This is one of those things I think could use some guidelines in the corebook, and probably in Edge (Or is it in Edge? I don't recall. And couldn't find anything on a brief skim through).

Mainly because the use of such talents are... very dependant on session length. A group that does 2 hour sessions gets a lot more use out of it than one doing a marathon 8 hour session. This actually makes those sorts of talents rather limited if you're (un?)fortunate enough to be in one of the latter cases. Sure there is a generally unspoken presumption in most of gaming that a session is about 4 hours, give or take, and it feels like most games are built around this presumption. But that's where the problem is. Any deviation from the average length either buffs or debuffs once per session. And especially in an 8 hour session, a once per session talent is almost worthless, a very limited resource indeed.

And yes, there is always working out with your GM - IF they are willing to, since ultimately they have the power to decide. So I'm rather firmly in the camp that issues like this should be in Black and White.

Well, in such cases you could always have a break, a sort of "wipe" if you will, let some time pass in-game, perhaps a short down time to do stuff, or move the story to another stage - for instance they just left hyperspace and are enroute to the planet to meet someone. The time in between can be fast forwarded, any player get to do one "legitimate" thing (i.e. no black marketeering or acquiring restricted items), like restock stimpacks, get a new comlink, scanner goggles, new toolkit (whatever), anything which wouldn't require a check or roleplaying moment - I'd allow a check to modify an attachment perhaps. Players can also spend XP at this junction, increase one skill or buy a new talent. Then re-roll for destiny points, and reset once per encounter talents.

Of course these "breaks" will differ in nature, sometimes a few hours of in-game time passes, other times perhaps a day, several days or perhaps a week... to cut down on roleplaying travelling - if no encounters are planned, necessary or desirable for the story to progress; unplanned and pointless encounters is not something I'm a fan of, not that all unplanned encounters are pointless, not at all.

At least I'd do something like that, at a minimum re-roll of destiny points - as that sort of signifies a new session of sorts - and perhaps let them spend some XP, unless you're fine with players spending XP while playing.

While anything you do here is going to be a house rule of sorts, I'd say that the 4-hour guidline is a pretty good one.

Even in marathon 8+ hour sessions, the's usually a point after the resolution of some issue where everyone breaks for food, bio-breaks, and other outside-the-game replenishment. I'd say treat those as your "session" breaks as well.

I think this got brought up on the Sam & Jay Q&A episode of the Order 66 podcast.

From Jay's response, his experience is about a 4 hour session, with 3 of it spent doing actual gaming and the other hour for the random chatter that always comes up during game sessions. And that's probably about the average for most groups, with college-age ones probably lasting longer while those of older adults are probably shorter due to various responsibilities (spouse, kid, and job being the big three) of the different members.

So for those marathon sessions of 8+ hours, I'd say that whenever your group takes a pronounced break, such figuring who's ordering what from the local Chinese delivery place or what you're getting on your pizza, then I'd say any "once per session" abilities reset, with the caveat that if you broke in the middle of an encounter, the refresh takes place after the encounter.

It is an odd mechanic, for sure, but I understand why they did it.

In D&D, you gain an action point every two encounters. This left us with tracking encounters across sessions. It ran into situations like, "did we do 3 encounters last time, or just 2?"

It got to the point where we started arbitrarily dictating when we had an action point. Once per session eliminates this entirely.

I would say once per in-game day is acceptable, too, and would be worthy of a house rule.

Based on Jay Little's response that they balance XP and once per session talents on a 4 hour session. I'd say just to keep it simple allow your players to have it be twice per session if your sessions are 6-8 hours long and you feel that they would have used it again in a session.

One of my groups plays for about 6 hours every 2 weeks. One of my players has a once per session and we've kept it at once per session, for now, but I don't think he would have used it more than once anyway.

I try to find a natural break during an adventure to bring the session to a close, these is either at the end of an act, after a decent milestone has been achieved or when the group enter hyperspace. this is sometimes seems a bit arbitrary but the players always know when the session has ended as they are rewarded with XP, which seems to happen more in this system than in others I have played.

All this is why I think it deserves at least a short little sidebar or paragraph mention in the core book. Which is the real point of this thread. So I'd say consider this a formal suggestion to make it so in the core book.

I would extend the 4 hour rule to Obligation rolls too. Force dice aren't that big of a deal because of the way they refresh the other side's pool with use. But Obligation should change at the same pace as session talents would refresh. Having obligation issues for 8 hours is a little rough on one PC and too much of a relief for others.

All this is why I think it deserves at least a short little sidebar or paragraph mention in the core book. Which is the real point of this thread. So I'd say consider this a formal suggestion to make it so in the core book.

I agree it should be addressed. of my Edge groups, we ran one for 3 hour sessions, and one for 6, both with only one use of "once per session" talents... it didn't make a whole lot of difference in their use. The guy with most of them kept forgetting he had them in the long session group, and a different guy had the same issue in the short group.

Short answer: whenever you roll obligation/hand out XP/generate Destiny Points.

Another short answer: whatever feels right

But I agree, that's going to differ from group to group. A sidebar might be nice, but remember in the Gamemaster chapter session length is already addressed (and is assumed to be 3 major encounters and 2 shorter ones). A diligent and fair GM should be able to extrapolate something from that without too much effort.

I would prefer that it be defined similar to how Vancian magic works in Classic D&D and AD&D, that is, once per day. So, regardless of how long your session lasts, simply a good night's rest in game time resets all. My two credits.

It would be really nice for RPG developers to take into account the growing number of games played online through forum-based play-by-post methods and maybe throw in a one- or two-sentence recommendation of how much content or IRL time might constitute the equivalent of a "session" in PbP. Usually this is something completely left to the GM for a house-rule (and probably rightfully so since every single PbP game will have a different update rate) but a tiny bit of suggestion/guidance would be helpful. An easy way to frame it would be references to the corebook-included module and how much of the module might reasonably be covered by an average IRL game session.

It would be really nice for RPG developers to take into account the growing number of games played online through forum-based play-by-post methods and maybe throw in a one- or two-sentence recommendation of how much content or IRL time might constitute the equivalent of a "session" in PbP. Usually this is something completely left to the GM for a house-rule (and probably rightfully so since every single PbP game will have a different update rate) but a tiny bit of suggestion/guidance would be helpful. An easy way to frame it would be references to the corebook-included module and how much of the module might reasonably be covered by an average IRL game session.

Again, I think it just depends on when XP is dolled out and/or when Obligation/Duty is rolled. This should usually signify the "end" of the session and/or "beginning" of a new session.

I don't see how it has to be more complicated. Easy-peasey.

I always break my PbP games down into "seasons" or "episodes" of varying length. Usually, every 100-150 posts (for a 5 person group + GM) or whenever we hit a good, solid break in the action, I give out XP, reboot the "Once per Session" talents, reroll obligation/destiny, and such. It's worked well so far.

I can easily see the issue and I believe that I brought this up before on the D20Radio forums when the EotE Core book was being discussed shortly after its release. My group meets once a week, for instance, and each session lasts approxiamately one hour. I can certainly see where my group may have an XP/Talent recharge advantage over others who meet less frequently though for longer individual session times. Again, the Vancian-style approach solves this for me at least where Talent re-use is concerned.