My sons and I were able to get through a few hours of Long Arm of the Hutt with some family after Thanksgiving dinner. Whenever we play next I'd expect them to finish Act 1 and clear out the thugs around the Ryll mines. Since this is our first play through other than the Beginner's Set adventure, any idea what is a reasonable amount of XP to award? I'm assuming that the best time to award this is at the end of each act, but I'm also open to opinions about that as well. I understand that in the end it's all up to me, but I'd sure value the wizened advice from those of you who are more experienced at this than I am.

The rule of thumb is 5 xp an hour of actual game play. IE not including the time that people are off topic.

I've been awarding 5 exp per session with an additional 5 exp for good roleplaying. This can be achieved by offering a really cool idea for how a roll went, good in-character chat, etc.

A mission that I ran lasted 6 sessions. I awarded 5x the number of sessions each player was present for in experience. So, if a player made it to 5 sessions, they got an extra 25 exp.

This system will likely persist until they get to the point where they are getting hard to counter without huge changes to stats or encounters.

For longer sessions (6 hours or so) I've been awarding 30XP. For my new campaign I'm having shorter sessions (2-3 hours) but am planning for 20XP. I think I'm being fairly generous, but I don't mind accelerating the PC progress as I expect the campaign to only last about 10-15 sessions.

My sons and I were able to get through a few hours of Long Arm of the Hutt with some family after Thanksgiving dinner. Whenever we play next I'd expect them to finish Act 1 and clear out the thugs around the Ryll mines. Since this is our first play through other than the Beginner's Set adventure, any idea what is a reasonable amount of XP to award? I'm assuming that the best time to award this is at the end of each act, but I'm also open to opinions about that as well. I understand that in the end it's all up to me, but I'd sure value the wizened advice from those of you who are more experienced at this than I am.

It entirely depends on how fast you want them to advance their characters.

People have all manner of opinions which in the immortal words of the great philosopher Harry Callahan are plentiful as compared to human anatomy.....

Personally I aim for 25xp ish, my reasoning is because it allows new characters to see a little burst advancement which is fun, while simultaneously being enough xp for an advanced character to purchase the 5th rank of a career skill or last talent in a spec tree, so they feel as though there is some payout even for them.

We've been doing 5xp for every "challenge" whether that be a social encounter, a fight, or solving a problem through skills/roleplaying.

Then I add 5xp if the player can tell me how they role-played their Motivation. I accept pretty much anything, even just a single act or moment, but my group is honest enough to tell me when they don't.

For a while I was giving out 20 base xp + multiple misc. rp rewards for 4+ hour missions. That translated into about 25+ xp per session.

I run a multi-GM campaign and some of the players and other GMs have been concerned about the rate of xp. Pleasant surprise, actually, when campaign participants want to slow down a bit to help with campaign longevity.

For the two most recent sessions I ran (same adventure), I dropped the base xp to 15, but included specific mission goals that earned 1 xp. One team earned 20 xp while the other earned 22. Even though the amount was less, the consensus was that earning less base xp, but gaining specific mission-related rewards was preferable.

10 xp for a session where we did the minimum of what we were expected to do or what we expected for ourselves (we rarely disagree when this occurs).

15 xp for a standard session.

20 xp for a session where we made significant progress (e.g. completing a mission).

+5 xp if we succeeded against terrible odds.

Keeps us lean and desperate.

My rule of thumb for the awarding of XP is 10 base points, then I get all the players to roll a force dice and add up the light side points for the total. Then I add bonus XP for great roleplaying, defeating a nemesis NPC, completing a storyline etc. Usually 1-5 points. This usually gives the players between 15-20 points for each session.

Works really well with the players in my group (4-6 players) when I run a table.

Hope this helps

10 xp for a session where we did the minimum of what we were expected to do or what we expected for ourselves (we rarely disagree when this occurs).

15 xp for a standard session.

20 xp for a session where we made significant progress (e.g. completing a mission).

+5 xp if we succeeded against terrible odds.

Keeps us lean and desperate.

This is what I do as well..

