Base measurement in DDN

[Fifth Element]

Is that really a disadvantage? Turn it around: what advantage is there in using yards or meters?

The advantage of a yard is that it is close enough to a metre that non-US players can just use metres instead without changing anything.

A yard is no less arbitrary than a pace, but it's closer to a metre which gives a metric and an imperial unit that can be used interchangeably for game purposes.

 

[Stalker0]

I like the idea of using yards, the math is actually simpler.

Your speed is 10 yards. Each square is 1 yard. We get the advantage of squares again without the flavor of calling them squares.

And people in the US use yards all the time, its called football.

If I say that something is 100 yards away, most US people would know what I'm talking about. So we sub it to meters for the rest of the world and call it good.

 

[Raith5]

I am from a metric country but I prefer feet. It sounds more old fashioned, more like what the characters themselves would use.

 

[GX.Sigma]

I'd rather design the entire game using meters as the basic unit, then just call them yards in the US version. Trick non-metric Americans into thinking it's using their units, when really it's not.

 

[arscott]

*I'd much rather count in ones than in fives. On a grid, one square/hex = one unit of movement is intuitive, and even in theatre of the mind, I mostly think about how many 'steps' a character can take.

*Calling them "squares" or "hexes", though, is stupid. It yanks us out of the game world and into the real world.

*I'm all for metric in real life, but I think D&D should use more archaic units of measurement wherever possible. For that matter, I think it should use units of measure that are no longer common in the US, such as leagues for overland distance and stones for weight.

*That said, "yard" is both uninspiring and a bit on the short side compared to previous editions. I wish there was a unit of length about 4-6 feet long that could be used instead.

*Wikipedia informs me that the Romans used "pace" for a five-foot unit of measurement. It's meant to be a step with each foot rather than with just one, which is why it seems longer than what we'd think of as a pace today. I strongly support "pace" as the unit of measurement.

 

[Incenjucar]

I like the idea of a 5' pace. Actually changing the size of a square unit causes problems with decades of materials, but the "pace" is some wonderfully natural language that's easy to visualize. It's basically "two big steps minus a foot."

 

[Leatherhead]

I am ok with them using squares.

So long as they don't call them squares.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Measuring things in Hexes or Squares is absolutely no different than feet or meters. They're all abstract, human-created units of measure. It's not like meters or inches or grams or pounds actually exist in the foundation of the universe. They're just terms applied to numbers.

Okay, sure. If you wanted to, you could just create a unit of measure equal to 4.27 feet and call it a 'blogfink' and give all in-game distances in blorgfinks.

The point is not that one unit of distance is fundamentally different than another, the point is that when not playing D&D, we typically use certain measurements for distance, and "square" is not one of them. Using different units in D&D than in reality has two problems. The first is that it is a barrier, something that makes the game more difficult to understand, especially for beginners. If I say that one character is 5 feet (or 1 meter) away from another, people know what that means. If I say they are one square apart, that requires a mental conversion to some meaningful unit in order to conceptualize what is going on.

The other problem is that it's distancing (no pun intended). It suggests that the characters are pieces on a board, not people in a world. Which is the exact opposite of what we are trying to do with this game. We are trying to play make-believe here. Anything that makes the world seem more concrete and real is good, anything that makes it abstract and unreal is bad.

D&D isn't a science.

Okay. But people who play D&D are likely than average to have a background in the sciences and are more likely to have experience with and a favorable opinion of using metric units.

 

[Blackwarder]

Or simply not being from a god forsaken place that still use feets... I mean, who heard about this America place anyway?

Warder

 

[Klaus]

Local D&D translations have rounded up the 5-foot square to a 2-meter square (which is, IIRC, the Star Wars Saga measurement).