The lack of an RPG forum speaks volumes to me. I am trying to be patient but there is currently NO OFFICIAL home for the RPG now. It's not like 4e has been out of print for years or something - they only just recently released the Atlas.

So are we going to get a home for the RPG? Or is FFG just dropping the whole thing? I (and I imagine several others) would rather not clutter up the CARD GAME forum with RPG related posts but it is not like there is anywhere else to go right now. Additionally it seems we have lost all of the information and material that used to be on the old forum too.

I grew concerned once I saw the memo, that was released when AEG had L5R bought from them. Just reading the memo alone, it felt like FFG had the card game in their sights, and the the rpg was more of an afterthought. I was worried after picking up the underlying attitude towards the rpg, that the game that I love and have introduced many people to, would pretty much fall out of production and out of mind. Of course the card game will be more profitable, and more than likely the licensing was bought almost purely so that FFG could get money out of the card game. I don't want the rpg to receive a convoluted dice mechanic, caus the roll and keep system is simple and effective, I also don't want to see the game lose the spirit it has. The honour mechanic is amazing and inspires players to roleplay well, and I can only beg that the ideals of the game are carried on, because I don't wish to see the game falling back to its oriental adventures days.

The lack of an RPG forum speaks volumes to me. I am trying to be patient but there is currently NO OFFICIAL home for the RPG now. It's not like 4e has been out of print for years or something - they only just recently released the Atlas.

So are we going to get a home for the RPG? Or is FFG just dropping the whole thing? I (and I imagine several others) would rather not clutter up the CARD GAME forum with RPG related posts but it is not like there is anywhere else to go right now. Additionally it seems we have lost all of the information and material that used to be on the old forum too.

From a poster (Donovan Morningfire) in another thread:

"Now of course, that doesn't mean much of anything, and as it stands it could be that FFG is currently planning on letting the RPG field lie fallow for a bit. Remember that they were pretty tight-lipped about having the Star Wars license, and didn't create forums for Age of Rebellion or Force and Destiny until the Betas for those two titles were on the very near horizon."

(I assume the same was true of the first SW RPG, Edge of the Empire. Anyone remember?)

At any rate, I wouldn't assume there are no plans for the RPG. But something has to be the first product out the door, and you're absolutely right to say FFG likely had their sights on the card game first, and quite possibly some board games. Same was true with Star Wars, IIRC, between the LCG and X-Wing, but the RPG line seems to be pretty well supported. I expect the same will be true for L5R, even if they haven't settled on what form the RPG is going to take yet.

If it truly didn't matter to them, I doubt FFG would have even bothered to mention it.

As to the old forums, that's AEG's domain. They say they're trying to get clearance from FFG to put the forums back up, I believe. I don't think FFG has commented on it either way. If they stay down indefinitely, we'll probably never really know whether AEG or FFG is to blame.

i agree it would be nice to get a bit more subforum action going on, but i wouldn't read anything into that on FFG's part. truthfully i think they basically threw this forum up and are saying "go nuts kids, we'll be back in 18 months". They've said they'll do something with the rpg, we know there'll be an lcg, but FFG has a pretty specific pattern when it comes to communication and release behavior and we shouldn't expect them to change for us.

AEG has said that at some point we'll get the old RPG forum back. granted this is AEG, so i'd say its six to five and pick'em if theres any veracity to that statement, but you never know. it did come from Dave, and he's a good guy, so its really a case of is there any reason they'd stop Dave from doing it.

I'd suggest patience on this one. Understandably, FFG is taking the time necessary to produce a good, clean product. We are still within the first month since the announcement of the sale. As formal announcements of the new product will not be until 2017, I believe we will not hear anything on this for a while. It is the nature of the industry.

Patience is a virtue. In the meantime, I hope you guys have enjoyed the 4e product thus far. There's a lot of beautifully rendered books. Make good use of them and wait to see what little treats FFG comes up with over the next couple years.

And before the few of you who remember this name ask, no. No, I'm not dead. I'm just lurking off somewhere else because I never was good with playing nice with people online. *laughs*

I've been looking for a rpg forum to call home. I had projects to suggest for 5th edition and for Imperial Archives 2, and since they got cancelled, I've been working to offer them as homebrew but I have no idea where to post them where it could be accessible.

