Making a Better Cleric

I'm not sure if anyone caught this, but I figured I'd share this little nugget about clerics in the Basic D&D booklet (red cover).

"...Clerics do not receive any spells until they reach 2nd level (and have proven their devotion to their god or goddess)." -B9

Interesting justification in parenthesis there. Clerics have to first go through some trial or test of faith before their deity endows them with a glimmer of their divine powers. We also see another idea on the same page:

"...Clerics are forbidden by their religious codes from using edged weapons, such as swords and arrows." -B9

I have little doubt that both quotes are simply excuses to justify mechanics set up in an effort to "balance" each class. After all, a fighter with magic powers is automatically more awesome than just a fighter, so the designers had to add artificial restrictions. But that doesn't mean we can't take something from this sentiment.

The big takeaway here is that:

1. Clerics must prove their devotion to their deity before recieving bonuses (or perhaps suffering a penalty)
2. Clerics are forbidden from certain actions

Next up we check out "Turn", or as it'd later be called in Rules Cyclopedia (RC) "Turning Undead".

"Clerics are very helpful when undead monsters (such as skeletons, zombies and ghouls) are encountered. When a cleric encounters an undead monster, the cleric may attempt to 'Turn' (scare) the monster instead of fighting it. If a cleric Turns an undead monster, the monster will not touch the cleric and will flee from the area if it can." -B9

Interestingly, it goes on to say "If a cleric is successful at Turning some undead monsters, the player must roll 2d6 to find how many hit dice of undead monsters are Turned." which is different than what is found in RC, which states "...the Dungeon Master (not the player) will roll 2d6 to determine the number of Hit Dice of undead monsters that turn away."

Breaking it all Down

The Cleric is a complicated class. It's a hybrid of sorts, really. It can fight similar to a fighter, but can cast magic similar to a Magic-User, though it has its own magic and has a special ability called "Turn" (or "Turning Undead" if you're reading RC).

The benefit we have is we can start with the red cover BD&D booklet and jump into the future by reading AD&D 2nd edition, Rules Cyclopedia, 3.x, 4E and 5E. We can see how the cleric began, conceptually, and how it changed and matured over time. In my opinion, it's more important we understand the "spirit" of the cleric and the intended flavor of the designers, more than the individual rules and score numbers (although you know I'm going to look at them anyway, so we might as well get started).

Exigences

In my own game, Open Adventure (OA), each Archetype has a set of "exigences", which is a fancy way of saying "requirements". These actions must be performed on a daily occurrence, lest the individual powers of an archetype begin to wane. This is the same sentiment that we see with the first quote about clerics ("proving ones devotion"), but this is also found with Magic Users (in BD&D) being required to be well-rested and spend 1 hour to memorize spells. The idea in my game is that a "disciple" (the OA equivalent of a cleric) must devote 1 hour to prayer and devotion per day.

Additionally, disciples must follow three "rites" (required rituals) and abstain from three "ascetics" (forbiddings). The specifics of the rites and ascetics are left to the Game Host, and are modeled after the individual focus, alignment and wishes of the specific deity that the cleric obeys. Lastly, because in OA alignment can change based off player character actions (or the virtues & vices they obtain), disciples must remain of the same alignment as their deity. Such rules allow for a more open, free-form alternative to the idea of clerics having religious codes that suit the desires of their deity, rather than one single rigid path (e.g. clerics are forbade from using edged weapons [as a side note, if a cleric worshiped an evil deity, wouldn't they WANT you to use edged weapons to kill your enemies faster?]).

If a disciple were to lapse in any of the above requirements, the penalty they suffer is total revocation of their clerical magic. In other words, if they don't keep their patron deity happy, their deity cuts them off. But don't worry, they can get their mystical powers back after 6 hours of devotion to their deity and apology for their "sinful" ways.

Alignments

In BD&D they had the option for good clerics to be a bit naughty. They could be bad (or evil in a way) by casting a clerical spell, but in reverse. Instead of healing someone, you could cause them injury, for example. This was a great play on the polarity of good and evil (or law and chaos, as it was called back then). It hinted to the possibility of there being evil, or dark, clerics; which in turn gives raise to professions such as "necromancers" and "vodoo priests". But, in my opinion, this "alternative cleric" was never fleshed out enough.

If we fast forward into the future of D&D, especially 3.x and beyond, we see this concept comes to fruition. There are rules for good-aligned and evil-aligned clerics, and how they can channel positive and negative energy. In my opinion, basic versions of these rules should be included in BD&D since they were essentially missing from the start.

