I just got done going through this book and I feel like I want to throw up.  I kept trying to come up with positive things about it.  I kept trying to be optimistic because I really wanted to love it like I do 1st edition.  Now I feel like I have been kicked in the stomach over and over......sigh

Mind elaborating a bit on why it's bad for those of us at work?

It just isn't 7th sea anymore.  7th sea had a specific feel to it IMO and this edition moved so far away from that feeling for me.

Examples....

They included the Assassin back ground in which your character gets bonuses for killing people.

They changed the skills from being far to many knacks (which I didn't really see as a problem) to a list of 17 skills.

When it comes to activating hubris the gm can offer a hero point to the character to act it out but they can just say "nope I don't want to"

They took rune magic away from the vestenmannavnjar

They added a demon summoning and binding magic.

Dracheneisen became a Die Kreuzritter only thing and Eisens now have access to a magic that is like necromancy (which comes with a trigger warning, hardly a heroic endeavor).

There is more really.  I just stopped reading because it was hurting my brain.

That's the risk people take when they rely on a specific feel. I suppose everyone does with everything, to an extent, but the more one does and the less able they're able to adopt a new "feel" the more they're likely to be disappointed when the mode of the thing changes. Goes for games and most other fictional concepts. "Feel" is very vague and fragile.

Yeah butthat is what made 7th sea different from other games in which you could play a pirate.  Pathfinder, 3.5 sure you could play a pirate (they even put out supplements to incorporate 7th sea in 3.5 and it failed horribly) but 7th Sea was meant to feel like you were playing a pirate in the "Pirates of the Caribbean."

In reply to PCO.Spvnky (msg # 5):

Yes, another thing a focus on "feel" does is blind one from the ways in which something is still unique and good (possibly even better) despite changes in that "feel."

I'm sorry for not being sympathetic, but I've dealt with a good, functional game being plowed under because despite its technical achievements it didn't have the "feel" that some people felt the past versions had. They wanted broken, unbalanced rules with one feel, rather than working, balanced rules with a different feel.

If this new edition of your game has glaring mechanical problems that's an issue with which I can sympathize, but if it just doesn't "feel" like the old edition, well, that's usually what happens when things change. Even if they'd only tried to update it to fix mechanical problems, there'd still be people who had grown to love the flaws who would be complaining about the "feel" changing.

Ultimately, you and the community are better served by talking about what you do like about a game, rather than what you don't like about it, whether you like the game or not.

An rpg game is more than just a system of rules and rolls if that's all the game was about then we wouldn't have so many that are popular.  I also think that the roll and keep system is one of the best systems that has come out and so do everybody that I have talked to about the system.