One wonders what disaster happened at AEG to make them give up their cornerstone IP. I assume that I'm not the only fan of the RPG to be shocked by the sale. With the success of the 4th edition and the publishing schedule, you'd think that L5R4 would have been a healthy game.

Personally, I think we're buggered. FFG has dropped a bunch of it's old games from their schedule [black Crusade, Only War, etc.] so I don't see us getting a lot of support from them.

I'm not saying they won't support the RPG, but 'the lack of an RPG forum speaks volumes to me'....

IF by some chance, the RPG gets picked up by someone else I sincerely hope they unchain it from the card game. For a society built on iron-clad tradition, Rokugan's last century-and-a-half [1100-1280] has been a stone beeyotch. A culture as rigid as theirs would completely fracture under all these disasters.

One wonders what disaster happened at AEG to make them give up their cornerstone IP. I assume that I'm not the only fan of the RPG to be shocked by the sale. With the success of the 4th edition and the publishing schedule, you'd think that L5R4 would have been a healthy game.

Personally, I think we're buggered. FFG has dropped a bunch of it's old games from their schedule [black Crusade, Only War, etc.] so I don't see us getting a lot of support from them.

I'm not saying they won't support the RPG, but 'the lack of an RPG forum speaks volumes to me'....

IF by some chance, the RPG gets picked up by someone else I sincerely hope they unchain it from the card game. For a society built on iron-clad tradition, Rokugan's last century-and-a-half [1100-1280] has been a stone beeyotch. A culture as rigid as theirs would completely fracture under all these disasters.

AEG made it pretty clear, over the last year, precisely what happened. Zinser doesn't care about l5r, and board games are cheaper to make, have no pain in the ass community around them, and sell better. thats pretty straightfoward. by his own admission he starved l5r of resources to buy the rights to have a dozen boardgame properties, and they never really put them back. when FFG offered to buy l5r he probably went to the bar and bought the most expensive bottle of whiskey the had.

as for as the rest, i think you're being a little chicken-littley. FFG has done great things with 40k and star wars, and l5r is a HUGE property for them. they've already indicated that they're going to do SOMETHING with it. maybe give them the benefit of the doubt. the lack of an rpg forum probably has more to do with the fact that the sale happened just a few weeks ago and they tend to not bother creating forums for products that don't exist yet.

edit: if you're looking for a dedicated RPG forum, head on over to one of the many clan forums. Shinden Fu Leng maintains a pretty active community. i hear the crane and mantis forums have kept pretty active post-sale. or if the lack of one here bothers the community enough, email the administrators and maybe start a petition. i doubt it will help, but it can't hurt. or ****, start your own. theres CLEARLY a demand.

edit2: really?! no swearing? well thats weak sauce.

I don't want the rpg to receive a convoluted dice mechanic,

A bit too late for that, as roll and keep *is* a convoluted dice mechanic. A dice pool system with subsidiary dice pools in each roll, exploding dice, and situational modifiers based on school, magic, gear, and so on does not a tidy system make. Exception-based gaming systems are always nuttier to untangle than other systems.

I've seen other people wonder if FFG will use their Star Wars/WFRP system for L5R. I dunno; none of us here do. If they do, it'd arguably be a faster system, as it's a more modern dice pool resolution that moves a lot faster than the roll and keep rules. But worrying about it either way seems a bit moot. We've got years to go before we have any actual data to look at.

I find the comparaison with SW funny. FFG's Star Wars is not system which resolves quickly. While it is not the worst offender, it is actually quite long to determine failure or success with that very system. The symbols are hard to differentiate and you also have to take into consideration dramatic sucesses, dramatic failures, advamtages and disadvantages. And that's not even taking into account your special abilities that can remove/add dice or change symbols into others.

Sure, it gets faster the more you play, but that can be said for the vast majority of game systems including L5R.

Star Wars is not a bad system, far from it, but saying it is faster than L5R, especially the 4th edition is simply not true. I can even argue roll and keep is the simple one.

I find it funny you refer to FFG's Star Wars as a system which resolves quickly. While it is not the worst offender, it is actually quite long to determine failure or success with that very system. The symbols are hard to differentiate and you also have to take into consideration dramatic sucesses, dramatic failures, advamtages and disadvantages. And that's not even taking into account your special abilities that can remove/add dice or change symboles into others.

Sure, it gets faster the more you play, but that can be said for the vast majority of game systems including L5R.

