How much Karda do you gain/give per session?
And what's the (standard) duration of your sessions?

I typically run 4 hour sessions (much longer and the natives get restless), dispensing ~3-5 karma per (this gives fairly fast progression, but I'm okay with that; it's a small group anyway).

average 5 hour game and 7 karma

Our games run for about 3 hours per week (would prefer longer, but the best we can get free on everyone's schedules). We average 7-10 karma per run, which normally lasts for about 8-10 weeks (so about 24-30 hours gameplay)

5 hours per session, with about two sessions to complete a run and 7-10 karma per run so 4 or 5 per session on average.

If I can manage to complete a session one night, I will typically hand out 4 to 5 Karma. 3 if it's sort of slow, 6 if there is alot of good RP.

Generally, though, it takes two sessions to complete one. I will hold Karma from the 1st half over for the second, but award Karma for each, generally around 6 or 7. Again, depending on RP, I might go another point higher.

Our session times generally run oddly, at best. We all ge together, talk about the past 2 weeks, and eat dinner. There's usually some bitching about WoW or the local LARP while trying to get the various children situated. There are a few questions about gear and what not. We finally get around to playing. We play for maybe an hour, some vaguely grey area pops up, a huge debate takes place for the next hour, hour and a half. Finally we get back to actually doing the run, but not before trying to put children down for sleep. After that we get back into it, for maybe another half hour, hour tops. Then we part to the four winds, except the people who live where ever we are playing at for that particular game. 2 weeks later, repeat.

Sessions: 4-8 hours once per week
Karma: 8-12/mission
Mission Time: 1 to 3 sessions (mostly on the 1 session end)

We award a little heavy because we like to see progression in our characters. Even at this rate it can easily take a year or more real time to see any kind of awesomeness out of a character. We also have 2 groups going at a time, one black trench and one pink mohawk so the sessions are divided between the two (though we play the BT one more).

-D

Typically you'll start to see players use karma to upgrade characters when they've accumulated maybe 20 points, give or take a few.

So the real question is, how fast do you want to see them increasing skills and stats?




-karma

Here are the present specs as the campaign grinds down to an end.

Approximately one session per month and one run per session where possible.

Session Length: 8-16 Hours.

Karma Awarded: 5-15 Depending on Length of Run, Difficulty of Run, Degree of Success, and Individual Roleplaying incentives as dictated in the core book. Average karma award per player per run is probably somewhere between 7 and 10.

Character death rate is high, most common use for earned Karma is buying back points of Burned Edge, character advancement rate is slow. Like it or not it's been kind of a one step forward, two steps back campaign for the PCs, but the players seem to be enjoying it.

Karma: 4-8
Time: ~ 8h

Depends on the run, of course.

Thanks to all!

I was just curious, so my 5 karma for a 3 hours session seems "right"

If your PC's greatly enjoy character advancement, I might aim for enough karma for a bump every 3-4 sessions, plus or minus whatever bonuses/negatives the PCs actually earn. That keeps the carrot of +1 agility close on the horizon, but not so much that you run into 'Everyday is Christmas Syndrome'. All things being equal, I'd hand-out 5-7 points per session.

I'd also give out a bit more karma if your sessions are space-out more. Weekly sessions should get a little less, monthly sessions should aim for a bit more. The big thing is that the actual player needs to feel like getting the next bump is 'almost there', and won't need to wait for 4 months before they can finally increase their magic attribute to 4.

I want to play in these games. It seems like a challenge to stay alive. The GM has probably heard of me though, and would disallow me many things based on my strict reading of RAW. Stupid Rule 0.

My table usually sees 5 hour sessions, two sessions to complete a 'run (unless they figure out the easy way), and a payout of about 5-8 karma, dependant on roleplaying and other factors.

One of my friends will sit down, create the 'run, and dictate how much karma to give the players and make a list of events that would remove karma; IE: for every innocent death -1 karma, for every instance of collateral damage -1 karma, and so-on.

It's fun to hear stories of when his groups reduce their karma reward to the negatives.

EDIT: And additional question I'd like to know is: what karma is the average for the characters at your tables, and why? At my tables we rarely get over 40, usually because we end up having to end the campaign sessions. We have very few player deaths, despite the danger, but when we finally get another campaign/game started, people tend to reroll rather than bring in an old PC.

To be fair, it's not entirely that I'm a tough GM. It's 50% that and 50% that my players just suck. (Love you guys, if you're reading this. : P )

A run for my group can take 1 hour if they're quick, to one marathon 6 hour which was deeply unpleasant.
In terms of karma, I generally award the following per session:

1: Survived.
1: Survived uninjured.
1: Achieved an objective of the run or campaign.
2: Made everyone crack up laughing/go silent.
3: Good roleplaying.
*: For every extra 50k earnt, they gain 1 karma. They can also trade their run pennies in for 1 point of karma, at a rate of 50k/1.
And, because they're such bastards:
10: Did not make the GM hang his head in despair.

So far, only one session has gotten the 10 point whopper.

in SR4A there is a Table for Karma
Stick to it and everybody should be happy

we do and give 6-10 Karma per Adventure which is mostly 1-2 Sessions á 5-7 Hours

HokaHey
Medicineman

If not for the character death issue, my players probably have around 100 Karma (I haven't checked, but I could) but fifty percent of it or more was spent on buying back burnt Edge. Also, uh, yes, I think only one of them is even close to playing a character that's been around the whole campaign, so I'll have to check with her.

I don't know how they spent/squandered the rest, but I haven't seen a significant increase in power level, so...yeah.

I also have a tendency to frequently swap out campaigns and also to swap out games but I've kept this SR campaign going for going on two years now which is pretty good for me.

In the two sessions i've been to, 3 total played, our group has received 6 karma if you made 2 of them and 8 karma if you made all 3. Basically we get 3-5 per run, runs taking between one-two 4 hour sessions...

Yoink. I am adding this to my system as well.

I doubt it will be awarded. Ever.

My wife was looking at this chart last week and complained that I was low-balling the groups karma award, and she was right, I was.

But I then reminded her that I've been awarding skill points, contacts, and other in game stuff to them when it's appropriate. They're pretty much right where they should be if I had been giving them the full rewards.

When I was running SR4, we'd play every other week in a 4-5 hour session. My players wanted to noticeably advance, so I set the karma award at 8 karma per session (basically, a contant stream just for showing up) and then I'd use the regular, in book, awards per missions (and a mission could last a couple months of real-time). It turned out to average around 12 karma per session. We played two campaigns like that and as we planned, each lasted about 2 years.

Everyone was happy and they had advancement bookkeeping every month, so upgrades were sufficient to keep my players entertained.

I high recommend, as part of the chargen process, you all get on board on how long you want to play, frequency of playing and what you expect out of the game and tailor your karma and nuyen awards to that system. You can avoid a lot of headaches and heartaches with a little upfront planning.