Homecoming

Homecoming is a take on the Homeland story (itself based on the Prisoners of War series) of a returning prisoner who is struggling to adapt back to their old life.

The game consists of a bunch of character ideas and prompts, which are heavily based on the Homeland characters and situations.

Interestingly the GM player (and they really are more of a player here than a kind of master) takes on the role of the homecomer and has a set of behavioural rules for portraying them.

The rest of the players take on the roles of people who have a connection to or an agenda with the returnee. It is this motivations that are meant to drive the game through some suggested scenes.

In a way the prompts are a poor use of the word count as there isn’t really any mechanics that are driving the story or game. The player characters have questions or issues and I guess the homecoming character is just meant to roll with it and try and come up with interesting answers to questions (or perhaps they are meant to be ignorant of the questions and just playing their own agenda).

Presumably the game is meant to end when the player characters all answer their questions, maybe there needs to be some epilogue then when the consequences of those answers are explored.

Overall I think this is a kind of interesting setup to a freeform game but it feels unplayable now without an end state.