Star Wars is not a bad system, far from it, but saying it is faster than L5R, especially the 4th edition is simply not true. I can even argue roll and keep is the simple one.

i would agree with this. i like star wars. i think the ad/disad system is clever, adding a ton of flavor. but that flavor is time consuming, and if you don't have a table that can flow and be creative, it can be INCREDIBLY exhausting. the Campaign Podcast is a fantastic example of a group that does it right. but they're also a bunch of improv actors, with the exception of the GM, so go figure. my personal experience is a lot less fluid, and i expect that if you have a group thats even a little bit rules-lawyery it would have the potential to be downright painful.

I find the comparaison with SW funny. FFG's Star Wars is not system which resolves quickly. While it is not the worst offender, it is actually quite long to determine failure or success with that very system.

Yes, it is a system that resolves quickly, and it's far quicker for most players than the roll and keep system.

There's only six symbols in the Star Wars dice iconography (8 if you count the two that only Force users use, but that's not always a given). While I'm sorry you have trouble telling six symbols apart, that's fewer icons you have to know how to read than to read a d10. Meanwhile, the six symbols are all visually distinct, they only appear on the appropriate color dice, and they always oppose each other in pairs. Advantages, Successes, and Triumphs only appear on the positive dice; Threat, Failures, and Despair only appear on the negative dice. They always cancel each other out: One Advantage eats one Threat, and so on.

You roll a pool in roll and keep, you have to deal with exploding dice (so identifying, picking up, and rerolling dice). After or despite that, you still have to identify the high-rolling dice, which are the ones kept, so you then get rid of the lost dice. Then you have to add up the totals. This is not a fast nor convenient system -- it combines addition, memory retention (if there's special rerolls on dice due to schools, gear, etc.), splitting the dice pool in two, and so on. Yes, you can get good at it. But it's not as simple as a base die roll resolution system (like D&D, Eclipse Phase, Pendragon, and so on). It's a dice pool system that you have to process, chew up, reduce to a smaller pool, and then add up, all before you can use it to resolve a game state.

With the Star Wars system, you don't have to reroll the dice or add things together. You don't even have to do any addition, which is a boon for some sort of players -- just pair off the symbols, see how much is left, and you're done. The abilities that "add or remove dice" are no worse than the abilities in roll and keep that do the same, and the dice in Star Wars don't have to be rolled again. Finally, despite your claims, there are no major mechanics that change symbols into other symbols in Star Wars -- threat are threat, triumphs are triumphs, and the game is about the tools to quickly resolve those, not algebraically transform them from one die result to another.

In both mechanics and physicality, the roll and keep system is more complex than the Star Wars one. You have to separate the pool to find the dice you need to keep, you have a potential of rerolls which require more physical action on the part of the player, and then you have to sum up a subset of the dice. There is no way in which reading all of a pool of dice is more complex than doing a first reading of a pool, potentially rerolling portions of it, and then summing a subset of it.

I am interested in your claim that there's mechanics in the Star Wars system that actually let you transform dice results from one roll to another. Can you give examples of this? I can't think of any offhand, but I'd be interested to see what there is.

I find the comparaison with SW funny. FFG's Star Wars is not system which resolves quickly. While it is not the worst offender, it is actually quite long to determine failure or success with that very system.

Yes, it is a system that resolves quickly, and it's far quicker for most players than the roll and keep system.

There's only six symbols in the Star Wars dice iconography (8 if you count the two that only Force users use, but that's not always a given). While I'm sorry you have trouble telling six symbols apart, that's fewer icons you have to know how to read than to read a d10. Meanwhile, the six symbols are all visually distinct

yeah. no. the symbols are NOT distinct, they have to be examined each roll in a way numbers don't have to be. most of your post i'm on board with but that bit not so much.

the other part you're leaving out is, as i said above, is what happens after you've resolved the roll, which star wars obligates you to in a way other games don't. its not bad, like i said, but its unquestionably slower. again, not bad, but you have to take it into account. every roll means you have to decide what those advantages and disadvantages mean.

One wonders what disaster happened at AEG to make them give up their cornerstone IP. I assume that I'm not the only fan of the RPG to be shocked by the sale. With the success of the 4th edition and the publishing schedule, you'd think that L5R4 would have been a healthy game.

Personally, I think we're buggered. FFG has dropped a bunch of it's old games from their schedule [black Crusade, Only War, etc.] so I don't see us getting a lot of support from them.

