Coyote and Crow: Cold Hunger - Session 1 of 4
We completed a Session Zero as the first of a four session Coyote and Crow campaign called “Cold Hunger” based on the rulebook’s introductory scenario (which you can watch here). It was really fun and productive. We were in agreement about almost everything — there was a slight debate as to whether we should be able to push our characters to the limits (to give them stats at 6 or above, based on their chosen Path and/or Archetype), and I ruled, safely and with precedence in the book, that we should do what is most fun, so, yes.
Over the three hours, we created a superpowered group of four new Suyata recruit characters in Cahokia, but as we established bonds, the following story developed, with an occasional splash of roleplaying:
An awkward Seeker, Mawakii, who believes destiny will be thrust upon her, learned intimate details about her colleague Thanga, the Whisperer, as she shepherded his dying partner’s spirit into the Black.
Thanga, a legacy appointment to the Suyata, felt pressure to perform perfectly but resisted help from Tala’s unsavory contacts who could have helped him close a case.
Tala, the hacker Scout, was injured by a mysterious online powerful force, requiring cybernetic aid from Onawah, the Tinkerer.
Onawah’s procedure mirrored one she previously failed that resulted in her father’s death.
It took a fair amount of prep:
The rulebook is long (472 pages), with 121 pages before character creation is even discussed.
The best way for me to learn all the rules was to create a character keeper (which took at least 20 hours — I’ll share it once I’ve squashed all the bugs) and then build a character myself (which took around an hour). We uncovered a couple issues during this first session (mostly related to automation for a complex trad system that has a lot of options) that we mostly fixed already.
To help the players get a sense of potential imagery for character images, I created this Pinterest board, which took a few hours. That gave me a lot more confidence that there could be images which were cyberpunk in nature and could fit in that world.
The players’ bonds were prompted from a couple choice Backstory Cards (I think my favorites or all of them were actually from the Unseen Threats add-on) that suggested potential past conflicts or shared situations they’d had together. With four players, it feels like two duos have potentially formed, at least in terms of shared history to get us started, and the contributions that these players gave to build out the world is very encouraging and exciting. As homework, the group is going to name some NPCs and their relationships, and in return, they’ll get progress towards their stated short term goals (which is a character progression mechanic in Coyote and Crow). Particularly given that we only have four sessions, and I’d like them to see some progress, any time they do something that contributes towards their short term goal (which usually means use a skill that they want to increase to the next level), it will count as double (so instead of it taking eight sessions to get to a level 8 stat, it will take four).
