Donovan Morningfire said:

I think the information that gets lost in a conversation like this is what the difficulty of the encounters are, and that it mattered in d20 games, and doesn't in EotE.  GM Chris did a lot of work and produced the information about how many sessions it took 'in his experience' to move from one lvl to the other.  This kind of information is absent from GMC's information. 

I can tell you that in my two year campaign I ran in Saga, my experience was very very different than what he described in his list above.  I gave the players the XP the book indicated they earned for about 3 sessions.  After that, it became very clear that if I continued to give them the XP proscribed by the book, they would be leveling so quickly there would be no way for me to reasonably complete the story I had planned (let alone the two other acts) before they were able to far surpass Vader-esque power levels.  The problem was caused by the dictated challenge levels for adversaries being much to low.  So I had to increase the CL the players were facing to provide any kind of challenge or danger.  This in turn led to massive XP rewards where they were leveling basically every session.  I basically threw up my hands when it came to awarding XP, and just told them "Okay, now you lvl".

Different groups may have had different experiences with the difficulty curve, but here, its absent, which means that those kinds of conversions are more difficult to make.  

My solution to the conversion has worked well so far.  Have the players [re]create their characters in the new system, and then give large XP rewards every session (50-100 XP), until you've worked up to the point where you feel they should be.  Everyone can learn the game again, everyone gets to feel how the game acts at different power levels, and GM isn't faced with nothing more than guesswork to determine how hard to make the opponents, since each later session can be planned based on information from earlier sessions.

My players are eager to get back to where they were, but they understand its a learning process for us all.  In retrospect, they've appreciated the chance to learn and not get their asses handed to them by foes that would have been pushovers before, but now are a lot more dangerous.

-WJL

Kallabecca said:

You know, Kallabecca, you bring up a highly valid point.

Now - not to toot my own horn too much - but I'd call myself "pretty experienced" with Saga Edition.    But your point is a very very good one.  Because 1 level every 2 to 3 weeks (1 session a week, I'm assuming) tells me a lot about the TIME your sessions take.

I hadn't even considered that.

My sessions tend to be 10-12 hour affairs with massive numbers of encounters.

So NOW… I'm wondering if the "10 xp per session" guideline is working off an idea of 4 hour sessions?  Makes sense.  The system is FAST.  [scratches chin]

Damn… you're on to something, sir!

GM Chris said:

Well, for most folks in most RPGs, a 4 hour session is the norm, as that's typically about all that can be accounted for between different folks' schedules and responsibilities.  So the baseline 10 XP per session probably is based on that guideline, rather than the half-day mini-marathon sessions you tend to run .  Don't get me wrong, they're quite entertaining to read about, but most folks would consider themselves lucky to get a 6 hour session in.

GM Chris said:

4 - 6 hour sessions once a week. Even when I started that was the norm due to other obligations (homework, extracurricular stuff, etc…). That also seems to be the baseline that most RPGs that I've played that AREN'T level-based for determining rewards for the session (Savage Worlds, Shadowrun, GURPS, HERO, Star Wars D6, etc…).

Okay… so now I'm totally convinced.  Also, I was emailing Jay Little last night, and asked him (regarding the 10 xp per session guideline), how long he envisioned a "session" to be.  His response?  About 4 hours.

So there you go.

Kallabecca, your point is EXACTLY correct.  :)

GM Chris said:

I think the problem is that you're falling into the trap of thinking that 1 XP at 1st level and 1 XP at 20th level are equivalent in Saga Edition.

The spine of the d20 system (which Saga is based on), assumes 3 encounters per session, 4 sessions, equals a level. XP progression in Saga is non-linear, meaning that XP values for opponents, and to achieve the next level, increase as level increases. I.e.: at 1st level, your character will earn maybe 200-300 XP per session. At higher level, you'll be earning thousands of XP per session.

EotE on the other had has a flat (linear) progression - regardless of how much XP your character has, they will usually only be earning 10-15 XP per session.

Given that, I think the only way to really compare the characters is to break it down by number of sessions played. So a 5th level Saga PC, with the assumed rate of progression, will have played roughly 4 (number of levels gained) x 4 (assumed number of sessions per level) - 16 sessions. An equivalent EotE character will have earned 160-240 (average 200) XP during that same amount of play time. Obviously, if you have more or less encounters than the asumed default per level in Saga you'll have to tweak those numbers, but it's encouraging to see that it's bang on what people say "feels" right in play.

Note this means your average 20th level Saga PC is equivalent to 19 x 4 = 76 sessions of play, or 760-1140 (average 950) XP in EotE, and gives us the following tables of equivalence:

Saga Level; Saga XP; Average Edge XP
1; 0; 0
2; 1000; 50
3; 3000; 100
4; 6000; 150
5; 10000; 200
6; 15000; 250
7; 21000; 300
8; 28000; 350
9; 36000; 400
10; 45000; 450
11; 55000; 500
12; 66000; 550
13; 78000; 600
14; 91000; 650
15; 105000; 700
16; 120000; 750
17; 136000; 800
18; 153000; 850
19; 171000; 900
20; 190000+; 950+

I.e.: 50 XP per level gained (above 1)

Award them 12 experience per session played.  In my experience this ends up being every 3 sessions or so.  I would think 150 (round up from 144) points would be reasonable. 

Darnit, for a second i thought this thread was about converting saga players but no such luck haha.

EngageEight said:

Force them to prep for and GM a 6-hour Saga game with 4 encounters, for a 6-person party of level 12 or higher characters.  That might do it.

Sounds good. And I will remind them that they can't use Threats of the Galaxy since it is more errors than accuracy.

GM Chris said:

Where's the +1 button…?

XD