I'm not saying they won't support the RPG, but 'the lack of an RPG forum speaks volumes to me'....

IF by some chance, the RPG gets picked up by someone else I sincerely hope they unchain it from the card game. For a society built on iron-clad tradition, Rokugan's last century-and-a-half [1100-1280] has been a stone beeyotch. A culture as rigid as theirs would completely fracture under all these disasters.

as for as the rest, i think you're being a little chicken-littley. FFG has done great things with 40k and star wars, and l5r is a HUGE property for them. they've already indicated that they're going to do SOMETHING with it. maybe give them the benefit of the doubt. the lack of an rpg forum probably has more to do with the fact that the sale happened just a few weeks ago and they tend to not bother creating forums for products that don't exist yet.

Cielago-san, I'll respectfully disagree with you on about WH40K, and WHFRP for that matter. FFG has cranked out several titles for 40K, supported them with a few books then dropped them [black Crusade, Only War]. I'm not a hard-core 40K grog myself, but the friends that I have that are have been *seriously* tee'd off at the mismanagement of the IP generally. Beyond that, the pricing is deucedly high for the page-count, especially for games whose binding crack so easily.

The WHFRP and Star Wars systems could only be described as a mess. Between copy-written symbol dice, cards, and so on, about the only things they didn't include in the mechanic was literally bells, whistles, and a voodoo stick. Might as well just play Talisman and be done with it.

No, the sky is not falling [Chicken Little], but I do wonder what will happen to a game that I do enjoy. I don't think it's particularly pessimistic to look at the evidence and behavior of the company regarding their past efforts and see a possible future for this one. Perhaps I'll be pleasantly surprised. Perhaps I'll be disappointed. My position is 'wait and see, but the indications are not all that great.'

There are class abilities that let you change a triumph into a number of successes equal to the number of times you took the ability. I don't have my book so I cannot give you specific examples.

Listen, I'm not there to start an argument, both systems have their quirks, good elements and flaws, but neither can be called quick. The debate over which is quicker would be poinyless.and we would not be able to convince each other out of our initial position.

Savage Worlds is quick. Marvel Saga was quick. World of Darkness is quickish, but not Star Wars, and not L5R. It doesn't mean FFG couldn't come up with a quicker system, but using Star Wars as a reference is suboptimal.

One of the things I personally consider to be the strength of the Roll & Keep system is not the ease (I have taught this game enough times to know that there is a learning curve).

It is the control.

I have seen players struggle for months in a regularly running game to get the "feel" of the dice under them. While there is some predictability to the roll, it is very swingy and that can be a challenge for many people to grasp and grow comfortable with. The control behind the mechanic, however, is where people fall in love with it.

It is not about keeping the highest dice in L5R RPG. It is about keeping the CORRECT dice. Often, that is the highest dice, but what if you do not want to kill your opponent? Arrange your dice to do the damage you want to do. What if you don't want to seem too good? Choose the right dice to pass, and no more.

The system also encourages risk taking in the form of taking Raises. Oh, and there is nothing that causes as much excitement at the gaming table as an exploding damage roll.

If FFG makes a new RPG system, and can capture both the high drama and high lethality of the L5R RPG system? Then I will be happy. But the R&K system already does that. I just wish it was a little more accessible.

I haven't ever played this version of SW, but I do have to laugh at the idea of "no, it's way easier because there's just all these symbols you've never seen before and you have to remember how they interact with one another and what they mean." L5R keeps your arithmetic skills sharp, to be sure -- but at least it's numbers. None of us have to be taught "9 is higher than 3," because we know that already .

If I had to point at a major weakness in the 4e incarnation of R&K, it would not be the rerolling or the arithmetic, but the fact that the probability curve is seriously non-transparent. Like, I made a spreadsheet when I started playing that showed me the average total for every dice pool from 3k3 up to 10k10, with and without emphases . . . and four years on, I'm still using that sheet. Plus I made copies for all my players, when I began GMing. We consult them on a regular basis, because if your TN is 20 and your dice pool is 9k4, how many Raises do you want to risk calling? No clue.

But me, I'm totally willing to accept that, in exchange for the other strengths of the mechanic.

I haven't ever played this version of SW, but I do have to laugh at the idea of "no, it's way easier because there's just all these symbols you've never seen before and you have to remember how they interact with one another and what they mean." L5R keeps your arithmetic skills sharp, to be sure -- but at least it's numbers. None of us have to be taught "9 is higher than 3," because we know that already .

