Our group will be starting its campaign tomorrow. We are shooting for a run that lasts as long as FFG keeps putting out support. 3+ years it seems at this point. We get together for 4 hrs and have 30 min of chatter before and after play leaving 3 hrs. of solid play time. As suggested that would be 15 xp per session. At 10 months of play time (2 months for vacations, breaks and whatnot) that is a total of 600 xp a year. After playing with a character builder, that is a LOT of growth it seems, or is that what is to be expected?

I guess the question is; What kind of growth do GMs plan on shooting for between books?

I was wondering roughly the same thing... 600-700 xp a year seems like a *lot* of growth

I also have wondered on that. We play weekly, though we alternate between a couple systems usually. So if I consider 6 months is roughly 25 weeks. That's 375.

Our campaigns can go on for years, I don't want to get to powerful to quickly. I'm wondering if 10 exp a session would be better.

We will be discussing this some tomorrow. I'll let ya know what we come to, but I have a feeling that we will be closer to 500 XP in 10 months.

Our GM is concerned about one thing mostly and that is keeping the players hungry. There are a few ways to go about it of course, but this is a biggie.

Keeping people hungry via credits is easy enough, but XP is the tricky part it seems. Struggling with coin at the beginning and turning it up works well with the system. As an example; you have made more contacts and can be trusted with more important missions. You could ramp up the XP the same way I guess, but there kind of needs to be some target to shoot for, so things don't get to out of hand, or make people feel as if they are not getting rewarded enough for their time.

As a quick metric, it costs 5+10+15+20+25+30=105 XP for a Rank 6 skill (165 for a non-career skill), and a couple hundred to broadly and deeply explore a single talent tree. So, if you focus your character progression just on the character's main schtick, you're going to be *very* good at that schtick, but you won't have gotten much better at anything else, or broadened your capabilities much.

So, the 500-600 XP range means a purely focused character will be easily among the best in the galaxy at what they do. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it is something to keep in mind.

I don't think there's any reason to ramp up the XP rewards though, as individual steps of progression remain at the one per 2-3 sessions range at the most. Even buying into additional Specializations remains cost effective for those who want to broaden their skill set a bit. If you're worried about that build up, you might want to give a minor per-session XP reward (5 XP or so), and a larger per-adventure one (15-20 XP or so) to help keep things 'in check'. Of course, that depends on how many sessions a typical adventure takes.

My campaign does a flat 10xp per session, because we anticipated the same issue of having maybe too much XP. We've been happy with it so far. We do give an extra 5 at the completion of an episode, which is about 4 sessions, so call it 45 xp per 4 sessions.

My campaign does a flat 10xp per session, because we anticipated the same issue of having maybe too much XP. We've been happy with it so far. We do give an extra 5 at the completion of an episode, which is about 4 sessions, so call it 45 xp per 4 sessions.

Also, makes the accounting easy.

As a quick metric, it costs 5+10+15+20+25+30=105 XP for a Rank 6 skill

There are only 5 ranks to Skills, so 75XP, but this point still stands and is the basis of the answer.

To fully explore a Career Talent tree, it's 300XP exact.

But, a player might not want every Talent in a tree. They will also likely want to put up several Skills, but not necessarily max every one.

On top of that, they can pick as many new Specializations or even Careers as they want! There are 19 Specializations in Edge of the Empire alone! 18 Specializationss are from Careers and Force Exile. And if you go into Force Exile, you have to buy each step of the Force Talents. AND you have to spend 10XP times the number of Specializations you're going to have after adding a new one.

But there's two more books to come! All those books will have new Careers and Specializations in them as well!

Now...

At 15XP per session, if you game every week (you may not, holidays, vacations, emergencies -but hopefully not- can cancel games) then that's 56 weeks a year, which means 15x56= 840XP/year . Less if you miss games.

At 10XP per year, it's 520XP/year . Less if you miss games.

Breaking down costs:

2 full Specializations for 620XP (300 + (300+20)) if same Career

3 full Specializations for 950XP (300 + (300+ 20) + (300+30) ) if same Career

Add 10XP to the cost when branching into a new Career's specialization (so 630 or 960 or 970)

2 full stats for 150XP if class skills

3 full stats for 225XP if class skills

Add 5XP per rank if not a class skill.

Force Talents add up to 120XP for Sense, 100XP for Influence and 150XP for Move.

But your PC's might not want to max out all of a Talent tree nor only focus on a specific Stat or two, so they could end up with partial of 3 Careers and many Stats in the mid range.

