9 hours ago, KungFuFerret said:

A rule of thumb that one of the devs put forth early on in the game line, that most people feel is pretty reasonable was 5xp = 1 hour of solid game play.

I mentioned this too them, but it was not received well. I think they prefer to play less capable, flawed characters, trying to complete a vague and near impossible task.

It varies a lot for me. I've given out as little as 5 XP and as much as 25 XP. My sessions are usually weekly and I only have two players. Both of them tend to be slow to spend their XP anyways. I tend to base my awards on how much they accomplish (or attempt to accomplish) and how much they get into the session.

The 25 XP session was the session where they went through a vergence-type trial to receive their crystals and they both really dug into the session and roleplayed to the hilt.

The 5 XP session was the most recent one where we spent most of the time building their lightsabers and handling some travel and exposition.

With only two players, I tend to be a little more generous because I feel like they need to be more capable than a larger party, so I try to give them the means to be.

I'm giving 8-15 base, usually 10, plus 0-5 for playing the motivation, in my current 3.5 hour slot.

I've previously used 3-5 per hour of play...

My practilar table ends up receiving like 10exp for most 8 hour sessions. Means character development is really quite slow, though given our campaign has been going on for about 4 years through the cival war period; and we have only gotten up to doing Endor now.

From my perspective it feels slow; as a gadgeteer into force user; I honestly feel sometimes even if I was handed 200 exp; it wouldn't fill all the voids that need filling because by their very nature force user's are never, ever satisfied.. XD That being said, it's a system that works and the experienced characters of the group have some serious history about them that is evident in both their capabilies and mannerisms.

Hm our GM seems to be a little cheaper than the average here. We played 3 campains with the same characters. In the first we got 13 XP per session, 11.25XP/s in the second and the third is very low with an average of 6.66XP/s so far, but this will rise when we accomplish the first storygoals i guess. (Playing the juwel of jarwin right now)

Our sessions are usualy from 6 pm til 10:30 pm so like 4:30 h long

On 8/19/2017 at 2:03 PM, AK_Aramis said:

I'm giving 8-15 base, usually 10, plus 0-5 for playing the motivation, in my current 3.5 hour slot.

I've previously used 3-5 per hour of play...

6 hours ago, Seguleh said:

Hm our GM seems to be a little cheaper than the average here. We played 3 campains with the same characters. In the first we got 13 XP per session, 11.25XP/s in the second and the third is very low with an average of 6.66XP/s so far, but this will rise when we accomplish the first storygoals i guess. (Playing the juwel of jarwin right now)

Our sessions are usualy from 6 pm til 10:30 pm so like 4:30 h long

Given everything that costs XP is a multiple of 5, I would suggest trying to stick to increments of 5 for your XP rewards. If only to keep things tidy.

My gamers usually get about 10-15xp per session, they get a bonus on 'Chapter' completion.

I do give bonus xp for epic actions, or something that reduces us all to laughter.

On 8/22/2017 at 8:14 AM, KungFuFerret said:

Given everything that costs XP is a multiple of 5, I would suggest trying to stick to increments of 5 for your XP rewards. If only to keep things tidy.

I explicitly avoid doing so. Why? Because wanting is often more appealing than having. Smaller incremental awards show progress without actually being themselves progress, and add up to real progress.

3 for weak play of motivation; 5 for good play of it, makes for better motivation as well.

Just now, AK_Aramis said:

I explicitly avoid doing so. Why? Because wanting is often more appealing than having. Smaller incremental awards show progress without actually being themselves progress, and add up to real progress.

3 for weak play of motivation; 5 for good play of it, makes for better motivation as well.

*shrugs* To each their own.

23 hours ago, KungFuFerret said:

*shrugs* To each their own.

Basic Psychology 101 stuff, really.

Plus, if points weren't to be earned individually (and I'm going by the published guidelines from the Edge beta, so I've got rules on my side), then they should have (and probably would have) reduced costs by a factor of 5 and reduced it to 1 point per 3-4 hours and 1 point for playing motivation well. But they didn't. The designers wanted those individual points to slowly accrue.

On 8/23/2017 at 6:30 PM, AK_Aramis said:

3 for weak play of motivation; 5 for good play of it, makes for better motivation as well.

"Here's 5xp to gain something useful" versus "Here's 3xp to be frustrated with" seems antagonistic to me.

15 hours ago, AK_Aramis said:

The designers wanted those individual points to slowly accrue.

To my knowledge, the developers have only ever recommended xp grants in increments of 5, suggesting an additional 5 for good role playing.

On 8/24/2017 at 4:48 PM, AK_Aramis said:

Basic Psychology 101 stuff, really.

Plus, if points weren't to be earned individually (and I'm going by the published guidelines from the Edge beta, so I've got rules on my side), then they should have (and probably would have) reduced costs by a factor of 5 and reduced it to 1 point per 3-4 hours and 1 point for playing motivation well. But they didn't. The designers wanted those individual points to slowly accrue.

You quote beta game rules for your stance on xp awards, but did those rules about amounts actually make it into the published, final drafts? Because if not, then it actually doesn't support your stance, as the devs would've decided to remove it after beta testing.

I mean, play it that way if you want, but you flat out said you're basically tricking your players into thinking they're making progress, when they aren't. Sure, that might very well be a Psychology 101 thing, but that doesn't exclude it from being a cheap trick to mess with people's heads, if that's the intent. There's a lot of Psych 101 stuff that gets used for negative purposes every day, just look at advertising.

