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Message: <blockquote data-quote="the_redbeard" data-source="post: 8255338" data-attributes="member: 22644">Remember that D&D evolved from a miniature wargame, and some of the first characters were warlords leading armies into battles. How do you get armies? You pay them with gold.Even in the early middle ages, when much of the cash economy of Rome had collapsed, warlords still used wealth to attract soldiers to their service (and food and shelter and such but). Precious metals were still social currency.  What did the vikings do with the gold and silver that they looted from England's monasteries? They used it to attract more vikings to their service.Edit to add: it's also not a bad rational for why those orcs deep in a cave without any place to spend their gold still have gold. The orcs still use the gold as social currency to attract other orcs to their service.70s era D&D assumed that your 'goal' was to reach name level, claim and pacify terrain, build a stronghold and attract followers. To be a classic early middle ages warlord in the worlds of Gygax and Arneson, you needed gold.People have written how analogous the basic structure of D&D is not unlike colonialism or imperialism: go to another culture's home, kill them and take their stuff. Not just the vikings but another example of murder-hoboism in history were the Conquistadors from Spain and their conquest of the Americas. A perhaps apocryphal exchange I've hear is that Montezuma asked Cortez (who took up being a conquistador to pay debts!) why Spainiards loved gold so much and Cortez replied that he had a sickness to need so much gold. Another possibly apocryphal story is that when the Aztecs rebelled and some of the Conquistadors had to flee the island city that was the Aztec capital, some drowned because they were laden down with too much gold to swim. So, encumbrance systems are a necessary part of Xp from gold. hah.I somewhat sympathize with the OP's skewering of the often contradictory passages of the wonderful 1e DMG (what is the Walt Whitman quote: "Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes." That is the 1e DMG.) But as others in this thread have indicated, one of the key reasons that many of these rules seem absurd today is that the play style, content and perhaps even purpose of the game is different.Lower level old school play was more about exploration to find the treasure. Combat was more of a risky failure condition then it was a goal. Today's main play style is very different than that.</blockquote>

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