Moridin said:
You will still have control over which skills you are the best in, and it's dynamic enough that if you hit 10th level and you spent the entire last adventure sneaking around, you'll be able to increase your hiding skills through a few different methods.
That is all and good, but will the rules allow me to determine that certain skills do not improve or do not develop at all, because of background and experience?
Unlike Star Wars characters, many of whom have backgrounds (origin, training and experiences) that we did not see develop as they occured offstage- or at had least various extended periods that occoured of stage-characters in a campaign tend to be different. We often start our characters from humble beginnings as inexperienced heroes and watch them develop every step of the way.
I'll give you a good example of a scenario I ran past my own playtest group. Let's say I'm running an adventure and I want to have a scene where the villain runs off, jumps onto a tauntaun, and takes off across the icy wastes of Hoth. The speeders are down, and there's no starships that can fly in the blizzard. In the movies, the heroes would hop on tauntauns and strike out across the frozen tundra, so I want to make sure my heroes get involved in a tauntaun chase sequence (your classic horse chase, only on tauntauns). Under the RCR rules, my 10th-level characters would probably shy away from such a scene amidst cries of "I don't have any ranks in Ride!" and so forth.
I guess that is the difference between your players and mine. Mine might very well try it at default- even just to play it for comedic value. I have had the sorcerer in my D&D campaign ride a warhorse into battle. Well, actually, he was trying to ride it away from battle and the horse charged back to try and save its master (another PC that had been knocked unconcious). Instead of jumping off because he lacked Ride (or only had a rank in it), the player played his character holding on for dear life shouting, "No horse! No!" as the horse went into battle with two monsters". Once the horse connected a few times, the sorcerer began shouting "Go, horsey! Go!". The same sorcerer also jumped on the back of a flying gargoyle and, then held on for dear life as the gargoyle flew around the town trying to dislodge him.
And, should by chance, my players decide not to give chase, they'll find another method to deal with the problem-even if its at a later date. That should not be a problem- part of the appeal of an rpg (at least to me as a player and GM) is the choices the players make and how they deal with the consequences of their choices. The players decision to not have thier players do the chase should open new possibilities- it is their characters' story let their decisions determine how the story unfolds.
And, what if the PCs had prevented the villainfrom running off? You still would no chase scene.
I think that a lot of people are initially startled by the whole "no skill points" thing, which is understandable. It is a radical departure from the d20 mold, but one that I think ends up being more like what we see in the movies. I think that once people see it in action (maybe not even on paper, but actually used in game play) they'll find that it works for the game as a whole.
I'll still take a look. However, I think the issue has to do with how characters developed based upon background and expeperince over the campaign and then having the rules say that the character is better than he or she should be, because the game mechanics say so!
). I especially admire that he posted a thread to get input for the follow up Future Tech, correcting many problems and adding good material/ideas. 
