So at the end of the session we go round each player one at a time and they say if they have done something or behaved in a way that fits their motivation and if they have they get 50 XP.
I like that idea, to keep it a meaningful mechanic. But in my current campaign, I'm trying to keep a slow burn on XP awards. I'm running The Enemy Within (just finished the 2nd book, Death on the Reik, yesterday) but I started with the adventure in the Starter Set and have worked in the 5 adventures from Rough Nights Hard Days (the 5th and final adventure from that book will be run at our next session). There was also some homebrew scenarios to ties things together, set an additional plot line hooked into TEW and to get them to the start of the TEW. So they started TEW with more than expected number of experience. But I've gotten to a good cadence, sticking with the objectives/accomplishments XP in the printed books, with no session based XP.
But I think that this would be a good practice to start for granting resolve. Resolve and resilience are almost ignored in our game. Fortune is given back each pretty much once as session. I keep forgetting about Resolve. Since my sessions are 8 hours long, and since Resilience is much harder to come by than Fate (in TEW you have a good chance of getting a Fate point at the end of each book), I'm thinking it would be fine to at the end or beginning of each session to ask: what have you done this/last session to help you progress towards your long-term ambition?
In my game, short-term ambitions are tied to career and factions. You'll see the counter at the bottom of my screens. Three of the four characters short-term ambitions are generally tied to patrons or organizations. They generally get short-term ambition XP when they do something to gain a favor point with their patron/faction. My fourth player is instead building up a network of fences (for hard to sell or questionably gotten goods) around the Empire.
They also get to say something they have learned about the world or developed something non-combat based in their character. They then get 5 advances in the relevant skill (if they have advances in that skill steady they get less). It’s a way of me awarding an extra 50 XP or so without it being spammed on combat skills and also means some more interesting skills can be developed. Without coming at the cost of other stuff. It’s a bit like oblivion/skyrim advancement.
I like this as well. I currently allow things that happen in game to give them some boons in their downtime activity, allowing them to learn new skills or talents, or unusual weapons with some bonuses to rolls, less XP cost, or less money. But I really like the idea of linking this to what they learned about the world. One challenge with TEW is the current party isn't well balanced for many of the social encounters and some of the non-magical academic research that would really help keep the game moving forward. I've handled that with the occasional rare book discovery, but I think your approach would really help non-academic and non-courtier PCs show some level of understanding of certain lores learned through experience. Players tend to be loath to spend hard-gained XP on lore skills that don't advance them in their careers. I don't expect that this will affect balance much as most instances of this in my game have been some pretty specific lores. Like giving them Lore (Liebwitz), Lore (Nuln), Lore (River Culture) would not impact balance but would help keep them interested in the complex, wide ranging, travels and intrigue in TEW.
They then get the usual XP for adventure achievements. I’m expecting to run this campaign for about 30 sessions hopefully so that should get the players to about 5000 XP which is a respectable power level to reach I think.
I just completed my 20th session. Each session is 8 hours long. We've gone through the entire Starter Set adventure, plus a couple of side adventures (either from the Starter Set and/or from one of the Ubersreik Adventure books, I forget which), a couple homebrew side quests, four of the five adventures in Rough Nights Hard Days, and the first two books of The Enemy Within. They are at about 3,225 XP. That may be low for the amount of adventuring, but I'm trying to keep them from racing too far beyond the TEW expected XP, even with the extra content I've weaved in.
