Do you reward player actions or behaviors with experience points? And if so, what do you reward? Examples:

• Out of Game: looking up rules, writing session logs or character backgrounds, bring snacks, showing up on time, amount per session
• In Game: clever ideas, acting, accents (or a developing a character's voice), supporting other players, playing to narrative game mechanics (motivation/duty/obligation/morality), good roleplaying (not just acting)

And an explanation of why would be excellent. I'm on the fence about rewarding expected behaviors from the players, but I do feel that it's important to encourage productive behaviors and discourage unproductive ones - though maybe not using XP as such an encouragement. Thoughts?

I don't do a lot of sub-calculations when it comes to XP, I tend to give 20xp to everyone in the party, and then one player did something cool or interesting or made us all laugh or had a great idea, I give that player 25xp.

I award fun Role Playing with bonus XP. I reward session logs/good back stories/etc bonus credits. Not a ton but enough to get them to participate.

I give everybody the same XP. For good "in game" play I stick with boost dice and sometimes upgrades.

I definitely don't give rewards for "bringing snacks" and the like and other social behaviours...no offence but that kind of feels like "stormy cloud and sunshine stickers". My regular group is composed of long time friends, so everybody knows what's expected; I guess if you had a new group where nobody knew each other it's probably better to just spell out how you want to run the game and set up the social environment.

None taken. I simply rattled off ideas that I had heard of before as examples, and I was leaning more towards a social contract with standard experience anyway. Boost dice and upgrades are good though.

I think too you have to be careful in penalising an introverted player and then rewarding an extroverted player or somehow putting a barrier into play for a new player or someone role playing for the first time.

If I reward my players I tend to throw down some extra XP for everyone.

I usually have very low XP per session, about 5 or 10, and found that when I started offering 1 extra for creative ideas on how to narrate Triumph, Despair, and the use of Destiny Points, they really started thinking more about the narrative than just the die rolls and mechanical results. I cap the extra narrative XP at +3 or +5 (depending on if we're doing a slow or fast progression game), which is the only part I haven't told them.

When people see a Triumph, everyone gets excited and starts chipping out ideas. As GM, I tweak some too outlandish suggestions, but the final choice of what happened goes to the person who rolled the dice. It keeps everyone engaged and thinking about more than numbers and symbols.

The benefits are pretty small, and I chalk up the points in private, and with respect to the player. I consider tacking on two points for an idea from the quieter players at the table, so everyone tends to get the same +3 or +5 by the end, but it encourages the focus to dwell on the narrative.

Disclaimer: I do this with my group and it works out well. The same may not hold true for your group.

I let the PC give out a lot of the XP, it makes the party feel more invented in the game. i will give the flat "you showed up!" XP of 10 or 15 depending on how long we play. After that we look at motives. If the PC had a chance to make a choice or action showcasing there motive then they get 3 XP. (the other PC decide if the bonus is given.) next I ask each PC to tell the best RP moment. the thing that when someone outside the game asks "what hooped at game night?". Whoever is responsible for the answer will get 1 XP and if the action was multiple PCs than all involved get it. Then after all that is done we use bonds form the game Dungeon World for 2 XP each. so if a PC is on point with their RP then you can easily double up on XP for the night. And the best part is all of the bonus XP is not given by me but voted on by the PCs, so I can't play favorites.

At the end of every game I have players go around in a circle and recap what they've done, and why in terms of their character. This way I give them a chance to give their side of the story, and also have the newer roleplayers understand why the more experienced ones do things the way they do.

The XP award breakdown:

• 5 for being useful. This is basically the 'congrats you showed up points' but I don't want to put it like that to them. It's also my way of trying to get players to leverage their strengths.
• 5 for being engaged. That means not having side conversations even if the focus isn't on your character, and not being distracted by your phone to the point where you need something repeated. Honestly this is ideally an automatic extra five and really exists more as a punitive measure to take away when there is a problem.
• 5 for good roleplaying. This is for making decisions in the head of their character, adding flair to distinguish them, etc. My group's style is really into individual character exploration and backstory, so players get this about 75% of the time.
• 5 for session MVP. This is democratically elected by players, GM as a tie-breaker. The one stipulation is that you can't get it two sessions in a row. I've actually found that this gets distributed rather equitably and the players take care to highlight the contributions of quieter members when they get their time to shine.

My group has a 6 hour session once a month. Is 30 XP too much?

My group has a 6 hour session once a month. Is 30 XP too much?

Sam Stewart said in a podcast that he recommends 5 XP per hour of actual play. So assuming your players stay on track the entire time, not likely I know, then they would earn 30 XP for 6 hours plus any bonuses you determine for specific goals. If they are like most groups and chit-chat 25% of the time, they would earn approximately 23 XP for the same session.

That said, there are no hard and fast rules about XP in the book.

My group has a 6 hour session once a month. Is 30 XP too much?

Sam Stewart said in a podcast that he recommends 5 XP per hour of actual play. So assuming your players stay on track the entire time, not likely I know, then they would earn 30 XP for 6 hours plus any bonuses you determine for specific goals. If they are like most groups and chit-chat 25% of the time, they would earn approximately 23 XP for the same session.

That said, there are no hard and fast rules about XP in the book.

Thanks, We probably do lose an hour to chit chat, food and latecomers. That 5 XP/hour rule-of-thumb sounds reasonable. I might back it down to 25 to encourage them to set aside some XP.

Size of the group can also influence how much you give out. We had to reign back our group because it's large (8-9 player) and even getting 30xp after an 8-10 hour session was resulting in large power jumps in terms of party capability, due to it still resulting in 240xp worth of upgrades on the table. We've found 15/session works nicely, as you can pick up any single advance in the book for 2 sessions.

Size of the group can also influence how much you give out. We had to reign back our group because it's large (8-9 player) and even getting 30xp after an 8-10 hour session was resulting in large power jumps in terms of party capability, due to it still resulting in 240xp worth of upgrades on the table. We've found 15/session works nicely, as you can pick up any single advance in the book for 2 sessions.

That makes sense. With more players, each individual player gets less focus and therefore does less. While I have run plenty of large group games over the years, I find that Star Wars and other more narrative games work best with smaller groups.

Size of the group can also influence how much you give out. We had to reign back our group because it's large (8-9 player) and even getting 30xp after an 8-10 hour session was resulting in large power jumps in terms of party capability, due to it still resulting in 240xp worth of upgrades on the table. We've found 15/session works nicely, as you can pick up any single advance in the book for 2 sessions.

Yeah, I have a large group also (Six in person and 2 online). I normally wouldn't run a game with this many people, but these are friends from high school and college (of 20-30 years) and this is really the only way we can all get together.

You bring up a good point that was nagging me a little bit. If I give them too much it'll increase the chance of them cross specializing into each other's roles, thereby increasing the redundancy of their skillsets and capabilities.

I'm not convinced that this is entirely a bad thing. In a perfect world, every character would be a special snowflake and have their own unique role. In Star Wars, Han, Luke and Lando are all great pilots and that's OK, so maybe that shouldn't be a big deal in the game.

I'm dragging some of them away from GURPS, kicking and screaming, so I'm hoping to make this a really good experience for them.

I have been toying with making Obligations provide bonus XP when they are roleplayed/pursued/resolved by the player (similar to Backgrounds in 7th Sea, for those who know that game).

Over the years I have had one observation that could be worth sharing. You can be stingy when awarding XP and players will adjust, if you are too generous and find it a problem, you will never get the players to cut back the XP their character has.