So, we have full support for good and evil clerics. But what about neutral clerics? If you're thinking to yourself "there's no such thing", you'd be wrong. In Rules Cyclopedia, in fact, it talks about how Druids are a prestige class, of sorts, derived from clerics. Since Druids are always neutral, we essentially have support (or at least tolerance) for the idea of neutrality existing within the ranks of the cleric class.

However, the way druids are handled in RC has never seemed right to me. Why must we wait until level 9 to become a druid? Even if we did, why would a cleric remain ardent to one alignment for 8 levels then decide to walk away from the cosmic battle between good and evil (not to mention the cities of men) to live among forest animals?

Instead, I propose the druid become its own class that can be pursued at level 1, and treated as a neutral cleric that devotes itself to the cosmic force(s) of the material plane. This would explain why nature and the universe are so sacred to a druid/neutral cleric, with none of the "ex pat" mid life crises.

Exorcism

The last topic we need to tackle are the special powers that these disciple/cleric characters posses. Whatever they end up being, we can conclude that they A). are either only given to a cleric if they are "ardent" in their faith and/or can be revoked if the cleric isn't walking the path right, and B). should fit the theme and focus of the cleric's alignment. That means support for good deeds as well as neutral and evil ones.

The common thread with all clerics throughout the history of D&D has been the ability to repel undead. First, the term "Turn" or "Turning Undead" should be changed. It's a confusing term that has no intrinsic meaning (that I'm aware of) outside of D&D, and must first be explained to be understood. Rather, the term "exorcism", which is a real term, is far better suited for the job.

Terminology aside, a purview of the 3.5 rules show us that there is a far more refined approach to clerical exorcism:

• Good-aligned clerics can attempt to destroy or rout (force to retreat) undead creatures
• Evil-aligned clerics can attempt to command or rebuke (force to cower) undead creatures
• Neutral-aligned clerics can mix and match between the two options

As much as I love OSR and Basic D&D, I have to say that these "new" rules are far more in spirit with what the "old" rules were trying to do. They fully support all the alignments by offering fun alternatives to evil clerics (commanding the undead rather than destroying them).

While we're discussing "turning" undead, let's talk about that "turning undead" table.

This bad boy has got to go. From a game design perspective, it's never a good idea to have such an innate common ability require such a large and verbose table. Especially when it can be condensed down into a few simple rule statements.

To start, the whole premise uses a 2d6 system. Since it's based on the idea of routing, or invoking fear and panic, in undead, we can replace this monstrosity with another system already in place: the morale system. The morale system exists to gauge a creature's willpower and whether that creature is fearful during combat (or other situations) and chooses to flee. Sound familiar? Yup, the morale system also uses a 2d6 mechanic. The two systems are practically identical.

All that has to be done is make a rule that says a cleric can force an undead to make a morale test when they attempt to exorcise them. The 2d6 roll adds the level of the cleric. If the roll is over the creature's morale number, the monster is affected. The next rule we need is to say that if the cleric's level is 3+ levels higher than that of the monster's hit dice, they are automatically destroyed (or commanded, if evil) instead of routed or rebuked. If a cleric is level 10 or above, they can affect 3d6 creatures (instead of 2d6). At level 25 they can affect 4d6 creatures, instead. Voila!

Miscellaneous

Okay I lied, exorcism isn't the last topic. I want to look at some of the differences of how clerics are handled in different versions.

Holy Symbols

To start let's talk about holy symbols. In BD&D and RC there is no rule about holy symbols being needed to exorcise undead. In fact, RC (page 14) reads "The power to turn undead is inherent in the cleric; he does not need the symbol of his faith or any other device to do it, unless the DM declares otherwise."

To me, I find this ruling a bit odd. We're all used to seeing priests and other holy men pulling out their holy symbol and using it as a ward to keep evil or undead at bay, often times in tandem with holy words. In fact, Wikipedia has this to say about exorcism:

Exorcism (from Greek ἐξορκισμός, exorkismos – binding by oath) is the religious or spiritual practice of purportedly evicting demons or other spiritual entities from a person or an area they are believed to have possessed. Depending on the spiritual beliefs of the exorcist, this may be done by causing the entity to swear an oath, performing an elaborate ritual, or simply by commanding it to depart in the name of a higher power.

