If you've got the leisure time to play it THAT slow-paced, then that's fine. Especially if you have players that need that "extra" time to focus on the characters, instead of leveling up as you say. However, some players don't need extra incentive to focus on their character. I know I personally spent the time I needed to develop my character. So much so that my background was several pages long, I had written up bios for each of my contacts, blurbs about my char's personality and quirks, etc. All that was left was to progress as the game progressed, and continue to "grow" the character from there. Being in the military, on top of having a family, I don't have the time to play every week, sometimes not even every other. And people are constantly moving, or going TDY or something. If I were gaining 1 karma a session....it'd be time to find a new group.

I'm a similar type player, I'll take the time to write up 3+ pages of background, I'll have well thought out and established contacts, and reasons for all of my skills and equipment...

and I have no problem playing the game "in character" so to speak, as far as making decisions the way I think my character would, screwing over the team if I think this background or something similar were to happen (ie finding evidence of a "lost loved one" as per the flaw quality)...

most of the players I game with are similar, perhaps less in depth in background and npc developement, but that will come up with some....

and I'm with Brol in that when 6 of us get together to play a game, we're not too concerned about speaking with my characters accent or roleplaying out an hour long lunch meet with a contact, we'll roleplay through all the more important bits, making roles and keeping the decisions and all in character, but usually something like a lunch meet for info would only take us about 15-20 min, and once it stops being productive the GM would usually say something like " alright, unless you have something else in particular to ask you all finish up your meal with small talk, he asks if you're still seeing that stripper Candy" player response " and he reminds you of her ex" player response wrapping it up with something like "yeah let him know i've got it under control" - and I'll pick up the check... and that'd be the end of it

we try not to really cut out any roleplaying that we think is productive to the session, but we really try to keep things moving, aside from some one liner banter and witty comments we stick to things pertaining to the session.

and when we play it's usually for 6-8 hours as I said, if we ever ended and the GM said 1 karma i think there's be a revolt


... just had an image of 1 of the players going "wait a minute, 1 karma for surviving the night, 1 karma for putting up with that comment, and 1 more karma for not knocking you upside the head with this book... that's atleast 3, not to mention some of the other BS that's happened tonight"

I do, but I could see how some people would desire a faster-paced development. Generally, I find a lot of RPGs give out advancement like candy, which leads to rapid development and bloating power on player-characters. I like slow development, it means people are less likely to cripple themselves at chargen to make the über-specialist counting on quick growth to compensate.

But if you play occasionally rather than regularly and want to give the players a more tangible set of rewards, dispense with the karma system entirely. My suggestion is to give them BP at the end of each adventure, and assume 6 months to a year happens between each game. I'm not sure how much BP, but take a peak at what you want a character to get each adventure (ie: say you want them to get around 3 skill increases) and calculate the BP for that, then give that out.

We play weekly, and use something resembling that table. Unfortunately, our runs are generally at least 3 sessions, and sometimes up to 8+ sessions. We generally get between 5 and 20 per run (not session). This averages out to about 2 per session, which roughly translates to 100 Karma a year. This feels like really slow progression to me, but seems to fit RAW.

What would have been best would be a mini-chapter on "development speed" and karma rewards, with advice to GMs. It'd have several alternative scales for karma rewards, with indications of how quickly characters advance on a given scale. It'd also have details on what kind of nuyen rewards would fit those karma rewards.

Agreed. Expected karma really factors into what kind of builds are viable long term as well. For example, a surly guy with 1 Charisma and a chip on his shoulder becomes a lot less appealing if you can bet that he'll be stuck that way a few months from now. By contrast, if he gets 6 karma per run you can at least grab yourself Leadership and Intimidation fairly quickly and command some respect if they'll never mistake you for being part of the "in" crowd or being a smooth talker.