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

[Aeolius]

...basically, it's two arbitrary numbers, and an arbitrary scale between them.

What are hours, minutes, and seconds then?

 

[Seule]

What are hours, minutes, and seconds then?

Also an arbitrary scale (although the start and end points aren't), the main difference is that it has a REALLY large installed user base, i.e. almost everyone.
I have no problem with metric time as a concept (look it up, it makes sense), but switching to it would be... unpleasant.

--Seule

 

[LazarusLong42]

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).

Goodness, though, some of the questions that have been asked intrigue me, partially because they're some of the few things I can actually feel knowledgeable about around here. So:

(1) ALL measurement scales are arbitrary. It's unfortunate, but necessary. Without some degree of arbitrariness, we would all have different definitions of inches, meters, pounds, and kilograms.

Remember that the original definition of "one meter" was "one ten-millionth of the distance measured on the Earth's surface from the north pole to the equator, through Greenwich, England." Personally, I think "the distance light travels in 1/299792458 of one second" is slightly less arbitrary, but it's arbitrary nonetheless.

(2) Many measurement systems were derived from societies that, for one reason or another, did not use base 10. The number we call a "dozen" shows up as the inches to feet conversion, the (original, and still used in Troy measurement) ounces to pounds conversion, and the shillings to pence conversion. Similarly, our day is broken up using base twelve--into two spans (day, and night) of 24 hours each. But from there, it's broken up in base 60--something we got from the Babylonians through the Greeks.

(3)

Being fairly familiar with both systems, I find Metric vastly superior for calculations, but Imperial is more organic, being based off measurements of the human body...

One centimeter: The width of a human pinky.
One meter: The distance from the centerline of the body tot he tip of an outstretched arm.

And so forth...

(4)

Really? I find a measurement based on the states of water to be fairly arbitrary. Kelven is based around absolute zero, right? I think that's more intuitive than a water based system.

And yet the metric system is partially based around water. One liter of water masses one kilogram. 99% of chemistry is done in aqueous solution; a system based partially off of water makes entirely perfect sense. (To us chemists, at least...)

And... I've rambled long enough. But it passes the time at work.

 

[Zappo]

I don't care much about miles or kilometers being more or less medieval... D&D isn't much medieval to begin with.

Being fairly familiar with both systems, I find Metric vastly superior for calculations, but Imperial is more organic, being based off measurements of the human body - inches are less fiddly than cm, a pound is a more useful weight than a kilo, a pint is a more sensible drink than a liter (although I'm persuadable there) - feet & yards are more useful than meters, stone are more useful than kilograms, miles are easier to deal with than km - a mile is the distance you can walk before you're 'on a walk'. Although the US apparently doesn't use stone, and measuring people's weight in pounds seems very awkward to me.

I guarantee that this is entirely cultural. The fact that imperial units are based on someone's human body doesn't make them any more (or less) intuitive. Being used to either is the only factor. A kilo is the amount ot pasta you buy. A hecto (100 gr) is the amount of cheese. A liter is a small bottle (and it weighs 1 kg), two liters is a large one. A half is what you order for a beer. A quarter is what you order for wine at a restaurant. A millimeter is just big enough to be seen clearly. Zero celsius is where you have to be careful while you drive, 100 is when you put the aforementioned pasta into the water. Give me any system, and I can find you any number of instances where its units are "more useful". Everyday life is composed of such a huge number of things that whatever you're measuring them with, you are bound to find something that has, less or more, length/weight/whatever "1".

I'm getting hungry.

 

[Zappo]

By the way, there are lots of good arguments for counting in base 2 instead of base 10. For example, you could count up to 1023 using your fingers, though number ten would be a real pain to keep up for long (try it).

 

[Cor Azer]

They're right. My pocked calculator says so (it has a handy sticker with metric conversions on the inside of the lid)

How worn is your pocket calculator? Note that mathematically, the formulae:

degC = 5/9(degF - 32)

and

degC = 5/9 degF - 32

are not equivalent. Order of operations is important. The first requires you to subtract 32 from your degrees Fahrenheit, then multiply by 5/9, the second requires you to multiply your degrees Fahrenheit by 5/9, then subtract 32. The first is the correct (or rather, more accurate), conversion.

Yes, I'm likely being a bit too pedantic (is that the right word?) about this, but I am a mathematician after all.

Edit: Just correcting my typos... nothing to see here...

 

[tarchon]

For everyone who say feet and pounds get the medieval feel better, I have to say...

Why do you use platinum/gold/silver/copper, then? You should use pounds, pence, and shillings for coins (1 pound=20 shillings=240 pence), and guineaus, crowns, sovereigns, halfpennies, and farthings, etc. And financial money (the one used for accounting, loans, debts, etc.) was different and disconnected from the coinage.

Then, to be even more medieval, if you move a two week walk away from a place, you arrive in a land where people speak a different language, or at least a different dialect of the same language. Common? What's this?

As for the money, we're even more medieval than that. We don't really have coins show up that much. We use the values more for accounting than for what the characters are actually finding, which would tend to be things like furs, ingots, jewelry, silks, etc. With the languages, we certainly do it that way. There are a few <i>linguae francae</i>, but nothing like Common.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

How worn is your pocket calculator? Note that mathematically, the formulae:

degC = 5/9(degF - 32)

and

degC = 5/9 degF - 32

are not equivalent.

Hm... Didn't look at brackets further up.

My calc lists °C as [°F-32]/1.8 and °F as °C1.8+32

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Neither did I, but I know a couple of people who do. That's where I found out that they translated blackguard with "Finsterer Streiter" (which always reminds me of "wer hat Angst vor'm Schwarzen Mann") And a couple of other atrocities.

That's why I got the US Version of NWN, too. Ever since that "Gleich gibts mächtich ähn off de Rübe" voiceset in Baldur's Gate, I prefer the English versions of D&D CRPG's.

Hmm. Or Diablo II with its "Holzkopf Baumfaust"?

But you must remember that the Imperial pound is not 0.5 kg, but 0.4536 kg.

You mean I should remember - but I don`t. I will always ignore this fact...

The shorter imperial units inch and foot are easy enough: 1" = 2.5cm (not exactly, but close enough for converting a character's height), and the feet/10*3 = meters rule is easy enough, too.

I will try to memorize these two.

 

[Gez]

Remember that the original definition of "one meter" was "one ten-millionth of the distance measured on the Earth's surface from the north pole to the equator, through Greenwich, England." Personally, I think "the distance light travels in 1/299792458 of one second" is slightly less arbitrary, but it's arbitrary nonetheless.

Certainly not "through Greenwich, England". Why would the young République have anything to do with the royalist Brits, our ancestral enemies?

Besides, the Earth being round... It's one tenth-millionem or one quarter of the Earth's circumference.

Histoire du mètre.
Chronology of the metric system.