Followed by this photo:

Looks like that cleric has a holy symbol in his hand, and based off the description there's some form of verbal component involved.

I feel like disallowing a holy symbol goes against the grander spirit of what a cleric is and does. To me, a cleric has always been a conduit of their deity's powers. The cleric themselves only have mystical spells because they are so faithful to their god. In turn, their deity empowers them so they can complete their quest/conquest/mission in life. Their holy symbol, in turn, is a focal point of those powers.

Now, some readers might feel compelled to point out that all of this talk about exorcism has to do with evil creatures (aka fiends) and not undead. That's a good point, but I still believe that for consistency sake, a holy symbol should be present. Looking into the future (at 3.x D&D) we see that exact ruling being enacted, whereas holy symbols become a requirement to "turn" undead.

Affected Creatures
Another interesting difference between "old school" D&D and "new school" is how they handled which creatures are routed and which are not (since you might roll X, where X is less-than the total hit dice of undead creatures within range at the time of the exorcism). In BD&D it states that the lowest level creatures (such as skeletons) are routed first, then the extra points are distributed to higher leveled creatures. Presumably this is to emulate the weaker-minded creatures being more vulnerable to the effects of exorcism.

In newer versions of D&D, however, it says that the creatures physically closest to the cleric are turned first. This, I assume, is to emulate a "blast" effect with the exorcism; as if it is exploding outwards from the cleric's body or holy symbol.

Personally, I think both can be used, in combination. The rules state that after a cleric exorcises undead, they roll 2d6 to determine how many levels/hit dice worth of undead are routed. A simple ruling would be to say start with the lowest leveled ones. If there is still a tie, or you need to know which one of that group to begin with, start with those closest to the cleric. If there's still a tie, the cleric gets to choose.

Conclusion

Clerics can be a lot of fun, but I don't think there's a perfect version of D&D out there. Instead, it behooves us to take the best parts of each version and combine them to paint a picture of what we think the designers had in mind, as well as keep the effects grounded in historical fact (based on tradition and mythology).

Race-as-Class is a Terrible Idea

An undercooked idea that should have died in the brainstorming stage, some game designers actually continue this practice. Why? What is RAC, and why is it so bad? I'll answer these questions and more in this week's reason why OSR games suck!

To better understand this terrible idea, we first have to go back to the start of role-playing games. RPGs were born in-part from tabletop war games. These are games where you have different "units" of characters in a battlefield simulacrum waged within a diorama usually setup on a board or tabletop.

Similar to little plastic army men, players might have one unit be a "minesweeper" army figure, another "crawling on the ground prone" figurine and another "aiming a rifle" miniature. Each unit had certain strengths, weaknesses and capabilities associated with it. This idea seems ok for a game that focuses on the "big picture" of an entire battle; but it is as primitive as a flint-knapped knife when it comes to roleplay and adventure games.

"This game uses race-as-class?! NNNNOOOO!!!!"

In Basic Dungeons & Dragons (red book), for example, you had a few choices when choosing what "type" of character you wanted to play:

1. Human Fighter
2. Human Cleric
3. Human Thief
4. Human Magic-User

Now, I know some of you are probably screaming at your screens saying that there were really seven choices, not four. But you'd be wrong. The other three options (which all subscribe to the "race-as-class" methodology) are simply a re-hash of two or more of the above classes. Let's review:

1.  Elf - Fighter/Magic-User hybrid
2. Dwarf - Fighter with added defense and saves
3. Halfling - Fighter/Thief hybrid

You'll notice that humans have four choices while elves, dwarves and halflings only have one choice each. This means if you want to be some kind of badass book-thumpin' cleric who calls down the wrath of <insert patron deity>, you can only be human. But what if you were envisioning some kind of awesome dwarf-turned-holy-man? Kind of like how Worf worked for Starfleet or Chewbacca hung out with humans. Well, too bad, you're out of luck. Apparently only humans are noble enough for religion and spirituality.

What about a ninja-like elven thief? Sorry, not in the cards. Only humans can be thieves. Don't even ask about magical halflings, because it isn't going to happen.

Not allowed!

You see, race-as-class means that whatever class, or style of play, you choose for your character, their race (or more appropriately called "species") is inexorably linked to that socio-economic class. This in turn "type casts" less common races--such as halflings--into a certain style of play. There is no room for mixing and matching, no room for flexibility or customization. You're forced to play the style that the game designers chose for you.

