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Old 03-10-2020, 01:42 PM   #31
Dalin
 
Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: Saint Paul, MN
Default Re: How many character points do you give out per session?

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Originally Posted by bocephus View Post
I think Im going to add that as an option for one of my groups. They are younger players and having difficulty with playing the disadvantages. I dont know why that never occured to me.
Yeah, younger players do well with a richer set of incentives. With brand new players who are younger than high school, I usually ignore disads and quirks for the first few games. Then I phase in bonus points for playing them up in a prosocial manner.

The last bit is key with some of my younger players. Most of my adult players rapidly figure out how to use their disadvantages to create fun characterizations and roleplaying opportunities. For kids, it sometimes becomes a way to hog the spotlight or derail an adventure. (This is exacerbated when the GM is similarly inexperienced, as I see in my middle school RPG activities.)
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Old 03-10-2020, 02:43 PM   #32
RyanW
 
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Default Re: How many character points do you give out per session?

I've been leaning toward zero.

Or, rather, treating adventuring time as nothing more than training on the job and giving most rewards as purely in-character benefits (which may have cost points at character creation).
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Old 03-11-2020, 04:48 AM   #33
Rathbone
 
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Plano, Texas
Default Re: How many character points do you give out per session?

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Pretty much that. How many character points do you give out? Do you have a system (if they do this they get 1 CP, if they do that they lose 1 CP, etc.)? If you have run many different campaigns, does it vary much from campaign to campaign?
I GM in two different Groups which each meet every other Saturday. Each Session is 6 hours long.

In one I award 3-4 points for each session but do not give them out until the end of the story arc.

In the other I give out 3-7 points each session depending on the genre being played and how well they did in the session.
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Old 03-11-2020, 08:27 AM   #34
Edges
 
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Default Re: How many character points do you give out per session?

It depends on the campaign. But I usually don't give points out on a per-session basis. Instead, they are given out after "adventures." Such adventures typically take 9 - 18 sessions after which PCs are awarded 15 - 30 points.

So that would average 1 2/3 points per session.
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Old 03-11-2020, 09:40 AM   #35
bocephus
 
Join Date: Apr 2019
Default Re: How many character points do you give out per session?

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Originally Posted by Rathbone View Post
I GM in two different Groups which each meet every other Saturday. Each Session is 6 hours long.

In one I award 3-4 points for each session but do not give them out until the end of the story arc.

In the other I give out 3-7 points each session depending on the genre being played and how well they did in the session.
Could you give some detail on why you have two different systems?

Im just curious. Is it more player expectation or something else.
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Old 03-11-2020, 10:51 AM   #36
DangerousThing
 
Join Date: Mar 2013
Default Re: How many character points do you give out per session?

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My group typically gives out 2 per session, sometimes 3 if something special happened.

The problem we're bumping into is there is no time between sessions. The GMs are usually doing 1 day = 1 session. So after 20 days, our characters have gained 50 character points. It's an odd thing to try to balance their progression without limiting the players enjoyment or without giving the character very unrealistic advancement in a specific area. 20 days and a character has increased a skill by 6 or 8? That's dumb to me.
That does seem weird. My game sessions (3-4 hours) have ranged from 5 minutes in-game time to months of in-game time. And I give 3-4 cp per game session.

I've never heard of one in-game day being equal to a session.
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Old 03-11-2020, 11:02 AM   #37
Maz
 
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Default Re: How many character points do you give out per session?

1 pt per session.
We play 4 hours every other week.

We played session 80 a couple of weeks ago.
PC's are around 400 cp now.


PC's do not have to spend points on "things aquired through play", be that riches, rank, status allies or otherwise.


However, sometimes we do time-skips. Where we say several months went by. The PC's get a bunch of bonus CP during this time, and can then also choose between focussing on "getting more money" or "getting more CP" during the downtime. (this also helps avoid the problem Boge mention).
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Old 03-11-2020, 11:21 AM   #38
Kalzazz
 
Join Date: Feb 2009
Default Re: How many character points do you give out per session?

Usually 1 per hour of gameplay, which sadly is usually 2-3 hours, often rounded up towards say 3-4

In character session length varies, most often it's a few hours or less, they get a job they go do it come back get reward and the job is usually local

Many sessions may cover only minutes of game time, they look in a couple rooms fight a couple fights

Others like my latest session took 7 gamedays as they sailed from Jamaica to Key West
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Old 03-11-2020, 02:38 PM   #39
Christopher R. Rice
 
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Location: Portsmouth, VA, USA
Default Re: How many character points do you give out per session?

I tailor my character point guidelines to the campaign. For example, this is for my Ceteriverse campaigns.


• For showing up for the game: 1 point.
• For good roleplaying, within the original concept of the character: 1 to 5 points per play session.
• For poor roleplaying, ignoring or violating the stated personality or objectives of the character: -1 to -5 points per play session.
• For metagaming and/or ruleslawyering: -1 to -5 points to all points otherwise gained.
• For successful completion of the mission, or progress toward its completion in a multi-session adventure: 2 to 4 points.
• For partial failure, or significant setbacks in a multi-session adventure due to PCs making bad decisions (bad die rolls don’t count!): -1 or -3 points.
• For disastrous failure of the mission: -4 or -5 points.
• For an extremely clever action or solution to a specific problem that makes a large, as long as it is in character: 1 point per character per action.
• For a character journal for one episode (up to 500 words: 0.5 points per 250 words.
• For a character portrait (of any PC): 1 points.
• For each additional page of expanded character history: 0.25 points per 250 words.
• For other fiction written about your character: 0.25 points per 250 words.
• Game Bounties (this is doing things for me for the game itself, like you creating a template I need done, working on a map, etc. I will send out emails and you guys can decide if you want to do them or not): 1 to 20 points.
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Old 03-11-2020, 02:48 PM   #40
Christopher R. Rice
 
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Default Re: How many character points do you give out per session?

I also use "Point Debt" pretty liberally and have rules for spending points for upgrades.
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