Old School Design Rants #2 Old School Does Not Mean Incoherent Mechanics

One of my biggest gripes about D&D is the lack of coherent basic mechanics to handle adventuring tasks.

Each game has several subsystems for swimming, climbing walls and doing any of the other things an adventurer might do. Its not necessary to have % "skills" d6 systems, d10 systems and all that, just to be Old School.

While I understand why a retro-clone would include them, it being a clone and all, as James Raggi has shown us with Lament of the Flame Princess, its perfectly possible to have a coherent mechanic to handle stuff that comes up in games that is best handled by the dice.