And why? To what end were the game designers hoping to achieve? Some may say it's to make humans be the predominant species of the land by there being a 4 out of 7 chance a human-based character class is chosen by players. But who said that humans should be the dominant species in the adventure you want to run? This is really just the designer's way of saying that their notion of "realism" within a fantasy world outweighs your desire to have fun. Effectively, the original D&D designers are either insulting your intelligence by making the choice for you, or flipping you the bird.

 Say YES to choice!

It's no wonder this completely unnecessary and absolutely asinine practice went extinct when the BD&D lineage died out. Even Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition, which was released around the same time as Basic Dungeons & Dragons, knew better. Their system wasn't perfect (still denying players the satisfaction of certain race/class combinations because realism), but at least they recognized that players deserve a choice.

So why in the world would certain game designers perpetuate such a silly practice? Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe they are suffering from the Stradivarius myth by believing that everything the founders touched turned to gold. The reality was that they were a bunch of guys who were quite literally making it up as they went. Maybe these offending game designers just want to continue the status quo, without a single forethought into whether it's even a good idea.

I've even heard some apologist old-school gamers try to defend race-as-class by saying that classes are really just a big blurry abstraction and shouldn't be taken so seriously. Um, what? Are you saying I'm wrong in thinking that combination X & Y is more fun for me than just X?

This whole thing is racist, really. No, not real-world racist; but fantasy-racist. It's saying that all dwarves, no matter their background; their upbringing, their homeland, their life choices, etc. all inherently understand gnome, goblin and kobold languages and have a 33% chance of recognizing new construction (Rulescyclopedia page 23). How is that realistic? How is that "just an abstraction"? It certainly isn't worth denying me my halfling magic-user!

 "But why can't we use magic?"

The fact of the matter is that life is a very complex and beautiful thing. Take humans as an example. We come in many different sizes, shapes, colors, cultures, expertise, strengths, weaknesses, capabilities and so on. To type cast humans by saying we are all one and a half to two meters tall would just be wrong. Saying we all have an inherit know-how to use computers, swords, vehicles or science is also wrong. It would be like saying we all run around stealing stuff from people's pockets, or carry battleaxes wherever we go.

Do yourself, your game and the community as a whole a favor; and do right with the players. Give them what they want. Don't force your preconceptions and bias onto everyone else. Let us customize the game how we want.

Dungeons & Dragons Ability Scores Are Pointless

When the original D&D designers were creating the game; they wanted a means to differentiate one "type" of character from another. So they came up with the six core stats (strength, intelligence, wisdom, dexterity, constitution and charisma) that they felt would best encapsulate the parts of the character's body and mind needed during an adventure. Next they needed a way to quantify how powerful each stat would be. They chose to give each "ability score" a numerical value. Since the twenty-sided die (d20) was new and shiny back in the day; they wanted to use it in parts of their game.

A d20 allows for a random number to be rolled between one (1) and 20. Therefore, each number has a 5% chance of being rolled. I believe the original designers figured an "average" humanoid character in D&D would have a stat number somewhere in the middle of all this, and thus declared an ten as the average stat number. At first glance it seems to make sense, too: we humans have ten fingers and ten toes, we use a decimal system, and when rolling a d20 there is a 50% chance of rolling 10 or less and a 50% chance of rolling 11 or higher. All perfect, right? Not quite; that's when everything begins to unravel.

To better understand what is inherently wrong with this logic; let me ask you a question: on a day-to-day basis, how often do you consider yourself failing at things? Let's imagine you're carrying some heavy boxes up some stairs. You have to move 16 boxes up a flight of stairs; how many of the boxes are you typically going to drop and helplessly watch tumble down to the bottom? Probably none; if you're careful. But with the logic of D&D; an average character should fail at 50% of everything they do. What a bummer!

Ten is a Terrible Number

Worse yet, ten is just a terrible number. Our decimal system is not one (1) through ten (10), it's zero (0) through nine (9). Yup, nine is the limit. Starting at ten is starting over the maximum of our single-digit decimal system; not in the middle. The number ten is like that awkward period in our lives when we're going through puberty and our bodies are all gangly and disproportionated as we're growing into our true potential.

The number ten, it turns out, is too big for some things and too small for others. Imagine your PC has a constitution of 10; what does that get you? Does that mean you can start with 10 HP? Nope; that'd be too much HP to start, according to old school D&D. Okay, maybe if you had a dexterity of 10; that denotes how many spaces you can move per turn. Wrong again. What if we said an intelligence of 10 was the number of spells we could cast or the number of languages we knew? All too many. 10 is just too big of a number for these kinds of things.

