This is LUMEN.
It's an SRD, a design philosophy, a commentary on my games. It's a toolkit.
If you've seen my game LIGHT, you've seen a piece of LUMEN. If you saw FRAME, and NOVA on the horizon, you've seen a few more pieces. Now you have the whole thing.
Make Your Next RPG Illuminated
LUMEN is an RPG system for action packed, power fantasy games. Inspired by some of my favorite video games and genres, I wanted to capture those exciting moments on the screen, and bring them to the table.
It started with my love of Destiny. But I love all sorts of "powerful character" genres. Looter shooters (Borderlands), hero shooters (Overwatch), dungeon crawlers (Diablo). I love to see the numbers GO UP.
With the LUMEN SRD, you can create your own game, Illuminated by LUMEN. Highlights of the system include:
Quick dice rolling
No skill lists. It's about how you approach a task, not what you're doing
Combat is fast, and characters feel powerful
Gameplay loop that keeps the players wanting to get back out there
Atypical SRD
You'll notice that this document is not a technical manual on building games! The tools are there, but they sit between my thoughts and advice on LUMEN games in general. The SRD gives you insights into what I think makes the system special, and how to lean into that.
I hope you feel like I'm there talking with you about LUMEN, instead of instructing you on it.
Huge thank you and shout out to mv for their incredible work putting the LUMEN PDF together. I think they did a terrific job capturing the style of the system, plus it's fully hyperlinked and bookmarked! PLUS there is a ink friendlier version of the PDF for those who want to print at home.