(A Doctor might want to learn to handle a gun better and dip into Hired Gun. a Bounty Hunter might want to learn how to keep the ship flying and become a Mechanic and then upgrade his gear and become an Outlaw Tech , a Scoundrel might want to become a sneaky Thief, etc, etc which makes many RP possibilities)

Something tells me FFG already did this math and that's why they suggest 10XP per session , with bonuses for good RP or extra exciting sessions. This will give players the chance to branch out into different Specializations and growing as characters other than just roles even before the next new book comes out, while not filling out too much of any trees they choose. Yes, it will be slower than 15XP but it's the gradual changes that are to be appreciated.

My starting point is 15 xp a session +/- 5 if we get in a long/short session or if we wrap up an arc. But then, we're probably only going to put in about a year with any given character(s), so after then, the group tends to roll up something new and start over.

My group and me used to play Tribe 8, which the numbers of Attribute/Skill were pretty close to 1:1. The XP expenditure is different though. But I put my experience as to why I'm doing the cost change for our group.

Tribe 8 uses the Silhouette system. Originally the first use of the system for heavyGear suggested 0 to 3xp per session. The idea was that growth of stats/skills were slow and that PC should spend XP on extra dice on the roll. Tribe 8 however suggests 2 to 5xp per session. So that's what we ran with

After almost 2 years were started hitting a sever problem. Due to the systems exponentiation rule system of result. players were starting to sit on a spare 100 to 200xp(Star Wars equiv would be x2 so 1000 to 2000). We also followed the training times suggested in the rules. So that's why they were sitting on a massive spare xp. The PC got to the point they didn't need to spend XP It just got worse.

After 8 years. I realized the XP problem was based on a short term campaign play. maybe a 1 year game, probably no more than 2. It looks like Star Wars is under the same design. XP is for mid length games that at most last 1 to 2 years. In this case you want PC to reach high end skills.

If your going to be running a long term game of 2+ years. I suggest either 5xp per session or a base of 10xp per scenario and offer bonuses on doing something special or achieving difficult objectives. heck offer Achievement XP for doing something amazing. As an example in a combat based scenario, offer a big XP bonus for never using blasters/melee weapons.

My campaign does a flat 10xp per session, because we anticipated the same issue of having maybe too much XP. We've been happy with it so far. We do give an extra 5 at the completion of an episode, which is about 4 sessions, so call it 45 xp per 4 sessions.

Indeed. And with a hopefully regular influx of new supplements (but if nothing else, AoR and F&D) there's plenty of stuff to spend XP on. At our rate, it'll be a while before we run out of stuff to spend XP on.

I personally don't think that singular campaigns should last more than 6 or so months, because when they do they end up getting stale. It is much better to end a campaign on a badass note and begin a new one. It might be a sequel campaign, and some characters might even come or appear as NPCs, or their friends or children might show up, but I suppose that's probably an opinion not shared by others. I just prefer my campaigns as individual connected sagas, rather than one that goes on forever. Having players stay on that long is hard too, even just form scheduling conflicts.

That being said, the campaign I'm about to do is only going to last from September until early December, once a week. At the end, we'll see what happens. But to keep my players interested and to make sure they can always do something fun, they're going to get 20 base EXP a session, plus more for good roleplaying etc. That way you guarantee that players have a **** load of fun and they don't get bored of playing one character for too long (though I totally let them switch characters if they get bored of one, too.)

I personally don't think that singular campaigns should last more than 6 or so months, because when they do they end up getting stale. It is much better to end a campaign on a badass note and begin a new one. It might be a sequel campaign, and some characters might even come or appear as NPCs, or their friends or children might show up, but I suppose that's probably an opinion not shared by others. I just prefer my campaigns as individual connected sagas, rather than one that goes on forever. Having players stay on that long is hard too, even just form scheduling conflicts.

That being said, the campaign I'm about to do is only going to last from September until early December, once a week. At the end, we'll see what happens. But to keep my players interested and to make sure they can always do something fun, they're going to get 20 base EXP a session, plus more for good roleplaying etc. That way you guarantee that players have a **** load of fun and they don't get bored of playing one character for too long (though I totally let them switch characters if they get bored of one, too.)

I suppose I understand your sentiment, but our group just doesn't work that way. We get very attached to our characters, and like to keep telling their stories. We have games that last for years, and are often very reluctant to change when we finally do. If one player tires of a character they may swap it out, but that's the exception, not the rule.

I personally don't think that singular campaigns should last more than 6 or so months, because when they do they end up getting stale.

Six months? Are you MAD?!? I've just barely gotten a handle on my character six months into a game, let alone actually develop him/her/it by then!

My campaign does a flat 10xp per session, because we anticipated the same issue of having maybe too much XP. We've been happy with it so far. We do give an extra 5 at the completion of an episode, which is about 4 sessions, so call it 45 xp per 4 sessions.

Also, makes the accounting easy.