The rule of thumb is 5 xp an hour of actual game play. IE not including the time that people are off topic.

I find that this works the best for my group. I also like to award XP here and there for misc reasons. Bringing food/drinks, tracking the events of the session with notes, great RP, etc.

I think Numenera or Exalted (have neither with me atm) gave me the idea of giving bonus XP for someone making the group come to a standstill for something in game that made everyone laugh, tear up, gasp in awe, or the like.

Off-topic, but love to share this one! I ran a Shadowrun 4e campaign where our deep-weed addicted mage was getting ready to go into a cryo-sleep after downing "snacks" worth quite a few doses, and the Doctor said, "See you on the other side," to which the mage replied, in a typical stoner voice, "I'm already there man." We laughed for a solid 10 minutes crying and pulling back together. Needless to say he got that bonus.

10xp per session. Plus +2XP for good advantage/threat calls, good roleplaying or "good behavior" (Once one player had trouble with hangouts and couldn't see the roll20 screen. Another player started taking prints and emailing to the first one. He receive +2xp for that)

I tend to award about 30 XP per adventure, with each adventure taking approximately two sessions to complete. For longer adventures (where the adventure is actually longer, not when things take longer because people dawdle) I award more XP.

The reason I'm a little conservative on the XP side is that I like long-running campaigns, so I don't want the players to become too powerful too quickly. We've been playing EotE since July last year, and my players are now roughly between 500 and 600 XP each. Everyone has at least two specializations, and two of them have three. It's all down to how long you want the campaign to last and how quickly you want them to become powerful.

Having players get too good too quickly is a detriment to longer campaigns so I like to keep the rewards lean. I'll provide somewhere between 5 and 10 xp per story "goal post" but how long it takes the characters to get there depends on them. After the end of a story/adventure, I'll add a bonus 10 or 15 xp.

Something I'm considering is, at the end of an adventure, having the players nominate a player other than themselves for an MVP award for role-playing/being the most enthusiastic player. The winner would receive an extra 5 xp reward.

I had forgotten another thing I will do which is reward targeted xp. For example if the players had a session where they had some NPC professor on board or an Ambassador they escorted etc, at the successful conclusion I might give everyone a free rank of Knowledge(X) or a rank of Negotiate or Charm, or whatever. It's a way to reward while simultaneously suppressing the mad dash to attribute 5 Skill 6 the power gamers engage in. So maybe you only give 10 xp for the PCs to use as they will but they get a rank of something else as a bonus.

I had a night where I gave no XP. The party did nothing related to plot and very minimal roleplaying, nobody argued it.

I had a night where I gave no XP. The party did nothing related to plot and very minimal roleplaying, nobody argued it.

That doesn't sound very fun for the GM or players. Did the campaign last for much longer after that?

My group normally plays for about 6 hours most Saturdays (plus about 2 hours of gas-bagging and food time). The standard award we have settled on is 20xp per 6 hour session. Enough to have some concrete advancement, but you have to save up for the best advancements (Skill rank V, Talent tier V, new specs).

Occasional bonuses of 5 to 10xp for completing a story arc.

It suits my groups pace and I think that is the key point. You need to find that balance point where things are advancing just-right. A difficult thing to do.

As a word of advice, do what I did when I started my groups campaign. Be upfront with your players and say that your not sure how quickly to award XP yet as you are new to this system. Let them know that you will be erring on the side of stingy to start of with but will ramp it up after that until you all get to a comfortable balance point.

I think I started on 10xp for two sessions, then 15 for about three then 20 for two before deciding that 20 was a good balance point FOR US. One free one-off gift (coincided with the first major campaign goal being completed) of XP made the total as if it had always been 20(ish) XP per session.

Worked out well with no hurt feelings as it is always more fun to give more XP than less XP.

I had a night where I gave no XP. The party did nothing related to plot and very minimal roleplaying, nobody argued it.

That doesn't sound very fun for the GM or players. Did the campaign last for much longer after that?

Every game has an off night. Or nights. That's when you put away the RPG books and break out a board game.