One of the things I've found a bit odd with the story modules is their over rewarding of experience. Take the "Beyond the Rim" module. For example. All three chapters combined have a total 115 possible XP + as warranted by the GM. It states to award 15 XP per player per session to avoid frustrating players. If I was to dole out extra XP each session, that number would likely be around 140-150, as I'm typically generous with RP XP. Onslaught at Arda is much less with a mere 65 XP for all three chapters + duties/obligation fulfillment, which I would likely bump up to somewhere near 90. EOTE rulebook suggests 10-20 XP + bonuses per session while AOR suggests 10 XP + bonuses.

With the Beyond the Rim module, my group JUST finished last week after playing for about 8-10 sessions, roughly meeting once a week. Since 300 XP is the how much it costs to buy an entire specialization it seems a bit odd to award what is essentially half of a specialization for a single module while another awards about a third. You can essentially max out a character by doing 2-3 story modules.

I award roughly 10 XP + bonuses every other session. This way the players have more time to learn their characters' abilities before moving on to another.

Can any other fellow GM's and Players, tell me what you give out/get for each session and where your characters have progressed to? Am I being a bit of a paranoid GM holding players back, or do I have some valid points?

Wow, I am a tight fisted GM, I generally had out 5-15xp per adventure! My players have never complained about it.

I typically throw out the suggested XP rewards in modules and such. I am very generous with XP since my group only plays about once every three weeks and our campaigns only last a few months. So I usually hand out a base of 15 or 20 XP plus 5 XP to everyone for particularly fun or interesting RP moments.

I generally give 25xp per biweekly session, and often single out one character who had a great RP scene or made everybody laugh to give them 30xp.

Personally I wouldn't ever feel bound by the suggested XP in a module, that is just my style.

How much XP you want to award is really a function of how long you want the campaign to last. At a certain point, when your players are rolling six dice for skill checks within their core character concept, half or more of which are yellows, and have a variety of talents to exploit besides to add boosts, it can become more difficult to challenge them, or at the very least, more difficult to GM when forced to come up with triumph or despair results every other roll. This is fine if you are only planning to play through 1-3 canned modules worth of game with that set of characters.

However, if you want to run a long, extended campaign, (say a 50 session campaign in a weekly game or some such) I'd recommend cutting the XP awarded in half, or even a quarter, so you keep the triumph and despair appearances in the dice somewhere closer to the sweet spot for longer.

At a certain point, when your players are rolling six dice for skill checks within their core character concept, half or more of which are yellows, and have a variety of talents to exploit besides to add boosts, it can become more difficult to challenge them, or at the very least, more difficult to GM when forced to come up with triumph or despair results every other roll. This is fine if you are only planning to play through 1-3 canned modules worth of game with that set of characters.

However, if you want to run a long, extended campaign, (say a 50 session campaign in a weekly game or some such) I'd recommend cutting the XP awarded in half, or even a quarter, so you keep the triumph and despair appearances in the dice somewhere closer to the sweet spot for longer.

This was my problem for my last group. I gave out about 10-25 XP per week. At the end of our nearly year long session which ended due to me relocating, 4 of the 6 party members who were in the game since the start had about 500+ XP. We had a colonist wookie doctor who never failed a medical or melee combat check, short of a dark trooper being thrown at him. Another player had branched into a third specialization and was essentially the same way. The only thing that scared the party were light saber wielding force users because they could cut a party member down in two hits.

There became very few challenges they couldn't overcome. Short of putting them into life threatening situations nearly every 3-4 weeks, there was little I could do to challenge the party. I'm trying to find a way to prevent this or see if there are any mechanics in the book, short of cutting XP, that can curve this.

I'm about to start them on the Onslaught at Arda module tomorrow. I'm looking forward to seeing how it plays out with them and testing out the squad / mass scale combat system included in the scenario.

I appreciate the feedback from everyone so far. Thank you very much!