Do the Non-US Players and DMs use the metric system?

[Deset Gled]

Especially odd given the things on the first page that didn't age well. Like Han Solo's "made the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs" being retconned in 2018's Solo to make sense.

I honestly can't find anything in this thread that hasn't aged well, just things that have aged.

And FWIW, the explanation of how the Kessel run and parsecs worked with the Maw has been around since at least a decade before this thread was born.

 

[Muso]

In Italy we convert every measure to the metric system. The imperial system is a total nonsense for us. Also we use temperatures in °C.

 

[Morrus]

In Italy we convert every measure to the metric system. The imperial system is a total nonsense for us. Also we use temperatures in °C.

It's kinda part of the fantasy setting for me. Gold pieces are meaningless, too, but using Pounds or Euros in the Realms doesn't feel right.

 

[Atomoctba]

This is something that I started wondering about a few days ago. The DND game in the USA deals with modes of travel using feet, miles, etc.

I notice that there are quite a few posters here that are from other countries that I believe use the metric system. Are the DND books converted where everything is changed to metric? Instead of taking the 5-foot-step is it a 2-meter-step or something like that?

Or do you just do the conversion on your own or do you just not worry about it and use feet, miles, etc.?

Just curious

Well, most other countries around the world think metrics (formally SI, "international system"). In this regard, USA is exception, not rule

Said that, here in Brazil we do both. Many people use the original books (in English) and learned to use feet, miles and pounds (most of time stopping to do mental conversions). People that use the translated versions use SI units, which are very more intuitive for us. The translation uses 5 ft. = 1.5 meters, which is very near anyway. And 1 lb = 0.5 kg, which is not very the mark, but does a good work most of time. But once we hit ounces, acres or gallons, well, chaos is assured.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

As an Irishman that was young when imperial was dominant I generally do not convert.
That said I would never use Fahrenheit, I have no feel for what temperature in those units mean.

 

[Bohandas]

And Kelvin takes the size of the degrees from Celsius, thus proving it to be the superior system... it's got subsystems (Kelvin)!

So does Fahrenheit. Those of us who dealt with engineering school learned all about degrees Rankine, which has Fahrenheit-scaled degrees plotted with zero equal to absolute zero (around -460 °F).

And they're both more scientific than Celcius because absolute zero=zero and they don't start at some arbitrary temperature

 

[Jolly Ruby]

I use feet, miles and pounds even if I don't know exactly what they mean. I know inches are very small, 1ft is about the size of a 30 cm ruler, a mile is more than a kilometre and 10 pounds is the average weight of a cat, and that's all I need to know. It's like B/X, that used "coins" as a weight unit.

 

[Aldarc]

It's kinda part of the fantasy setting for me. Gold pieces are meaningless, too, but using Pounds or Euros in the Realms doesn't feel right.

Maybe but gold is a unit of currency in a lot of video games, so players have a fairly easy time imagining things in terms of how much gold something costs relative to how much they have. It also helps that gold is typically in units of 10 or 100 when it comes to copper and silver, which is fairly "metric."

However, it's easier for me to ask my German partner and Austrian game group to imagine distances or heights in metric than it is in for them to imagine these things in British or American imperial units.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

[OT] Those crazy Yankees... first they can't spell and now they can't measure. [/OT] On a more serious note, adopting metric would probably result in a small GDP boost for the US economy as, no doubt, some economist has published a paper on.

I use imperial for fantasy for that sense of verisimilitude (um, it feels right).

IRL I use metric except:

• I always convert fuel economy into miles per gallon;
• heights for people are based on feet and inches; and
• weights for people are estimated in stone but measured in kgs.

I assume we had to give up all that space in our head to keep remembering to pronounce the letter R.

 

[Atomoctba]

It's kinda part of the fantasy setting for me. Gold pieces are meaningless, too, but using Pounds or Euros in the Realms doesn't feel right.

Once we are in this topic, may I ask to in a5e srd and online tools put SI units in parenthesis together the imperial ones? It is not that difficult to make mental conversions, but I think that would easy lots and speeding the play for us that grew under that other measurement system.