Starting out the same way. I run my group bi-weekly, so that's only 240-350 ish xp prior to AoE.in a year. (guesstimates here). I'll go on feel though. If it seems like the group wants or needs a bit more satisfaction on the xp front I'll bump it up.

I do something around 2xp per hour of time spent actually playing ( snack breaks, slapfights, puppet shows and catching up on Dallas don't count ) + frequent bonuses for "stuff." I award XP at the ends of Episodes for published stuff and when there is a break in the in-game action when we go off the hyperspace lanes into starbox territory. My first group that has been on and off again due to real life schedules is sitting at about +120ish XP in just under a year. We aren't a marathon session crew, or a group that gets together once a week though. If we had been playing more regularly or longer sessions we'd probably be about double that.

My current group plays bi-weekly, 6-7 hour sessions, and we started when the full version of EotE was released. We get 15xp base and +5 for good role-playing, especially when it comes to your motivations and obligations, and another +5 for milestones which is around every 3-4 sessions. Average is about 22 every 2 weeks and we started with 65 extra XP from the Beginner Game. This puts on track to be close to maxed out (Defined as 2 almost full Talent Trees and a few skills upgraded to 4-5) right around the time the non-beta AoR should be released (if it's a year after EotE). Where we go from there is TBD.

Man, if I could find such attention and dedication in a group, I'd be all for it. I guess my groups and players are more ADD than most XD.

It works for me, though, since it lets us switch up situations and characters (and sometimes I don't have to GM! Woo!) so that it doesn't go all Dragon Ball Z on us all. I would love to be in a year+ campaign some time though (that didn't go horribly stale and jump the shark by the end.)

600 seems to be the base established before we move into AoR. How our GM is working on reaching that is starting at a base of 10 XP per session with a bonus for RP and fun! Also, with given missions there will be the opportunity to add extra XP. An example would be...

Mission: Slice the computer at a military outpost and retrieve shipment schedule.

Bonus XP: Killing no innocent bystanders +5, Retriving the data without nobody aware at all that anything had happened +10, Rescuing jailed fringer +5 (depot is aware so ya don't get the +10 xp, but gain a "contact")

Stuff like that. The system we are in is uncharted and he has given us a ton of info already. He created several systems years ago for Firefly and has tons of NPCs and stuff to run.

Should be fun!

Now...

At 15XP per session, if you game every week (you may not, holidays, vacations, emergencies -but hopefully not- can cancel games) then that's 56 weeks a year, which means 15x56= 840XP/year . Less if you miss games.

At 10XP per year, it's 560XP/year . Less if you miss games.

Um...52 weeks a year, but it is still a lot of XP.

I want the pace to be much slower because I want these characters to go through all three books. I am "planning" a campaign/Episode for each book. Episode I Life on the Edge.

These are the guidelines I am using:

· 5-10 XP per session

· +10 completing a major story arc/adventure

· +5 XP accomplishing key milestones

· +5 XP creative storytelling/roleplaying/playing to a character’s motivation

· +1-5 XP for other creative ideas, in-character suggestions, or situations

Sometimes we do not get through any encounters during our 4 hour game but will have good, deep roleplaying, so the base xp award will be lower, but they can boost it through roleplaying and whatnot.

Um...52 weeks a year, but it is still a lot of XP.

Speak for yourself, earthling!

Um...52 weeks a year, but it is still a lot of XP.

Fixed the post, thanks.

I personally don't think that singular campaigns should last more than 6 or so months, because when they do they end up getting stale.

Six months? Are you MAD?!? I've just barely gotten a handle on my character six months into a game, let alone actually develop him/her/it by then!

I'm actually with this gentleman here. I'm in 2 EOTE campaigns at the moment and one of them I've shifted my character focus from one idea to another trying to get a handle on how he deals with his issues. (Started Bothan Assassin on the run for allegedly attempting to kill a ruling council member of Bothwui's Council of Elders.)

He went from angry at being betrayed and planning on becoming a rolling death machine to go back and settle the score too roaming the galaxy in his hot-rod YT-1930 (Love the look of this ship) seeing new places debating why he picked up the gun in the first place. Was it cause that's what his foster father, who betrayed him, wanted him to learn? Or did he want too? That's in 2 months, 4 months he might be a hotshot pilot for the rebels or a spy infiltrating the Empire on they're behalf. Next year he could be a force user on the path to being a Jedi. I could easily sink 1000 xp into that character and not dent his play-ability.

Having a maxed out statistically character is entirely impossible. If your overall goal is to rick-roll combat sure, you can be "done" in 6 months but the way this story telling/dice mechanic works and the rule set you can spend years developing your character.

All this talk of EXP and stuff makes me wonder how much EXP it would take to buy every talent, force power, upgrade, and skill...

hmmmmmm....