D&D 4E Should 4e convert to metric?

[lutecius]

Luticius, I honestly don't think it is worth my time to argue this with you any further. You seem to be absolutely convinced that the metric units are superior and more useable, and have some kind of idea stuck in your head that traditional units are difficult to use or flawed, and some kind of insulting notion that the people who use them are primitive.

Seriously, I can't even begin with how wrong your perception of traditional units is here... Do you really think that measuring tape in imperial units doesn't exist, and that everyone in the US measures feet with their own feet? This isn't worth arguing against...

The very phrase "never had to feed a family with cups of sugar", especially given that you compare it to plowing a field with an ox, says a lot about how you are either completely ignorant of traditional units and how they are used, or have some kind of severe unfounded superiority issue regarding people using traditional units.

All those were examples of yours, taken ad absurdum. It was just an attempt at humour, really, i apologize if it came off as insulting.
The topic seemed pretty trivial and I didn’t think anyone would take it that seriously.

I may be arrogant (i am French after all) but I certainly don’t think any developed country would have kept those units if they were absurdly unwieldy.

But being familiar with both systems I do believe non decimal subdivisions are a needlessly complex legacy.
Sure it doesn’t take much effort once you’re used to it, but I guess you do have to convert inches to feet, feet to yards and so on, from time to time.
With the metric system you don’t. You just move the decimal point of a number if you need to switch to a bigger or smaller unit.

That means while imperial measurements might have had a definition resembling real life a thousand years ago (plowing fields, etc.) they are today as arbitrary as metric measurements if not more so as they lack any logical basis.

Thanks, this is exactly what I meant.

 

[Orius]

For D&D? Traditional units. It just doesn't sound right for a pre-modern society to use metric measurements.

As for the whole metric vs. customary arguments, it always amuses and exasperates me at the same time.

I'm one of the few Americans who actually feels comfortable with metric (well, except for Celcius, even if the scale has a better basis than Fahrenheit). Sure, I use customary in everyday use, and sometimes it has advantages, but I like the consistancy of metric better. And to be honest, I feel the only reason America is still customary is largely out of stubborness, not because customary is actually good. Though I suppose I agree that the French should have come up with better standards, it kind of fits in with some of the other goofy things the French revolutionaries did to throw out everything related to the monarchy and the Church.

In a way, America does use metric. All our customary units are based on mertic standards. The inch, for example, is defined as exactly 2.54 cm. Every other unit that we cling to is based on a metric standard, and those standards were established something like 100 years ago. That's one of the things that makes our use of customary so silly. It's been legal to use metric in America since 1866, but nobody ever really used it because the free market economy worked against it.

And I don't buy the whole "unfamiliar" argument. How many of you who are staunchly pro-customary buy those 2 liter bottles of soda without thinking about it and have a good idea how long it will last or how much you'll need?

I think America will have gone metric by the end of the century, but it'll be a slow and gradual process. Likely the pressures of globablization will end up forcing American companies to go metric, and they'll do so.

 

[ironvyper]

Maybe for the older generations but hasn't metric been taught in American schools for some years now?

I got out of highscool 6 years ago. And no it hasnt. Its a small conversion table in the back of the book that no one ever talks about. Its not taught at all.

 

[TwinBahamut]

All those were examples of yours, taken ad absurdum. It was just an attempt at humour, really, i apologize if it came off as insulting.
The topic seemed pretty trivial and I didn’t think anyone would take it that seriously.

Well, to be honest, it was far from being a proper reductio ad absurdum (since it was not at all a logical derivation from my points, but instead more of a deliberately obtuse misinterpretation of my points), but thanks for the apology. Also, I am sorry if I was a bit insulting in my reply.

But being familiar with both systems I do believe non decimal subdivisions are a needlessly complex legacy.
Sure it doesn’t take much effort once you’re used to it, but I guess you do have to convert inches to feet, feet to yards and so on, from time to time.
With the metric system you don’t. You just move the decimal point of a number if you need to switch to a bigger or smaller unit.

