D&D 4E Should 4e convert to metric?

[lukelightning]

For dry ingredients? Well, I've never seen anybody measuring by volume for dry ingredients! (except very small amounts, like a teaspoon of something.)

Cheers, LT.

What, you've never baked? You use cups of flour, etc. Heck, my oatmeal this morning was measured using volume (yeah, I could eyeball it instead of measuring but I'm picky about my oatmeal. Call me Goldilocks.)

 

[Sirea]

When you say 1.60, you don't actually mean 'one and sixty hundredths'. you mean 'one and six tenths' or at best 'one and twelve twelve twentieths'. your use of centimeters implies more precision than you've actually got.

Yes, we do mean 'one and sixty hundredths'.

Personally I'm 1m72 tall, so when people ask me "how tall are you?" my answer is "1m72". So there is more precision in using cm compared to inches.

Now I've been playing D&D for over 15 years, so I'm quite familiar with inches, feet, yards and miles. For practical purposes during roleplay we mentally convert them to 2.5cm, 30cm, 1 meter and 1.5km respectively though. That are units we can calculate in.

It's obvious that ease of calculation is the result of being raised in one of the 2 systems. Some of the examples of 'metric being hard' given in this thread are completely trivial to me, while the imperial calculations are a lot harder (for me).

I have no problem with imperial being used in D&D, by the way. It has that nice historical feeling, while metric feels modern.


One last remark: I disagree with metric being artificial and imperial being natural. For all practical purposes, 1 liter water has a volume of 1 dm³ and weighs 1 kg. Although none of the units are scientificaly defined by this, it just happens to be like that.
So length, volume and weight all are nicely tied to getter by one of the most natural things there is: water. (You can also add temperature in degrees Celcius to, 0 being the freezing point of water)

 

[Jhaelen]

Now I've been playing D&D for over 15 years, so I'm quite familiar with inches, feet, yards and miles. For practical purposes during roleplay we mentally convert them to 2.5cm, 30cm, 1 meter and 1.5km respectively though. That are units we can calculate in.

Yup, that's what I do as well IF I want to get an idea about how large or how far something really is. Using the metric system is completely natural for me.

The more annoying thing is I have to do the opposite when using German rulebooks:
I'm calculating how many feet are X meters and THEN I calculate how many squares these are. I constantly get confused because my players are using the German (i.e. metric) rulebooks and I use the English rulebooks. Things could be so easy if D&D only started using the metric system!

That's why I'm happy they'll get rid of feet in favour of squares in 4E. This will work equally well for people used to the imperial system and people used to the metric system.

 

[lukelightning]

Metric and Imperial: the new Law and Chaos.

 

[tankschmidt]

Down with the metric system! We don't want no foreign rulers!

One last remark: I disagree with metric being artificial and imperial being natural. For all practical purposes, 1 liter water has a volume of 1 dm³ and weighs 1 kg. Although none of the units are scientificaly defined by this, it just happens to be like that.
So length, volume and weight all are nicely tied to getter by one of the most natural things there is: water. (You can also add temperature in degrees Celcius to, 0 being the freezing point of water)

One fluid ounce of water weighs one ounce, and 100 F is about human body temperature, so nyah.



In all seriousness, if I were from another country, I'd just say a square is a meter, 2 lbs is a kg, and 2 F is 1 C. So my 2000 degree fireball is your 1000 degree fireball.

 

[Revinor]

For all practical purposes, 1 liter water has a volume of 1 dm³ and weighs 1 kg. Although none of the units are scientificaly defined by this, it just happens to be like that.

Obviously, they are defined like that. 1 liter is just a shortcut for 1dm^3. 1kg was defined to be a weight of 1 liter of water at 4 degrees.

Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grave_(mass)

1 meter was originally a length of pendulum with half-period of 1 second.

Real 'native' units (from basic measurements) in SI are seconds (which is highly non-metric in itself) and Celsius degrees (which are probably most elegant part of metric system). Kilogram/gram and meter are derived units originally.

So there is completly no accident that 1dm^3 of water weights around 1kg.

 

[TwinBahamut]

I have never ever had any problems with this, but I feel extreme frustration when I come upon ounces and gallons and stuff. Besides, the acre is fine if you are using oxen to plow, bring in a tractor and the defenition loses it's ground. What is enough for one serving depends on what you serve and how big the one you serve is, etc. I can understand being used to the measurements, but those justifications are very weak.

