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.