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

[Salad Shooter]

Either in Metric or Imperial I still can't understand Han Solo's definition of how fast the Millenium Falcon is.

A parsec is a measure of distance, I'm not quite sure how far it is, apparently the writers of star wars thought it sounded nifty and used it as time..

 

[Salad Shooter]

Either in Metric or Imperial I still can't understand Han Solo's definition of how fast the Millenium Falcon is.

A parsec is a measure of distance, I'm not quite sure how far it is, apparently the writers of star wars thought it sounded nifty and used it as time..

 

[Agback]

A parsec is a measure of distance, I'm not quite sure how far it is, apparently the writers of star wars thought it sounded nifty and used it as time..

A parsec is the distance at which an object will have an annual parallax of one second of arc as seen from Earth. That works out to 3.26 light-years, or about 30.8 trillion kilometres (19.1 trillion miles).

Regards,


Agback

 

[Azul]

Other than a few holdouts (personal measurements for example) pretty much everything is metric, but we learn both.
Metric is just such a superior system in every way, the only advantage Imperial has is installed user base, and it's losing that everywhere in the world other than the US.
For games, we use whatever units the game is written with.

--Seule

My group also tends to just use whatever units the game uses, but our bias is towards Imperial units for medieval/fantasy games and metric for modern or sci-fi. The only consistant exceptions are personal measurements (always in Imperial units - feet and pounds) and temperature (always in Celcius).

In everyday life, we use metric for everything except personal measurements (weird cultural leftover).

As for those units being US Standard units or whatnot, well, in the States I suppose that holds true but in the rest of the English speaking world the British Imperial weights and measures were the norm until metric replaced them. They are nice for an archaic feeling game but for real world use... ugh... good riddence. I learned both in school and it didn't take long to figure out why we were switching to a decimal-based system.

 

[Agback]

As for those units being US Standard units or whatnot, well, in the States I suppose that holds true but in the rest of the English speaking world the British Imperial weights and measures were the norm until metric replaced them.

So? Metric did replace the British Imperial system. No-one uses the Imperial system any more. Some people think they do, but they don't.

A lot of Americans refer to their system of pints, pounds, and feet as 'the Imperial System', but it isn't. It is the US Customary System, and it is distinctly different from the British Imperial System. Different number of fluid ounces in a pint. Different number of pounds in a hundredweight and in a ton. Different correspondence between volume and mass for the same specific gravity.

What does a pint of water weigh in D&D? Does this make the D&D pint Imperial or US Customary?

Regards,


Agback

 

[Agback]

In central and northern Europe, miles were between 7 and 10.5 km long, compared to the mere 1.6 km of the statute mile.

In the US today, miles vary from 5280 feet (international mile) to 6000 feet (radar miile) and even 6080 feet (nautical mile). There is also a statute or survey mile that is used only by surveyors, and is about 3mm longer than the international mile, but divided up the same way, resulting in two very slightly different feet and two very slightly different inches. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mile

The number of ounces in a pound depends on what you're weighing, as does the mass of an ounce. And the way an ounce is divided up into smaller units.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._customary_units#Units_of_mass

The volume of a barrel depends on what you are measuring (31 US gallons of fermented beverage, 42.5 US gallons of petroleum products). And different units (bushells, gallons) are used to measure different things. Besides which the bushel is sometimes a unit of weight, or rather, one of two different units of weight, depending on what you are weighing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._customary_units#Units_of_capacity_and_volume.

But even so, the US customary system is not a complicated as mediaeval English units were.

People manage.

Regards,


Agback

 

[tarchon]

Not really. It might give you a British medieval feeling . Except miles, which meant something different in every country anyway, there's not much similarity to the Middle Ages. Then you would have to invent your own system for each and every little town .

In central and northern Europe, miles were between 7 and 10.5 km long, compared to the mere 1.6 km of the statute mile.

Feet, miles, inches/ounces (<i>uncia</i>), and pounds are all Roman in origin, so they were found fairly commonly in continental Europe. The variation was more in the calibration of the unit system than the unit system itself.

 

[Derulbaskul]

In the US today, miles vary from 5280 feet (statute mile) to 6000 feet (radar miile) and even 6080 feet (nautical mile).

The number of ounces in a pound depends on what you're weighing, as does the mass of an ounce.

The volume of a barrel depends on what you are measuring (31 US gallons of fermented beverage, 42.5 US gallons of petroleum products).

[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.

 

[Turjan]

I just wonder why Americans don't use Roman numerals any more ! Any ideas ?

j/k

Feet, miles, inches/ounces (uncia), and pounds are all Roman in origin, so they were found fairly commonly in continental Europe. The variation was more in the calibration of the unit system than the unit system itself.

I know. The German word for a foot rule is "Zollstock". "Stock"=stick, "Zoll" is a unit measuring 2.6088 cm (I just don't know what this reminds me of... ). Anyway, that's long gone, although I still heard people using "Zoll" for 2.5 cm when I was younger. I still use pounds in the kitchen, although I mean exactly 500 g. Both examples show that old units were still in use for quite some time after the metric system had been made official, but the calibration of old units was adapted to the metric system. Units that could not be adapted, like feet or yards, vanished faster.
Anyway, a system based on the decimal system is so much easier to use .

 

[Nifelhein]

I have a natural mind for metric system, so we speak most of the time with it, but when it comes to the table and miniatures, i count squares and we haev the 5ft step...

It is quite hard, for when we generate characetrs I make them roll height and weight, then I covert and we can actually get what that means... All that because I hate the translatins of D&D to portuguese...