I think your statement regarding the acre is a better argument for redefining the meaning of the acre, than it is a statement that the acre is a bad unit. Maybe "1 acre = how much land a tractor can cover in an hour" or something? Also, I stand by cups. Unless the actual size of a normal mug or teacup is vastly different in the US and in metric countries, it certainly a common and intuitive unit.

I think the starting units work fine for what they do. The meter is perfect in small scale measurements. A Human is between 1 and 2 meters tall (mostly), a building 20 meters. Is that to short? Then you just add a prefix and you are set. Instead of meters, kilometers. You don't have to think beforehand that "well, you take foot times three... Then I want to make this into miles, then I have to multiply the yards by the square root of Henry VIII:s glove size etc etc".

Erg... Please don't do that... No one goes through the whole set of steps between feet and miles. Just like people familiar with metric don't convert centimeters into decimeters, then decimeters into meters, but instead just multiply by 100 to convert directly, people using traditional measurements mostly just relate every measure of length to how it is defined by the foot. 12 inches = 1 foot. 3 hands = 1 foot. 3 feet = 1 yard. 5280 feet = 1 mile. You are more likely to see someone convert yards to feet, and then feet to miles, than you are going to see someone directly convert yards to miles. In both systems, it is simply remembering the common multiplication values of a single most commonly-used unit. Besides, for anything short of miles people tend to just use feet anyways (for example, the heights of mountains is typically given in thousands of feet).

The prefixes that are commonly used are kilo, centi and mili. I haven't seen the other ones used in everyday life. Besides, they go very well together with weights, since a mililiter of water is the same as 1 cubic centimeter which weighs 1 gram. Really, 1 cubic centimeter of matter weighs as many grams as the number of it in the periodic system. I'd say it's very much better than ounces and stuff.

Also, you are mistaken regarding the periodic table thing. 1 Avagadro's number of molecules (also known as one Mole of molecules) converts the molecular weight (in AMUs) into grams. Because substances vary greatly with regard to density, it is impossible to use a unit of volume to make that conversion.

Also, I question the original design of the metric system, if the best device for relating the units involves combining "odd" measurement values of common units. Why is the relation made between kilograms, liters, and decameters? Why not directly between meters, grams, and liters? Wouldn't that be a lot simpler? Either way, though, such measurement correlations don't serve any practical use in day to day life. Such things are only useful if you need to make an improvised measuring device, which doesn't come up all that much.

Since ease of use in everyday life is dependent on if you are used to a measurement or not, you can't say that something is inherently more practical or not when it comes to everyday life. I have no intuitive idea how tall someone is when she is 5'2", I have to convert it into centimeters first. I know, though, that when something is increasing in size to a large degree, I can always convert to a higher unit just by adding a prefix and removing three zeroes.

Well, why do you need to convert to higher units, then? Or rather... Does metric really have higher units at all? In a sense, any metric unit of distance other than the meter is pretty much just shorthand for scientific notation values of the meter. A megameter is notation for 10^6 meters, nothing more and nothing less. Why can't you do this with traditional units? Why can't I just say there are megafeet or kilomiles, or even just 10^6 feet and 10^3 miles, and get the best benefits of both systems?

Also, is your statement 100% true? Can you really convert meters to astronomical units by multiplying to ten? Can you convert meters to light years by multiplying by ten? Can you convert meters to degrees of latitude or longitude by multiplying by ten?

It's an interesting discussion, I have never met someone defending the imperial system before It's always nice to broaden your horizon in this kind of stuff.

Yes, this is turning into a fun little discussion, and just to make it even more fun, I think I will bring up an example that highlights the interesting nature of the distinctions being made: degrees vs. radians.

There are 360 degrees in a circle, and 2*pi radians in a circle. The degrees measurement is the traditional one, which features all of the normal benefits and drawbacks of traditional units. Degrees are divided by a lot of different numbers easily, and are not in base ten, so they are intuitive rather than decimal. Degrees also are terrible units for mathematical calculation (I once made my old calculus teacher flinch in pain when I mentioned the idea of using degrees in integration). Meanwhile, radians are absolutely beautiful units for mathematical calculation and scientific use, and are the SI unit for measuring angles.

So, people who grew up with metric... Which do you say, that an angle is 45 degrees, or pi/4 radians?

 

[TwinBahamut]

1 meter was originally a length of pendulum with half-period of 1 second.

