Home front is not a stand alone game; you will need to have a copy of one of the other GDI games or the GDI manual. Since this product is an add-on, I leave the discussion of the system to my review of Hunger: Must Be Feed for a quick explanation of the system. Home Front does give you some new gimmicks, backgrounds, and skills that are specific to the setting.
The setting is World War II England and pretty much straight up historical in nature as far as I can tell. Home front does an excellent job of depicting the dark and desperate feel of the bombed and busted England of WWII. The book includes a nicely detailed town, St. John’s-on-the Hill. The St. John’s-on-the Hill section mentions all the major points of interest including a resort, bar, fish market, general store and other places in the town. There is a rather large section (compared to the size of the book) on NPCs that are fully stated out, with descriptions and each has two adventure seeds specific to them. There are also several story ideas to choose from along with a list of subplots to use for each character. This is a nice feature because the GM can take a few of the NPCs , their own plot, a subplot for each character and end up with a nice adventure with multiple subplots built right in.
The layout and overall looks of the book are solid. There isn’t any art to speak of, just a photo of a bombed-out street and a map of the British Isles. The layout is nice, clean, and there is no wasted space.
Final verdict:
Great overall concept with some genius adventure building elements, that builds adventures right under your nose without any effort from you. Home Front also captures the feel of what it would be like to be one of those left behind while all of the soldiers went off to war. The only thing is that with the short length of the book, it left me wanting more content.
I also wanted to point out that you could use Home Front with Hunger: Zombies Must Feed to get a cool WWII Zombie game as well.
WWII zombies always make me think of that scene in "Heavy Metal" where the B-52 crew turns into zombies. That used to scare the shit out of me as a kid...especially when the guy parachutes onto that island, only to find that it too is chock fulla zombies.
Quote from: mattormegWWII zombies always make me think of that scene in "Heavy Metal" where the B-52 crew turns into zombies. That used to scare the shit out of me as a kid...especially when the guy parachutes onto that island, only to find that it too is chock fulla zombies.
thats the coolest thing about Heavy Metal if you ask me.
I saw night of the living dead, the old black and white version when I was about 8 years old. We lived right next door to a rather large graveyard @ the time. I had nightmares for weeks. Loved zombie movies ever since.:D