But if you're players are aware of this, and are fine of the progression rate, cool. I personally like to keep the numbers straightforward for my own record keeping purposes, and keeping all awards in increments that will always play out with purchases just makes it all much easier to track.

Beta's show original intent.

Published games less so, especially in corporate playtest processes.

You go give in to that munkin impulse... I won't. Why? because it drives my players to strive for those extra points by playing harder.

2 hours ago, AK_Aramis said:

Beta's show original intent.

Published games less so, especially in corporate playtest processes.

You go give in to that munkin impulse... I won't. Why? because it drives my players to strive for those extra points by playing harder.

I'm going to try to be the voice of reason and ask everyone to chillax, and not imply that other forum members are munchkins or nefariously mess with their players heads because the other forum member prefers a different playstyle. Someone doing something differently doesn't make them wrong and them not being wrong doesn't make "us" wrong (generalized "us" and "them"), different strokes for different folks and all that.

The Edge beta had a lot of crap that needed to be cut. Sadly, some of it is still in the lines.

I'm handing out between 40 and 50 per session, 40 if it's a mostly "filler" session, 50 if it's a session where the characters accomplish a lot (either fighting lots of bad guys, or making significant headway into the plot).

The reason being, my game is set a thousand years after the New Jedi Order series, with a Second Galactic Empire working closely with the Jedi to maintain peace. As an established order, the lines between Apprentices, Knights, and Masters is important. Jedi become Knights at about 500 XP, Masters at about 1,000. My Jedi Council Members are built on about 2,000. I want the Jedi player to hit Knight eventually, but I don't know how long I can drag out the various mysteries behind their enemies (they're dangerously close to unravelling the big one, though I don't think they realize it yet), so I want "eventually" to be sooner rather than later.

On 9/4/2017 at 3:44 PM, AK_Aramis said:

Beta's show original intent.

Published games less so, especially in corporate playtest processes.

You go give in to that munkin impulse... I won't. Why? because it drives my players to strive for those extra points by playing harder.

hahahahahahahahahaha

I tend to stick to that 10xp per session level, with an additional 5xp for truly wonderful sessions. Assume a gaming night's hours worth of time here, being 3 to 6 hours depending on daytime jobs needing us the day after. Of course, I have a bunch of nutcase players (positively so) who immerse themselves, have in game conversations sometimes lasting an hour or so and not becoming tedious or boring, and who try to make any combat more than just "I hit for 4 damage. I miss. I miss again. I hit for 5 damage this time." It is rare to see a session with but the 10xp base.

As for Betas and incremental xp other than per multiples of 5... to each their own. I can see the advantages and disadvantages go either way. Besides, when I give 15 xp, and the player is actually saving up for that 20 cost or 25 cost Talent anyways, there is 'progress without progressing immediately' going on anyways. I don't know the designers, so I am not even going to touch the idea whether or not they intended it to be either way. Dit they intend for other numbers than increments of 5? I don't know. It didn't make it into the final product, appearently. So maybe they tried it in Beta and stopped intending it as they way it frustrated more than motivate people. Perhaps they did intend it, never stopped intending it, but some intern changed it because he or she didn't understand the mathematics involved. I don't know. Again, to each their own, though I would be inclined to follow the published rules for this, and not the Beta rules to which I never had any access.

I typically give 20 base XP

The players vote on who did the best RP of the session in secret. Winner gets +5 xp

I give the group +5 xp if someone does a story synopsis of the events of the session in character.

I occasionally give bonus XP for things like story arc completion, exceptional RP, etc... This typically ranges from +5 to +10 xp.

My typical is 10-15xp base. Then you can be nominated for up to 5xp by the other players for events that happened during the session. Style points as we call them.

I typically give out 15 XP for a 4ish hour session that I run Bi-weekly. A pretty good rule of thumb is 5xp per encounter. Social/combat.

5 xp for hour of play. Typically we play 5 hours so 25xp with a possible +5 kicker for accomplishing a major campaign goal.

We stopped using experience. Instead, we periodic "power ups."

These are handled based on the demands of the campaign and what seems right in terms of narrative and character growth.

I'd say we negotiate them, but so far that hasn't been the case.

The players are happy, feel like their characters are growing, and enjoying themselves.

One thing I've found is, without the usual bean counting, non-experience based rewards and achievements are just as coveted.

Got a new method of tracking XP for sessions, gonna go with a more individual route that rewards RP and generally gives out more xp than the standard. Feel free to download and use if you desire or tweak to your own liking!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/icg779r4r7pc3y0/Session XP Chart.xlsx?dl=0

How to use it: download, enter the character names in place of the generic names in Microsoft excel, print and write an "X" into each appropriate box for the character. Categories are for resolved encounters (whether through violence or other means; running away doesn't count as resolved), hours played, exceptional use of character Motivation in roleplay, exceptional use of Duty/Obligation/Morality in roleplay, X Factor for just something memorable, whether it was funny, clever, surprising, etc...

Math is: (encounters resolved + hours played + motivation + duty/obligation/morality + x factor) * 5 = session xp.

So if you resolved 4 encounters in a 3 hour session and RP'd your greed motivation well, it would be (4 + 3 + 1) * 5 = 40 xp.