I didn't know that... Interesting. Seems like a poor choice, though...

Real 'native' units (from basic measurements) in SI are seconds (which is highly non-metric in itself) and Celsius degrees (which are probably most elegant part of metric system).

I think I will disagree that Celsius is "elegant". While Fahrenheit is not much better anymore because of some tampering with its definitions (originally, 100 degrees Fahrenheit was set at standard human body temperature), the basic idea of Fahrenheit (that there are 180 degrees between freezing point and boiling point of water) is much easier for people to use (and mark on a thermometer) than Celsius's 100 degrees.

Also, isn't the SI unit for temperature the Kelvin now? Pretty much all of what few advantages Celsius may have had are lost completely when the whole thing is shifted down to be an absolute temperature scale. It would have been better to redefine the whole thing with new units.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

Furlong is archaic. It's only relevence today in America is its tenuous connection to the acre.

Don't forget horse racing!

Brad

 

[lutecius]

This is completely false. The same logic you mistakenly tried to use to counter my point above completely destroys this argument. You can't divide liters into fourths in the sense that there is no named unit for such a practical division. In the sense that you can divide a liter by fourths into quarter-liters, you can divide US standard gallons in to .1 gallons, or .001 gallons, or 1245.768 gallons..

Your previous point was about human measurement, that most of the time involves both feet and inches. Which is unpractical even for simple calculations, I am not talking about rocket science. And I reckon the Brits still use both stones and pounds for weight (but hey, they can't even drive on the right side of the road ).

Your other point was about the advantages of evenly dividing gallons into halves or quarters without measurement. My answer was that if for some reason you wanted to do that with litres, it was just as simple. You don't need an official quarter-litre (TM) unit. You just call it a quarter litre. If you want precise measures like decilitres, you need more precise tools, same for gallons.

A big problem with the Metric system is the absolute arbitrariness of the starting units. Metric units were designed without regard to the usefulness of the units themselves, only with regards to the simplicity of conversion . […] There is no reason they couldn't have used the foot and the pound as a basis for metric units...

They could have, but they would have had to pick one and run with it. Kilo-feet and such would be ok, miles/yards/feet/inches are a nightmare.
The metric system is not completely arbitrary though, they chose water as a convenient basis for mass and temperature (freezes at 0°C, boils at 100°C) and the dimensions of the Earth for distances. I guess they just decided that using the same units for science and everyday life was more consistent.

Heck, gram doesn't even work properly for the math... You need to treat kilograms as the base unit in order to even out the math for scientific purposes. [...] (and as the SI kilogram/gram problem shows, they managed to bungle that one up too).

I am not sure I understand what you mean. What is the kilogram/gram problem?
Is it about having to move the decimal point?

The problem with metric units is that, while you can make them work, each individual application of the units is slightly off from what would be a perfectly functional usage. I mean, look at the unit of an acre. An acre was originally literally defined as the amount of land that a man and an ox could plow in a single day. Pints and cups are units that indicate appropriate quantities for a person to imbibe in one sitting, and cups and pounds or are appropriate for cooking recipes designed to feed a normal family (the classic cup of sugar and half-pound of butter).[...] There is no reason they could not have used a more traditional and functional unit for the base units (meter, liter, and gram).

Traditional, sort of, functional I don’t think so. The thing is, I never had to plow a field with an ox, nor had to feed a normal family with cups of sugar.
As for the booze, with all the variables involved, cups and pints aren't much more telling than glasses or bottles.
And I find it quite unpractical to walk on walls and furnitures to take measurements, and very bad form when it comes to people so i use a tape most of the time.

On the other hand, I used to work in an aquarium store and did appreciate being able to estimate the weight of a full tank without the headache part. So, different experiences...

So? The simple truth is that traditional units were in use and useful before they were standardized, and metric units were not in use or useful before they were standardized. Standardization for traditional units was simply the process of averaging out the minor differences between widely used units that were already tied into the language and culture of a society, or occasionally adding new units to help clarify other units and fill in gaps.

Because "someone who thought he knew better" decided that the various traditional measures used in specific and local contexts weren't workable outside of said context.
At some point they realized they couldn't use weight units based on Ol'Dick's cow for international trade anymore because it was long dead, and that Mistress Abigail's saucepans wouldn't convert nicely into Shri Rajani's saucepans. Sadly, they both had to learn to think in Imperial saucepans, no matter how counterintuitive and arbitrary it was for them.