Venture-Captain, Massachusetts—Central & West
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I think we should keep the Guide to Organized Play as slim as possible. Besides, there is already a section of the Core Rulebook that does an okay job of explaining alignments. (See Chapter 7, Additional Rules)
Venture-Captain, Michigan—Mt. Pleasant
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I feel it would be more likely that alignment descriptions would be read if they were in the guide.
lol. Sorry, that catches me as being funny. If everyone actually read the guide you might have a point, but then if everyone read the guide we'd have quite a bit fewer threads on these boards asking things that are quite clearly found in the guide.
EDIT: Seriously, just this last weekend at a local table I was running the exclusive for, one of the players was shocked (and he thought he should just rip up his character sheets) because I mentioned that he's supposed to own the resources he uses for his character. He was playing a 6th lvl character and was just finding this out?!
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I wouldn't put anything in the Guide that's already in the Core Rulebook. The longer the Guide is, the less likely people will read the whole thing. Everyone should have the Core Rulebook, though I know not everyone has read that (I started a thread asking that just recently).
The Guide should only be for things that are specific to Society play that aren't covered elsewhere. Now if we were talking about a quick start guide or something for new players, that would be another story.
Alignments cause problems because morality is subjective imo, not because its not clear what is what. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
That said, alignments and classes and races are all a part of core. They are something you would be expected to know before you come in I would think. Organized play doesn't have special rules that augment alignment. What is in the guide is the few special rules it does have, such as not allowing evil alignments, how to handle it when evil actions, and the special rules on deities(such as no atheist paladins.)
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The harm with making a guide longer is, that as it is players think the guide is too long and they don't read it. Adding unnecessary information that is already in the Core book will just add unto that.
Mike's goal is to make the Guide slimmer and more organized. Adding unneeded information would be the exact opposite of that.
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Why alignment information? What makes that information so special that it should be added to the Guide, but not the dozens of other "everyone needs to know this" pieces of information from the Core Rulebook?
If I had to pick something from the Core Rulebook that was so essential to the game it's worth reprinting, I'd start with the types of actions you can take in combat. Or which bonuses to armor class do and don't apply to touch AC, flat footed AC, and CMD. Or dozens of other things that come up more often than debates about alignment at the gaming table.
We could easily double or triple the size of the Guide with reference information that new players should learn. But then it wouldn't be a guide to the specifics of Society play. It would be a quick start guide to playing the Pathfinder game, which would be useful to have, but it would be a completely different thing.
The purpose of the Guide is to point out things that are unique to organized play. Nothing more, nothing less. If we fill it with information that's readily available in the Core Rulebook, which all PFS players are assumed to have, and which is available for free on the prd, then the Guide would get bloated, and distract from its intended purpose.
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It's also a money thing. Why spend the money for an addendum or making an entirely new guide when the information is found in the CRB already? Like others have said, the Guide is to point out what is different and unique to Society play, not as a source of general gameplay information for PFS players. That's what the CRB is for.
