I'm GM'ing our group's first game in this system soon and I'm a bit confused as to how to hand out experience. I plan to go through the adventure at the end of the core book, but I don't see anything about experience except towards the end where it says to give a certain amount if the players accomplish specific goals. Is that it? Should I give the party some experience at the end of the individual acts? If so, how much?

A general guideline is to award XP at the end of each session.

As for how much to award, that depends entirely on you and your group. Some GMs only hand out small portions of XP (10 to 15) per session, while others hand out considerably more.

Personally, I adopted a guideline that Jay Little suggested way back in the early days of FFG's Star Wars RPG system, that being to award 5 XP per actual hour spent playing the game; time spent on general socializing, telling jokes/anecdotes, or pretty much anything that doesn't directly correlate to the gaming session is not counted. I add to that a base bonus of 5 XP just for the players showing up to play, and with an additional +5 XP for playing strongly to their character's Motivations. So in my games, if the group has spent 3 hours focused on playing the game out of a 4 hour session, then I'd award them 20 XP (base 5, +15 for three hours of play) once the session ends, even if the adventure has yet to properly conclude.

To expand upon Dono's sound advice, you do not award XP based on enemies defeated. As the GM you decide just how much XP is awarded. The 5xp per hour rules is about the most solid of baselines, but you should also consider how long the campaign will expect to run and how high in XP you want your PCs to be at by the time they finish.

This game can get unruly at 600+ XP, but that's going to vary from group-to-group and game-to-game.

My campaigns typically never last more than 6 months, so I usually hand out a larger amount of XP per 4-hour game. Typically in the 25-35XP range.

Good advice above. I'm not a fan though of the "XP for certain goals" that FFG uses. The goals can easily change depending on how the story evolves, and the players can easily resolve an arc without ever touching what I had originally intended, often in a more interesting fashion. So assuming everyone is reasonably attentive and involved during the session, I just stick with a certain amount of XP per hour.

Usually I hand out XP at the end of each session, but the last arc took four sessions to resolve, so we all agreed it would make more sense to wait. Now they have a bundle to spend...

The amount you hand out is based on how fast you want them to progress. Though when you're using pre published adventures I would stick with the rewards they assign, otherwise you risk the characters advancing faster than the adventure itself advances and challenges that were meant to be hard are suddenly easy. It's not a big problem if you're experienced with the system and can scale the pre published challenges accordingly but if you're new stick to what the book says so that they don't outpace the adventure.

Thank you all for the very helpful advice. Our group doesn't get together to play but maybe 4 or 5 times a year, so when we do it's usually a 12+ hour session. 5 xp per hour played plus any bonuses sounds pretty reasonable. I'll just have to find any natural lulls in the the campaign and call it a session to award xp and let them level their characters and roll morality.

Thank you all for the very helpful advice. Our group doesn't get together to play but maybe 4 or 5 times a year, so when we do it's usually a 12+ hour session. 5 xp per hour played plus any bonuses sounds pretty reasonable. I'll just have to find any natural lulls in the the campaign and call it a session to award xp and let them level their characters and roll morality.

You might adopt an "off camera" xp system as well. If you are engaging in in-game stuff between sessions, provide them with some XP as a reward. Perhaps they are outlining their character's goals going forward in a narrative "Dear Diary" fashion or something. Or perhaps they are helping you handle the actual crunch of the game. "Sure I can build you a spreadsheet of the *whatever stuff you need sheeted*, I can have it to you by this weekend*. Poof, XP for helping out.

It also depends on how quickly you want them to progress. If you want them to be advancing faster, give them more XP.

I use the above "5xp per hour" system, but I also provide extra if the players amuse me. We play usually every week (give or take outside issues), so we tend to only play for 3-4 hours max a session. So they average about 15-20 xp, with a possible extra 5 or so if they do really cool stuff, or simply make me laugh with their in character antics. So far this works great, it means just about every session, they have enough XP to buy at least something new every time. In fact, if you want, you can use that as a measuring stick. Since the most expensive thing (barring rank 5 in a skill or something), to buy is I think 25xp? If you want them to be able to buy something every session, you should be aiming for 20-25xp a session. For you, given how little you guys meet, I would probably use a "I want them to be able to buy 2-3 new things after every session". So you'd be looking at 50-75 xp. Which, divided out, would equal roughly 5xp/hour, based on the schedule you gave.

Personally, I'm very generous with xp, as I like to see my players develop new toys and get to play with them. I don't always do it, or if it's a slow session where they don't really do much in the way of "meat", I'll possibly only award 10-15. But that's just me.

I'm not a fan though of the "XP for certain goals" that FFG uses. The goals can easily change depending on how the story evolves, and the players can easily resolve an arc without ever touching what I had originally intended, often in a more interesting fashion.

I might still give some bonus XP for "end of story" games where they wrap up the current situation. The princess has been rescued, the BBEG has been defeated/escaped, they found the MacGuffin, etc.

Good advice above. I'm not a fan though of the "XP for certain goals" that FFG uses.

Where do they suggest this method? I don't recall actually reading it. Granted I didn't really read the GM section about awarding XP, as I didn't feel it was necessary, I know how to hand out XP But I find it odd, because every time the discussion has ever come up with one of the devs, I've never heard them suggest this XP method.

Good advice above. I'm not a fan though of the "XP for certain goals" that FFG uses.

Where do they suggest this method? I don't recall actually reading it. Granted I didn't really read the GM section about awarding XP, as I didn't feel it was necessary, I know how to hand out XP But I find it odd, because every time the discussion has ever come up with one of the devs, I've never heard them suggest this XP method.

At the end of the 3 printed adventures. 5xp for killing this guy. 10xp if the players talked him down.

Good advice above. I'm not a fan though of the "XP for certain goals" that FFG uses.

Where do they suggest this method? I don't recall actually reading it. Granted I didn't really read the GM section about awarding XP, as I didn't feel it was necessary, I know how to hand out XP But I find it odd, because every time the discussion has ever come up with one of the devs, I've never heard them suggest this XP method.

At the end of the 3 printed adventures. 5xp for killing this guy. 10xp if the players talked him down.

With the printed adventures it does make sense that they'd do that, since the adventures are set up in a fairly linear fashion, with definite milestones laid out.

Good advice above. I'm not a fan though of the "XP for certain goals" that FFG uses.

Where do they suggest this method? I don't recall actually reading it. Granted I didn't really read the GM section about awarding XP, as I didn't feel it was necessary, I know how to hand out XP But I find it odd, because every time the discussion has ever come up with one of the devs, I've never heard them suggest this XP method.

At the end of the 3 printed adventures. 5xp for killing this guy. 10xp if the players talked him down.

Ah, that would explain why. I never bought/looked at any of the printed adventures. Except the F&D one, because it's got lightsaber crafting rules in it

We play on Skype, we actually go for text-based adventure. So we can all take our time and describe what our characters do in the game with more detail than with words. So sometimes our sessions are pretty slow to move on and that's really fine! But that also means our GM doesn't always give EXP after each session, as we might have moved only a little bit forward in the story.