Is it just me, or does anyone else find they have a hard time explaining the distinction between "career skills", "bonus specialization career skills" and the free ranks you get for each at character creation?

Obviously this is only with players new to the system, but for some reason I just always find I have to explain it two or three times.

We just did a session 0 for a new campaign and at least a couple of my players found it very confusing. I need to find a new way to explain it, or just to make sure that everyone is paying attention and go over it really slowly.

I'm not suggesting anything is wrong with the mechanic, just wanted to vent a little

No... I'm not even sure how... ?

The way we did chargen (once past step 3):

Chose a Career.

Mark the Career Skills (we put a slash in the box net to the skill).

Put 3-6 Ranks into those Career Skills (3 Force Users, 4 everyone else, 6 Droids), 1 Rank each.

Pick a Specialization.

Mark your Specialization Skills (we turned the slash into an X).

Put 2-3 Ranks into these Career (Spec) Skills (2 everyone, 3 Droids), no more than 1 Rank each (so the skill is up to 2, max).

Go back and make all slashes into X's to avoid future confusion.

Humans pick 2 Non Career Skills to get 1 rank each.

Is it just me, or does anyone else find they have a hard time explaining the distinction between "career skills", "bonus specialization career skills" and the free ranks you get for each at character creation?

Obviously this is only with players new to the system, but for some reason I just always find I have to explain it two or three times.

We just did a session 0 for a new campaign and at least a couple of my players found it very confusing. I need to find a new way to explain it, or just to make sure that everyone is paying attention and go over it really slowly.

I'm not suggesting anything is wrong with the mechanic, just wanted to vent a little

Guessing it's just you, as I've not encountered that issue, and I've helped a bunch of folks that were brand new to the system build characters from scratch. Then again, I made sure they were all paying attention and not playing with their phones or chit-chatting about non-relevant things.

Probably also helped that for the newbies, I broke it up literally step-by-step, having them pick a career, then pick their career skills ranks, then pick a specialization, followed by picking their bonus skill ranks from the spec. With Humans, I saved their non-career bonus skills until after the specialization and its skills had been picked, while species with a pre-determined skill bonus (like Twi'leks or Mirialans) assigned those skills prior to choosing their career.

Yeah, I think our group got a little confused because I wasn't focusing enough on each step and everybody doing each step together.

It's tough because if you go by the book, they should choose their background and Obligation/Duty/Morality first, but in order to do that, the players seem to inevitably want to know what species and careers and specializations are available, so they end up jumping around in the sequence.

As a result we ended up with one character with no Morality and no background, and other characters with no Motivations, so we'll have to figure that out at the start of the next session.

Next time I'm in this situation I am definitely being much more specific and going step-by-step with everyone on the same step together.

I don't think you're alone, since I've read some posts here where some people think that specialization career skills use a different mechanic or something. Going through creation step-by-step like Eeyore and Dono suggested I'm sure will make things clearer. Also, maybe not referring to them as "Bonus specialization career skills", and just explaining it as "you get more career skills from your specialization".

Actually upon thinking a bit more about it we had one guy in our last game that needed some serious handholding to get through chargen and Career Skills were his biggest stumbling block.

I didn't think of him at first since he always needs some level of assistance making characters if it's not a 3e D&D/Pathfinder game.

Is it just me, or does anyone else find they have a hard time explaining the distinction between "career skills", "bonus specialization career skills" and the free ranks you get for each at character creation?

Kinda... Some of the players in my group wanted to refer to skills gained from the career and specialization differently. By the end of the first session they realized they were all career skills.

The biger confustion we had was when we first looked at adding a second specialization. I don't think it's overly clear that you only get the bonus specialization skills as career skills. Luckily, we had been checking the forums so we figured it out right away, but we did have to come here to figure it out. Actually, I think it was when we realized that's how the character creation software had been doing it, so we just played it that way.

I would've prefered to have the term "career skills" be something else. Perhaps "known skills" or "Skill Proficiencies". Then have the known skills from the career be called "career skills" and the known skills from the specialization be called "specialization skills." Then the rule could be, "Career skills: You gain the following known skills." Same for Proficiencies. Then, in the taking additional specializations section it could just refer to "specialization skills" and there would be no confusion as to if you get the career skills too.

I think part of the problem is that skills you can buy for cheep are called career skills. Career is also a game term for a character's class. Since career has a double usage, it's prone to confusion.