I dislike making it an exact science... I don't want to have a calculator at hand to hand out such things.

I have done three sessions so far where I handed out 25xp to each player and a bonus of 5 every time to highlight a certain player that really lived up to his/her potential.

I'd drop the base session XP by 5 across the board.

I'd cut this section entirely:

I only give XP for completing a task, roleplaying, clever ideas, beating a tough opponent. Good rolling and beating hordes of minions never deserves more than 1 XP IMO.

book keeping isn't hard, the gm simply writes everyones name down and ticks when they do something really well.

if you do a flat 5xp for roleplaying it wont inspire people to try and out perform them selves, there are a lot of roll players out there who don't understand the concept and by them knowing when they roleplay well or poorly they improve as a player.

a group i'm in does something similar but the gm awards in increases of +2,+3,+2,+3 and so on we usually end p with 32 to 37 xp per session.
i dislike this, so in my group i award xp properly, by that i mean if a character has leart from an experience he should gain experience, so if he passes an untrained skill or triumphed, or succeded against the odds, then he has learnt from the experience and gets xp to show that.

it isn't very hard to say at the end:

John, your character gets 20 for the session, 7 for all there great work during the day and 3 for your good role playing.

Trevor, you get 20 for the day 4 for your awesome heal crits and 2 for your role playing

Alex, you got 20 for the day and absolutely dominated that very hard combat with all those triumphs, you get 8 xp, but you weren't role playing at all so no bonus there. John gets 30, Trevor gets 26, and Alex the power gamer got 28.

It's only hard if you don't keep tally and try to remember at the end, adding ticks at 1xp each and then rating their acting isn't hard at all.

as to dropping xp by 5 across the board, that is based on ffg's recommended xp award and is a separate discussion, maybe your idea of normal is too easy.

one thing i'd consider, is maybe making all those 1xp things 0.5xp, and rounding down fractions left over

that would mean you get 1 xp per 2 occurances.

Our GM keeps us lean.

Our GM keeps us lean.

thats all good but some players dont meet often, i believe 10xp per hour is a good ratio. so a 3-4hr session like we have gives between 30 and 40 xp

Our GM keeps us lean.

thats all good but some players dont meet often, i believe 10xp per hour is a good ratio. so a 3-4hr session like we have gives between 30 and 40 xp

Nice !!!!

During 3,5 hours of a session my team had three small encounters during one day. They have still one encounter ahead of them and possible one more before the "episode" ends. I won't award more than 15 XPs for all (plus extra points for roleplaying) and that includes the second session. You are very generous GMs.

if you do some searching in the GM forum section, you will find average XP per hour around 5. 10 is a lot of xp. I recommend looking through the talent trees and pay attention to the value requirements. By giving out xp, your basically saying 'this much time equals a talent or skill'. At 10, your giving people Dedication for 2.5 hours of game time. Thats not much time at all for a stat boost.

Our group meets every other week for 3-4 hours and average 15xp unless there is some milestone reached giving them more.

with it taking 5+10+15+20+25 minimum to get the stat, it takes 75 xp or almost 8hrs of game play to increase a stat, that equates to roughly 1 campaign, but if you feel thats too fast reduce the starting xp given out, my players like fast progression.

I award 15xp flat per session and then throughout my adventures I have certain benchmarks in the story. It might be particular skill checks, it might be demonstrating good tactics approaching a situation, a particularly funny scene or solution and l might hand out a bonus award. It usually sorts out so far to about 30-35 a session and if we are lucky we get together on average twice a month.

I don't like awarding less because just a couple sessions later, something like 15 xp doesn't let a player really pursue a focus. They might be able to buy a skill or something they don't have, but it limits them and l want people to feel like they've accomplished and earned something every game. Just my table, to each their own of course.

10xp per hour sounds like an awful lot of xp being handed out, in a system where xp is very valuable.

I give mine 10 xp per session, plus 5 if they accomplish a major goal they've set for themselves. I'll give 20 if they wrap up a campaign, maybe a bit more if I'm planning on a time skip.

There's no science to it on my end. It's what I feel is appropriate.

Egads - that's a whole lot of bookkeeping! I just eyeball it at the end of the session, kick them a touch extra if it was the end of the story arc or if it was a really hard game.

Also, I like my campaigns to last a good long while, so I tend to lowball the XP 10 to 15 experience for a 4 to 6 hour session is pretty standard at my table.

I know a lot of people are commenting on the high XP gain per hour of session, but I think a lot of that depends on how often your group meets.

