Gameplay Loop
So far, with everything you’ve read, you could make a really solid LUMEN RPG designed for oneshots. We haven’t covered character advancement, or getting more loot (weapons), or what exactly the players are going out and doing.
If you want to, you can just stop right here. Go design an awesome action-packed RPG where the players go on an exciting mission or quest, and then go run it with another group, and another. One shots are awesome, and a LUMEN one shot is totally doable!
But, I LOVE solid gameplay loops in games. I’ve learned this over the years and I found myself being drawn to games like Blades in the Dark. You go out on your heist, do the job, then come back and do downtime. Then you do it all over again, rinse and repeat. I’ve run some sandbox style campaigns and they are fun, but I’ve always been drawn to a tight loop of play.
LUMEN RPGs are designed for that loop. What follows are rules for codifying what exactly the players are doing in a LUMEN game, and how their characters will get even more powerful through advancement and loot.
The Loop
LUMEN games are built around missions. You might call them quests, adventures, strikes, or some other thing in your game, but I’m going to use the term mission here. Missions are work that the PCs are sent out to do. Clear out the dungeon, sabotage that facility, recover the lost tech. Whatever it is, the PCs need to go out and accomplish their mission, and look good doing it.
Sessions of LUMEN RPGs are primarily made up of the mission. The general structure of the gameplay looks like this:
♢ Short briefing where the PCs get their mission
♢ Lots of time spent on the mission itself
♢ Advancing the characters after the mission is complete
That’s the basic structure. The PCs are wandering around looking at bounty boards, exploring an open world for opportunities. They are given missions, and they do them.
Mission Generation
You are going to want to include some rules or advice for generating missions in your game. Tables work great for this. In NOVA, there are tables for different types of missions, and then additional tables to determine which enemy faction is involved, the danger of the mission, modifiers for it, and a whole host of other things.
We include these so our GMs can prep the mission if they want to, and if they don’t, they at least have a framework to go off of.
Briefing & Debriefing
This part right here is a decision point for you. LUMEN games are roleplaying games, so you are going to want to give some opportunity to do the RP side of that. While the characters can RP in mission, they don’t often get chances to interact with other people that are willing to talk to them instead of rip them apart.
The scenes before and after the mission are opportunities for the characters to take shape. You aren’t obligated to include anything lengthy here, but I recommend giving the GM advice on how to bring the RP into the game during these book ends of the mission.
Adding to the Loop
The gameplay loop is straightforward, but there are opportunities to disrupt it, or shake it up. One of the more popular ways to do that is to add factions to your game. Someone has to give the PCs their missions, right? By creating factions, and tracking the players’ reputation with various groups, you will start to see buy-in from the players in terms of who they decide to work with. Factions also help provide a framework on the types of missions available to the players.
Speaking of, you can mess around with the mission structure as well. Borrow from how other games do this. For example, in Band of Blades, the group is given 3 missions and they have to choose 1 to fail, 1 to resolve with a single roll, and 1 to actually play out. Adding stakes to the mission helps give weight to the game. This is important because the PCs are incredibly powerful and capable, and this is a chance to push back against them a bit.