Metric & Markets

[Hairfoot]

Outside America, only two demographic groups are familiar with the Imperial system of measurement: octogenarians and gamers.

Gaming's popular in Europe and Australasia, so why are games there published with system of measurement that is both redundant and illogical?

The general assumption is that the largest market for RPGs is in the US, which would mean it makes sense to publish only in Imperial. But is that true?
Would it be worthwhile to publish metric editions of games such as D&D for countries which use that system?

 

[CardinalXimenes]

D&D is system-agnostic. It measures in squares, which you can treat as 5 feet or 2 meters more or less interchangeably. But for games in general, I can't imagine that the advantage of having distances and areas described in your system of choice could possibly outweigh the expense and burden of printing two editions of every product- editions that differ only in the measurements used.

 

[rogueboy]

Outside America, only two demographic groups are familiar with the Imperial system of measurement: octogenarians and gamers.

Gaming's popular in Europe and Australasia, so why are games there published with system of measurement that is both redundant and illogical?

The general assumption is that the largest market for RPGs is in the US, which would mean it makes sense to publish only in Imperial. But is that true?
Would it be worthwhile to publish metric editions of games such as D&D for countries which use that system?

It may be naive of me to believe, but I am under the impression that the US is the largest share of the market (as you suggest in your final paragraph), and from what I've seen, I can think of only one demographic group within America that is familiar with the Metric system: scientists. I wish that wasn't true, because the metric system is infinitely more logical than the Imperial system (1kilometer = 1000meters [factors of 10] vs. 1mile = 5280feet [factors of WTF?]).

However, I think another reason for this dominance of the Imperial system is that many of the developers and designers are familiar with the Imperial system and can visualize Imperial measurements, but are unable to do the same with Metric measurements (even as a scientist, I admit that I have some difficulty with visualizing metric measurements, especially distances [I'm a chemist, I don't deal with distance - volume and mass, sure, but not distance]). Because of this predominance among the developers and the market favoring the Imperial system, and the societal recoil from anything metric, I can understand why many games are written with Imperial measurements.

But of course, that doesn't deal with the issue of why the measurements aren't adjusted to metric when translated to another language, since the market for the translated edition is likely able to visualize metric measurements, but not Imperial? I can think of two answers to this. The first is far simpler: the translators are lazy. It's a lot easier to just leave the measurements in Imperial units than it is to go through and convert all of them to equivalent (or at least similar) metric units.

This brings me to my second answer: if a measurement is "30 feet," what is the proper choice of conversion? Do we approximate 1 yard (3 feet) to equal 1 meter (roughly 10% off - 36 inches vs. ~39 inches)? This would leave the "30 feet" measurement equal to 10 meters... a simple number. However, what happens to squares? As written in 3.x, 1 square is 5 feet on a side... that would become 5/3 meters... not a simple measurement... and if we approximate that to 2 meters, we then end up with the 10 meter measurement we got earlier as 5 squares, rather than 6 as written.

To put it simply, my second answer to the question (2 paragraphs above) is that it would require some form of approximation, and a general consensus of how to do the conversion: if you're being accurate to within ~10%, then we have to be willing to have somewhat awkward measurements for certain things (like how long the side of a square is), or be willing to have the distance (in squares) be different in the Imperial and Metric systems... neither of which is a particularly pleasant choice, and likely leads back into the first answer: developers and translators have decided that laziness (not dealing with the second answer I proposed) is preferable to trying to figure out a workable conversion that doesn't make things unnecessarily complicated.

 

[PaulofCthulhu]

Don't the US military use metric? "Klicks"

RuneQuest also uses the metre as a standard of measurement.

In the UK we swap between the two systems quite easily, sometimes in the same spoken sentence.

We measure road distances in miles, but our weights are in kilos and fuel in litres. It's not that difficult to hold multiple systems in your head at once.

 

[Mouseferatu]

I can't imagine that the advantage of having distances and areas described in your system of choice could possibly outweigh the expense and burden of printing two editions of every product- editions that differ only in the measurements used.

This. You're talking about increasing the print costs of each and every book by an enormous amount, for a change that will probably result in zero additional sales. (Or at least a number so small as to be functionally meaningless, unless I'm wildly mistaken about the huge populations of folks in other countries who are just chomping at the bit to become gamers, if only the games gave distances in metric. )

 

[S'mon]

Don't the US military use metric? "Klicks"

RuneQuest also uses the metre as a standard of measurement.

In the UK we swap between the two systems quite easily, sometimes in the same spoken sentence.

We measure road distances in miles, but our weights are in kilos and fuel in litres. It's not that difficult to hold multiple systems in your head at once.

Most people measure people-weight in stone, which are (I think!) 14 to a pound. US just uses pounds. There has been a fair bit of resistance in the UK to the EU-mandated conversion to metric for weights & measures. Overall I'd the UK uses both Imperial and Metric in roughly equal amounts. But D&D's use of yards & miles for distance is more familiar and comfortable to most UK gamers than meters & km would be.

I like sf games like Traveller to use m & km though.

 

[PaulofCthulhu]

Metric, it's the future!

Actually if we were being logical, we'd all operate in Base 12, far better. Alas we usually only have 10 digits on our hands. One of the reasons in my games advanced alien races have 12 digits, they got a "one-up" (or rather "two-up" on the mathematics side a long time ago.

 

[fissionessence]

Metric, it's the future!

Actually if we were being logical, we'd all operate in Base 12, far better. Alas we usually only have 10 digits on our hands. One of the reasons in my games advanced alien races have 12 digits, they got a "one-up" (or rather "two-up" on the mathematics side a long time ago.

Forgive my ignorance . . . but what's better about base 12?

~

 

[Klaus]

Local editions of D&D are in Metric here.

 

[Aexalon]

Forgive my ignorance . . . but what's better about base 12?

~

Duodecimal (base-12) beats decimal (base-10) because 12 is an abundant number, unlike 10, which is a deficient number. Simply put, it means 12 (2·2·3) can be divided into a larger variety of parts that 10 (2·5) can.

Personally I'm a fan of senary (base-6) because 6 is a perfect number; But the base is too small, resulting in significantly larger representations for the same number (i.e. 7654321 in decimal becomes 432020401 in senary).

Another interesting base is vigesimal (base-20) because like 12, 20 (2·2·5) is an abundant number, and it relates to decimal better than duodecimal does (to people used to decimal, vigesimal feels like a combination of decimal and binary (base-2), with powers that are products of the decimal powers and the binary powers (20=2·10, 400=4·100, 8000=8·1000, etc.). It also has a word in english for a number equal to its base: a score. So, 145 in decimal becomes seven score and 5 in vigesimal.