So you've never played it but you feel totally justified in making judgments about it? How permissive of you. Pardon us if we don't bow to your lack of expertise.

Effectively, there's only four symbols in most Star Wars rolls. The big symbols, Triumphs and Despairs, only show up on the d12s, and those are the rarest dice to roll, and they are only a 1 in 12 chance on each of the d12s. So for the vast majority of rolls in Star Wars, you're only looking at four symbols. All of the positive symbols are on the positive colored dice. All of the negative symbols are on the negative colored dice. If you have trouble remembering 4 symbols, meaning "success", "advantage", "disadvantage", and "failure", that is a problem, but I haven't found a player yet who can't manage two pairs of matched symbols. It's much faster to just match up opposite color dice and subtract the matching opposed symbols than to read the numbers, sort them in order, reroll any 10s, and then sum your kept portion of your dice...which you still have to compare to a Target Number that the Gamemaster has to make up or reference from other rules sources. Star Wars doesn't even need target numbers -- you just look to see if you have a success rolled.

You don't have to like the system, but if you're going to comment about it, perhaps you should play it first.

yeah. no. the symbols are NOT distinct,

You can't tell the difference between these symbols?

The WHFRP and Star Wars systems could only be described as a mess.

Really? What's a mess about it? Having proprietary class cards has nothing to do with being a mess -- RPGs have a much lower profit margin than board games or card games, and other companies (including Hasbro/Wizards and Paizo) offers RPG tie-in record keeping stuff to try to make some more money on the side. Heck, official character sheets (which I've always considered one of the biggest wastes of money) have been around since the 70s and D&D. But the add-ons and character skill cards have nothing to do with the system.

I am also not very pleased with the Star Wars and Warhammer games from FFG. The main reason is that for me the Warhammer Fantasy one played more like a board game with some RPG elements. There were soem reason for this lie not being able to have 2 fire mages on the table with onyl 1 starter set since the cards etc only support 1 or the problem that you have again powers which you exhaust. All in all it is to much like the D&D 4th edtion with some different dice for me and I really disliked the 4th edtion of D&D cause it was more a rescouce management than a RPG for me.

So I can understand why people disliek the systems.

I have been playing rpgs since the 70's, and sure I have played with people that one member of our group had to do the math for someone else. Most of the gamers I played with had no problem with the mathmatics involved in the various game systems I have played. I even played the original Star Wars which was a dice pool system. I really enjoyed that game. I have never had any trouble with L5R's exploding dice pool, and teaching others to use it was fun.

Now all that being said I gave this new modern dice system a try one weekend at the game shop while waiting on other L5R players to arrive. They hand me a pregened smuggler to play. I handle the opening scenario using social interaction with some random dice determinations to land a job for my smuggler. Success, and now I have a bit of an idea how these dice read. Now move onto scenario two. Two thugs jealous that I had outmanuvered there boss to get the job decide to confront me in the streets. I attempt to use an evade tactic, to blend in the crowd, avoiding confrontation. I rolled successes but they cancelled my successes, and pressed a confrontation. Now my character believing he was successful in evading was caught off guard. The thugs acted first. I was injured, and lost one of my die rolls. Now being cornered and outnumbered two to one, I attempt to fight back. I roll for my attack, and success! But wait no it is not a success, they countered my attack. Their turn, they easily injure me again. I now am at a severe disadvantage, I attempt to use a flee option, calling for help. No one helps, and the thugs overtake and kill that smuggler I was running. They kill him, and the GM say, "You failed, but would you like to roll up a character and consider playing?"

To which I replied, "No, if your intention was to get me interested in playing this game: you failed."

I haven't ever played this version of SW, but I do have to laugh at the idea of "no, it's way easier because there's just all these symbols you've never seen before and you have to remember how they interact with one another and what they mean." L5R keeps your arithmetic skills sharp, to be sure -- but at least it's numbers. None of us have to be taught "9 is higher than 3," because we know that already .

So you've never played it but you feel totally justified in making judgments about it? How permissive of you. Pardon us if we don't bow to your lack of expertise.