The original designers of D&D decided that rolling 3d6 was a good way for you to randomly generate an ability score for your character which would have a statistical bias toward the number ten, as seen here. Except--wait a minute--there's a problem, isn't there? 3d6 doesn't center on the number 10, it centers on the number 10.5. If you have OCD tendencies like me, that 0.5% imbalance will make your eye twitch. It's almost as if the designers of D&D either didn't know their dice probabilities or simply shrugged it off, grabbed a beer and said "good enough". This means you're just as likely to roll an 11 as you are a ten. They easily could have used a plethora of other methods, such as roll 4d4, but decided to use an imperfect dice mechanic.

Ability Modifiers Are A Hack

But none of this solves our original problem with ten. You see, the founders of D&D knew ten was imperfect, which is why they had to come up with a hack to fix it. Thus, Ability Modifies were born. The idea was that the more of an extreme you rolled over or under this fabled ten, the more +1, +2 or +3 modifiers you would gain for various tasks. In later editions of D&D these modifiers would be expanded up to +4 and +5 and sometimes even beyond).



It was these numbers that the designers truly wanted to work with. These numbers were smaller, more manageable and more applicable. They allowed characters to dictate a number of feats:

• Melee Combat -- Increased the chances a character would hit their target.
• Increase Weapon Damage -- Melee and thrown weapons would deal more damage with a high strength modifier.
• Force Open Doors -- Could be used to increase the "Open Doors" roll.
• Languages -- Dictates the number of languages a character knows.
• Save Throws vs Spells -- Applied to the save throw roll to increase a character's odds of saving themselves from damage or magical effects.
• Armor Class -- Effectively increased the defense of a character who had a high dexterity modifier.
• Extra Hit Points Per Level -- Added a number of extra HP equal to the constitution modifier.
• Reactions & Number of Retainers -- The charisma modifier added to reaction rolls and dictated the number of hirelings a character could hire.

As you can tell, these modifiers are an important part of what makes a character capable in an adventure. It was as if the ability scores, and their average stat of ten, were only there to create the ability modifiers then fade into the background.

How It Should Have Been

A more proper design would have focused on these smaller numbers from the start. For example, instead of centering on ten (or, technically, 10.5) D&D characters should have had about half that value (for an average of 5). With a smaller number like five you can assign values that matter in the game with the number as-is.

For example, with a CON 5, you could say your character starts with 5 HP. If you wanted to retain that 50/50 success-to-failure ratio, simply roll a 1d10 for any and all ability rolls; then add your character's number to that roll. If the total is equal to or greater than ten, the character would be successful in whatever they were attempting to accomplish. It's such a simple, easy to play and easy to remember mechanic; it makes one wonder why the designers used such a roundabout system, instead.

The Naming Conventions of D&D Don't Make Sense

I don't want to fault the founding fathers of what are now known as role-playing games. They were pioneers who had no idea what they were doing because frankly, they were creating a new paradigm of game and it had never been done before. One of the many, many mistakes they made along the way was to use non self-descriptive nomenclature within the rules. In short, they took something relatively easy to describe and made it much more difficult to understand. Worse yet, many of us are still using these asinine titles as if they were the inspired word of some divine force.

Take Armor Class for example. Put yourself in the position of someone who has only played common games like "Monopoly", "Chutes & Ladders" and "Life". If someone asked you "What's your character's armor class?", how would you respond? The term doesn't tell us much about what it is, or what purpose it serves. Sure, it has the word "armor" in it; which is about as good of a clue as we are afforded. But "class"? Who came up with "class"? When I think of a class, I imagine a schoolroom with desks, chairs and students with a teacher.

A far better term would be "Armor Grade", "Armor Quality", "Armor Level", or "Armor Rating"...even "Armor Points" would have been better. When people talk about a "class", such as a class of people or items, they're rarely referring to a numerical value. Worse yet; to make things even more unfriendly to prospective or new gamers, we shorten the term to an acronym of "AC". So instead of asking "What's your Armor Class?" we lay on our fellow novices the cryptic question "What's your AC?" to which anyone in their right mind would respond with "Huh?".