My group meets about every 3 weeks if we are lucky, and we don't stick to one game for too long. I'm not generally opposed to giving out more than the recommended amount of XP to allow them to experience higher-levels of game play before we inevitably move on.

Curse you gamer-ADD!!

Yeah this really is campaign/GM individual type stuff. All good though, whatever works for you!

15xp per session seems about right, unless you play for some ungodly length of time. A 5xp bonus for good roleplaying also seems fair. Awarding bonuses for milestones or completing campaigns (10-15xp) seems good too. Overcomplicating the system will just annoy the GM in the long run, and make the game less fun for everyone.

I aim for a 4 hour session and give 15-25XP per session. 15XP if we call it early, or if the game.... doesn't really progress (sometimes everyone's just in the mood to tell in-jokes or laugh so hard they cry every time I mention that a Hutt NPC is expanding) and 25 XP if the session does something extra, like capping a campaign. I offer the +5XP for playing to motivation as well, but I'm having a hard time of it (some motivations are more obvious than others). So I literally play it right out of the book.

If your method works for you, cool. I'd never want to try and track that much stuff....

My XP in this game has been relatively lean, but that's because of how the group has been lately. We only meet every two weeks for about 3 hours, sometimes 5, depending on schedules.

After getting them to settle down and get into game, we get a solid 2-3 hours of actual gametime in, which includes in-game planning.

My table hasn't gotten XP for the past two sessions because they have been planning a "heist" and doing the obligatory preparation. This week when they actually finish the job, I'll be giving them each 40XP plus whatever is worthy of them for good roleplaying, such as the Politico's brilliant idea to incite a riot, the Bodyguard's sudden brilliance of using an ion gun to capture a droid and steal it's speeder, the Mechanic's suggestion to use the underground, the Pilot's quick thinking as to what NOT to do with the ship, and the Doctor's realization that their target is "addicted" to Lesai.

My rule of thumb for EotE is 5-10XP per session, based on what they've gotten done, with 1-5 XP as a bonus for every brilliant idea they've done or anything that they've performed in game well enough to get the group to say "Wow" (like the Politico's quick thinking to stain his face with berry juice and act as though he was psychologically addicted to lesai) or to laugh hysterically (like the Mechanic crying on the Doctor when she was told that a programmer was going to need to "fix" her droid; it wasn't really the case, but she stayed in character as the rest of the group lost control out of character over it).

Our group meets online to play maybe once every month or so. We've agreed as GMs (there are 4 of us in the group of 8-9 that take turns) to award a flat payout of 20xp. That's for usually 3-4 hour game sessions. Then the GM can award up to 5 extra xp for things such as clever plans, saving the day, etc...so everyone usually ends the session getting 22-25 xp. It seems to be working well for now.

I have been doing:

5xp for every major challenge (whether it be dice- or story-based)

5xp for a major milestone (usually end of story, but doesn't have to be)

5xp for playing motivation (just say one thing the character did and it's good)

for 4 hours of play we average 15-20 a session.

Role playing ability:

Didn't role play/Roll played 0xp

Bad role playing 1xp

Average role playing 2xp

Good role playing 3xp

Amazing role playing 4xp

We don't know who their real persona is anymore, give them an academy award 5xp

This is problematic. Rewarding "roleplaying" like this – as if it were a measurable thing – doesn't promote characterization as much as it allows the GM to lord over the players and judge how they play. This kind of thing is not only completely subjective, but also situational based on what happens in the story.

The book's suggested reward for playing motivation is as far as such a reward should go. Did you play your character? Yes. Reward. Done.

Alternatively, you could let the players decide who best embodied their character. Let the consensus decide and someone always gets it.

I give my players 10XP per session. They earn 5 or 10 XP extra for really good thinking or role playing. Lastly, they all get bonus XP for mission objectives. I only let the players 'advance' between story chapters.

At this point 200+ XP earned, advancement has slowed considerably, and that suits me just fine.

Your rates are WAY too high for even mid-term play.

Assuming a fairly typical 3-4 hour session, and the 15 XP per session baseline, that works to about 5 XP per hour baseline, and even that's a rather quick advancement. (I run 4-5 hour sessions, and only give 10 points base, and the progress has been pretty rapid. At 15 per, it was too fast for reasonable. You'd be putting 50-75 per session into my group. That's a tree in 4-6 sessions, fully complete.

my rates are going off what my first gm taught me, we would get 25-30 per 3 hours session.

i'll work out an adjustment to represent 5xp/hr and adjust the starting post when i have done it.