Familiar Field Trip is a tabletop RPG where you play as cute little animals… who are set on causing chaos, swiping treasures, and getting up to no good!  And maybe also completing the mission your witch sent out of the house for in the first place.  You’ll be competing, and maybe collaborating, if it also serves you, with other players to see who can earn the most points for all your trouble by the end!

Jump to: 

• Audience
• Setting
• Characters
• Mechanics
• Overall thoughts
• Find a copy

Audience for Familiar Field Trip

Familiar Field Trip is all about being a little creature getting up to trouble and competing against other creatures to see who can get up to the MOST trouble (or seeing how you can collectively wreak havoc).  The focus for this game is on playful mischief, so there’s not going to be any combat, even if there is some competition going on. 

From a mechanics standpoint, the base is a pretty easy to learn and track 2d6, add your modifiers, and maybe spend tokens system with additional dice rolls, which you’re clearly told about in each move prompt.  Each move prompt is about the length of a short sentence, so there aren’t big walls of text to parse through for each move. 

There is a small amount to track with scoring up points for meeting various criteria and adjusting modifiers based on different location features throughout the game, which adds a small (but fun) set of complications.  

I would say that between all this, the content is all-ages friendly, and the mechanics and reading are probably something that a precocious 6yo or a young kid, with some help from an older player, could handle and enjoy.

Setting for Familiar Field Trip

Familiar Field Trip is set in a medieval style village where daily life happens at the town square, the farm, the nearby stream, etc.  

However, there’s a witch who lives in or near the town, and they’ve sent their familiar (that’s you) out to complete a task, making this village not so peaceful.

You’ll explore 3-5 of the 12 provided locations in and around town throughout a session of gameplay.  Each location will be adjusted by a couple of additional factors that you generate from a roll table and that affect modifiers during gameplay (for example, rain giving you a +1 to Stealth but a -1 to Dexterity). 

These locations all have a special objective as well, which can earn you points at the game’s end (more on this later in the mechanics). 

Characters in Familiar Field Trip

Your character in Familiar Field Trip is a witch’s familiar who has been sent out on a mission by their witch!  However… you are not exactly an obedient familiar, and your primary interest is in trying to outdo the other familiars in the area in seeing how much trouble you can cause… alongside completing your witch’s mission. 

I loved the way the game introduced characters (these words are listed publicly on the game’s itchio page, as well):

I would say, this is a very accurate description of how play goes.  

You are competitive in trying to earn more points than your fellow familiars, so there’s opportunity to sabotage others, and the tasks your given are trouble based (i.e. nabbing collectables from the townsfolk, completing the location objective to stir up particular chaos, and literally earning mischief points).  

You can also choose to work together in some ways, but you are still, at your base, competing to get the most points.  

In this way, the tone could follow a cooking competition like The Great British Baking Show where folks are competing but generally willing to help each other… OR it could be more like the ones where someone tries to take the other chef’s ingredients when they aren’t looking.

Regarding character set up, this was pretty easy since there’s character playbooks with a list of stats, and you’re then given the opportunity to make some choices for your familiar’s size, color, and special move to make them unique each game.  These choices will adjust your stats (i.e. choosing BIG for size might mean you’re stronger but more easily spotted by the townsfolk) and give you a character specific move for the whole game. 

Character set up took maybe 5 minutes, and we were able to track everything for the game on one sheet.

 

Mechanics for Familiar Field Trip

In Familiar Field Trip, there’s a few different small bites of mechanics playing with each other throughout the game, I think mirroring the playful randomness of the characters.

Your ultimate goal is to end the game with more points than all of the other players.  You get these points by causing mischief, stealing and holding onto collectables, completing the special challenge before your time at a location is finished, and completing your mission from your witch.  They have different point values, difficulties for earning them, and strategies depending on the character playbook you’re using.  You can strategize where your biggest reward will be OR you can kind of approach this as what’s more random and fun for the story.

To take action in the game, you’ll make a move from a list available to your character and do pretty much exactly what it says in the short prompt.  

That specific action may tell you to roll 1d4 to see how many collectables you earn or 1d8 to see how many mischief points you rack up.  They may also add a permanent stat bonus to everyone in an area or take something away from another particular player.

There’s lots of variation, but it VERY clearly and concisely states what you do, making it feel chaotic while still being easy to follow. 

You’ll also be working towards completing a location objective and a goal given to you by your witch.  For these, you can use your turn to roll 2d6 and add any appropriate modifiers from your base stats, the location features, and moves you previously made that give a sustaining bonus.  Depending on your total, you’ll succeed or fail and may have some kind of consequence or could gain progress on one of these goals.  You also have the option to increase your roll from mid range to a total success if you trade in tokens that you earn throughout the game by making non-mischievous (called Cushy) actions. 

There are a couple more elements to the mechanics that you’ll need to check out the game to see, but this is the general basics and I hope it gives you a good idea of the complexity and clarity to expect.  

Overall thoughts on Familiar Field Trip

I thought Familiar Field Trip was a good balance of allowing strategy while still focusing on how it drove the story, and I liked that there was a competitive element to it just to have another option amongst all the co-op TTRPGs out there.  The story premise was fun and engaging with enough based on strategy and enough based on chance to keep everyone guessing (in a good way).  I enjoyed getting to play and think it’s a great game to bust out at a Halloween party, a casual get together with a group of friends, or for family game night.

Find a copy of Familiar Field Trip

You can find a copy of Familiar Field Trip on the PsychHound itchio page here.