The worst part of it all, of course, is that it isn't even about armor. A character in an RPG who has not a lick of armor on their body still has an "AC" of 10. Don't pretend that "no armor" is a type of armor; because we know that halflings get -2 AC when defending against attacking creatures who are larger than man-sized (Rules Cyclopedia). Many other extemporaneous factors can influence a characters armor class, as well; all of which have nothing to do with what your character is wearing.

So really, the very word "Armor" doesn't even apply. It should have been "Defense Rating". How about simply "Defense"? And why in the world is having a -2 AC a good thing (a topic worthy of a rant for another time)?

THAC0

If you think AC is a badly botched term, let's touch on the infamous "THAC0". No ladies and gentlemen; that's not an "O" at the end; it's the number 0. If that doesn't give you any indication of what a terrible idea this term was, I don't know what will.

Normally I'd say that the original writers of D&D took a total of 30 seconds to come up with these terms before moving on (without a second more devoted to peer-review or player feedback); but THAC0 is special. It's special in the fact that it's such a backwards, ill conceived algebraic problem; it's as if a mathematician who flunked out of college came up with this and actually thought it'd be fun.

For those who don't know what THAC0 is or how it works; allow me to explain: First, THAC0 stands for "To-Hit Armor Class 0 (Zero)". I do have to give credit where it is due: the designer at least tried to make this dozy self-explanatory...and promptly failed. Ask yourself; now that you know what it stands for, does it reveal to you what purpose it serves? I didn't think so.

So what does THAC0 do? Allow "Rules Cyclopedia" to explain it to you:

"If someone needs to roll a 7 [on a 1d20]--not counting any of his individual bonuses--to hit armor class of 0, we say that he has a THAC0 of 7...When a target's AC is worse than 0 (i.e. 1, 2, 3, etc.), you subtract that AC from his THAC0. Likewise, when a target's AC is better than 0 (i.e. -1, -2, etc.), you subtract the AC from the THAC0 score--but remember that subtracting negative numbers is the same as adding positive numbers."

Wow...just, wow.

Rules Cyclopedia goes on to explain that to use THAC0 in an easier-to-understand manner, you must use the table below:

That's right folks; the bread-and-butter of dungeon crawling (attacking in combat) requires a friggin chart! And wow, what a chart it is! First you have to find your character's class, then their experience level, then the attacker's THAC0 value and cross-reference that to the number rolled on the 1d20, which is then compared to the defender's armor class.

So, so many bad terms...

I'm going to stop bashing on THAC0 because, quite simply, it's like shooting fish in a barrel. It's a joke. Let me say it again: THAC0 is an absolute, unmitigated disaster, and you know it. Its very name is super-nerdy; and its definition is a bigger mess than Pizza the Hutt.

This is Pizza the Hutt

How any of this got past quality assurance boggles my mind. The fact of the matter is, early versions of D&D are littered with terrible, obscure terms. Here's a few more, for nostalgia's sake:

• Alignment -- What does this have to do with morality, philosophy and ethics?
•  Constitution -- A term not often used in the english language over, say, "health", "vitality" or "life force".
• Hit Dice / Hit points -- Am I suppose to punch the dice? It doesn't measure how many times something can get hit since weapons deal variable points of damage, and characters can die in many other ways then simply being "hit", so why is it called that?
•  Magic User -- Really? You couldn't come up with "magician", "wizard", "sorcerer" or any of the other two dozen terms for someone who wields magical powers?
• Prime Requisite -- Not self descriptive at all, and so many better terms could have been used like "Primary Trait" or "Character Class Trait".
• Mystic -- Literally nobody calls "Monk" character classes a "Mystic" anymore, and for good reason.
• Saving Throws -- Am I suppose to toss something at my fellow players? At the very least this should be called "Saving Roll". 
• Gold Piece -- Because apparently "gold coin" or any other known form of monetary trade was too difficult, they had to use "pieces" instead of actual in-game money.
• Coin Weight -- The "official" unit of weight measurement that is in multiples of gold pieces. Yep, gold pieces are apparently in coin weight.

Part of the problem with D&D and other OSR games is that it's very difficult for new players to join. The games come off as cryptic and mysterious in part because of these unnecessarily confusing terms. It leaves many players feeling that they need to know somebody who already knows how to play; just to play the game themselves.

It's embarrassing when game designers--even today--propagate these cryptonyms and carry on the status quo. You're hurting the RPG community by continuing these confusing descriptors in the name of nostalgia. Please, don't be afraid to re-think game design. Question everything, and ask yourself if there's a better more efficient way to accomplish the same task. I'm certain you'll find one.