Effectively, there's only four symbols in most Star Wars rolls. The big symbols, Triumphs and Despairs, only show up on the d12s, and those are the rarest dice to roll, and they are only a 1 in 12 chance on each of the d12s. So for the vast majority of rolls in Star Wars, you're only looking at four symbols. All of the positive symbols are on the positive colored dice. All of the negative symbols are on the negative colored dice. If you have trouble remembering 4 symbols, meaning "success", "advantage", "disadvantage", and "failure", that is a problem, but I haven't found a player yet who can't manage two pairs of matched symbols. It's much faster to just match up opposite color dice and subtract the matching opposed symbols than to read the numbers, sort them in order, reroll any 10s, and then sum your kept portion of your dice...which you still have to compare to a Target Number that the Gamemaster has to make up or reference from other rules sources. Star Wars doesn't even need target numbers -- you just look to see if you have a success rolled.

You don't have to like the system, but if you're going to comment about it, perhaps you should play it first.

Well, I've played both with the R&K system and with the new SW system. So, by your own metric I'm qualified to comment and make judgement on it.

It's a complicated mess.

You have 8 types of dice: 3 "positive", 3 "negative", 1 Force Die and D10s for the percentile situations. Among them, you have 9 different symbols - 8 geometric (Success, Advantage, Triumph, Failure, Threat, Despair, Light Side and Dark Side) and one numeric (for the percentile). Even if we ignore the numeric/percentile dice, the pairing of the dice so they nullify eachother, followed by checking the degree of success and/or special result(s) is STILL more complicated than "sum the dice, compare to given difficulty, learn if you succeed or fail".

Also, if you're trying to bring new people over to RPGs, using something that everyone knows how to do (sum numbers) is definitely better than to teach them which symbols match what symbols, which ones are good and bad, and which ones trump all the rest.

EDIT: Not to mention all the intricacies of the system, that Yosama mentioned above.

One of the things I personally consider to be the strength of the Roll & Keep system is not the ease (I have taught this game enough times to know that there is a learning curve).

It is the control.

I have seen players struggle for months in a regularly running game to get the "feel" of the dice under them. While there is some predictability to the roll, it is very swingy and that can be a challenge for many people to grasp and grow comfortable with. The control behind the mechanic, however, is where people fall in love with it.

It is not about keeping the highest dice in L5R RPG. It is about keeping the CORRECT dice. Often, that is the highest dice, but what if you do not want to kill your opponent? Arrange your dice to do the damage you want to do. What if you don't want to seem too good? Choose the right dice to pass, and no more.

The system also encourages risk taking in the form of taking Raises. Oh, and there is nothing that causes as much excitement at the gaming table as an exploding damage roll.

If FFG makes a new RPG system, and can capture both the high drama and high lethality of the L5R RPG system? Then I will be happy. But the R&K system already does that. I just wish it was a little more accessible.

R&K has been perhaps the hardest dice system I've found in terms of getting my head around probabilities -- with the exception of things like the FFG Star Wars system, with all its non-numerical wonkiness. With its "dice for this, dice for that, and dice for another thing," the latter reminds me more of something like Deadlands, with its dice, cards, poker chips, and assorted stuff.

Typo.

I haven't ever played this version of SW, but I do have to laugh at the idea of "no, it's way easier because there's just all these symbols you've never seen before and you have to remember how they interact with one another and what they mean." L5R keeps your arithmetic skills sharp, to be sure -- but at least it's numbers. None of us have to be taught "9 is higher than 3," because we know that already .

If I had to point at a major weakness in the 4e incarnation of R&K, it would not be the rerolling or the arithmetic, but the fact that the probability curve is seriously non-transparent. Like, I made a spreadsheet when I started playing that showed me the average total for every dice pool from 3k3 up to 10k10, with and without emphases . . . and four years on, I'm still using that sheet. Plus I made copies for all my players, when I began GMing. We consult them on a regular basis, because if your TN is 20 and your dice pool is 9k4, how many Raises do you want to risk calling? No clue.

But me, I'm totally willing to accept that, in exchange for the other strengths of the mechanic.

Saw your post after mine. (I'd have edited my responses into a single post, but the forum software keeps trying to attribute the quotations to the wrong people.)

So, it's not just me from a position of reading through the books and finding a certain opaqueness to the R&K system -- experienced players still see the same thing? For me, it's made it harder than it feels like it should be to just read the books and say "this spell/technique/etc is about this powerful", for example. It seems like one would need to play the game a lot to get the feel of it.

That said, reading through the FFG Star Wars books and seeing the dice system (not to mention character creation/progression)... I've always just put them back on the shelf.