I apologise if this is a question that's been asked a million times before but when awarding xp, particularly using established guidelines from books like Beyond the Rim which form themselves along the lines of:

• Landed on the Wheel: 5xp
• Met Reom: 5xp
• Gathered information about (x) planet: 5-10xp
• Took a leak in Reom's cup of coffee: 1 bajillion xp

Are these rewards meant to accumilate to a total value of xp for the party or are they to be awarded to each player individually?

If it's on an accumulative basis then my party has been getting a heap more than intended. >_>

I ignored it myself and continued to award the typical 15-20 per session amount. Some of their suggestions were pretty neat if you want to use that as an xp-delivery option. I used BtR more as adventure seed type stuff than running it precisely as written so a lot of it didn't apply to my group. Especially the Retreat. That whole section of the adventure got poked in the ear for some reason.

I felt that BTR was very generous with its XP rewards, almost going against the corebook suggestions at times however I did follow it for the first session and then figured I couldn't go back to being stingy in the latter part of the campaign. Having said that, we have a group that only plays once a month so it is not too bad...