gives players of all backgrounds a way to engage respectfully, while still keeping the source material rooted in Indigenous authorship and accountability. And for everything drawn from story, there is just as much created from pure imagination: new threats, factions, spirits, and strange wonders born of the team’s collective imagination and the specific logic of this alternate world.
Legends & Icons features art from Claudio Pozas and writing by a team of Native creators from across previous Coyote & Crow projects, including Kenna Alexander (Cherokee Nation). Inside are 100 entries, each built as a two-page spread with full-color art, stats, lore, and story prompts. It is an extremely practical format because it respects how tabletop sessions actually take place. You can flip the book open, land on a page, and immediately have what you need to drop something into play, whether your party is wandering off-road or you are steering them directly into trouble.
And the campaign plan goes beyond the book. After a one-month Kickstarter campaign, the team intends to finish production and deliver to backers before the end of 2026, then move into retail around this time next year. They are also offering a reward level tied to the upcoming Storyteller Program, their organized play initiative, with exclusive swag, digital rewards, special resources, and the option to run paid public sessions at public-facing events. The campaign also has stretch goals that invest back into the community, including bonus pay for the team and free copies for libraries and institutions.
When you take this all into account, the bigger picture comes into focus. For Coyote & Crow Games, the long-term goal is about building the infrastructure for Indigenous tabletop gaming to expand within the industry. The early funding surge is worth celebrating because it also reflects trust. It shows that players are backing Native creators to lead, to experiment, and to keep raising the bar for what tabletop gaming can be.
For more on the Legends & Icons campaign, visit the Kickstarter page. To learn more about Coyote & Crow Games, head to coyoteandcrow.net.
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