The rule about doubling costs for not in play really means that if they player mentions as part of the activities of a session that he is approaching the hero band's swordmaster (or whatever) to learn their special techniques (and thereby gives you the narrator the chance to have something happen in play around that) he gets the cheap price. If it happens off-camera then you get the expensive price.
So in The Empire Strikes Back when Luke meets Yoda and becomes a Jedi (a hero band) we see him learn the skills required. So Luke only plays the 'related to play' cost for the skills he has by the time he meets Darth Vader in cloud city.
Conversly Anakin Skywalker learns the skills of a Jedi Knight between The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. So Anakin needs to pay the 'unrelated to play' cost because it happened 'off-camera'.
You can be a little more flexible with the 'on-camera' and 'off-camera' rule than this really suggests. Really you just want to know more 'has the time spent training been mentioned in play'. This is most useful if you allow folks to acquire skills in-play. So the player might suddenly want to have extensive knowledge of Andrin's Law. He says, 'when I was a child I used to listen to the juror, old Hallarax, and so i picked up a good understanding of the law.' Because this happened off-camera, the player needs to pay double costs.
Make sense?
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