Well, as I and other people have said in this thread, shifting decimal places is not necessarily a huge advantage. People don't think in decimal numbers (I believe the human mind most quickly processes numbers of five and less), and most of the benefits of using terms like hectometer are completely trumped by the simplicity of using "a hundred meters", something that can be done regardless of it being the metric system or not. Meanwhile, using different measurements for different things does have a use, such as using light years for large distances of space, or even just years for measuring lengths of time (note that the unit "year" is traditional, and completely non-metric, yet clearly has value).

Thanks, this is exactly what I meant.

Well, in that case, I don't really accept that Derren's argument is a good argument that metric is superior to traditional units. It is a perfectly fine argument for changing the kinds of units in use in the modern day, but not an argument for switching to metric.

Let me clarify a little...

In the US, you will often see someone compare the size of something large to the size of an American Football field, a rectangular area that is 360 feet on one side and 160 feet on the other side, for a total area of 57,600 square feet. Alternatively, sometimes it is used as measure of length of 100 yards (the length between the two endzones). The analogy between the size of the football field (which is commonly understood by many Americans), and the floor area of large buildings or open spaces, is so common that it might very well be slowly worming its way into being a proper unit of measure in of itself.

To cite something even more clear... If you get the time, you should take a look at the units used in modern cargo transportation, related to standardized containers. These units, such as the TEU, are neither metric units, nor traditional units, but are instead custom-built units in the same vein as older units like the acre. These units are absolutely essential to modern globalization, commerce, and ship-building, but their origin is almost impossible to differentiate from the origin of units like the acre. Both the TEU and the acre are units created to facilitate the economic realities of their time. Certainly, I think you would be hard pressed to argue that shipping companies would be better off using liters as their unit of measure rather than the units they currently use.

 

[BASHMAN]

You metric folk will have to pry my yardstick from my cold dead hands! Where I come from we get 7 leagues to the hogshead and that's how we like it!

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

D&D translations do feature 1.5-metre squares.

As for me, I'd go for 1-metre squares myself. If I'm not mistaken, that's what (at least in early editions) the German Das Schwarze Auge uses.

In way, they are using the best of both worlds. They use old names, but use the (for German more familar) metric meanings. So, one feet in DSA would be one meter, not the strange 33cm.

But, to be honest, the authors themselves seem to be unable to adhere to this. Often enough, supplements and adventures will contain metric measurements, like "200 m wide, 1.80m high", instead of using the DSA unit names.

I must admit that every time somebody mentions Das Schwarze Auge (The Black Eye) this image pops into my head of an RPG based around spousal abuse..

So, have you stopped beating your wife yet?

Spousal abuse is probably a topic usually not discussed in DSA. It's far to.... soft for that.

 

[Hambot]

Metric all the way.

You don't need football fields to measure areas in - play rugby instead.

We compare things to the size of a rugby field because they are 100m long. So running the length of the field is the same as the 100m race.

Although my foot is 12 inches, I can't get how long 50 feet is without thinking of 8 people lying down end to end and doing it that way.

New Zealand went through conversion pains in the 50's. It has taken decades for the old imperial unit users to slowly pass away, leaving more and more kids learning things in metric. People are only starting to measure heights in centimetres rather than feet, and my mum still talks about how many pounds she is. But my children will never hear that so they will be 100% metric.

 

[arscott]

That sounds awkward for converting distances to squares. The corridor is 50 meters long: it's easy to convert this to squares if the units are 2 meter, but 1.5?

I know things are going to be in squares anyways, but do many DMs describe the environment in terms of squares, outside of combat? "The tunnel is 14 squares long... the tower is 10 squares tall. The cow is 3 squares away..."

Interestingly, the earlier editions of d20 star wars used 2 meter squares, but kept them in line with the 5 foot squares of D&D by reducing move speed. So a human in D&D had 30 foot move (6 squares) where a human in star wars had a 10 meter move (5 squares, or about 33 feet).

SAGA edition reverses this with 1.5 meter squares (presumably to encourage mobility), and basically does measure all distances in squares.

One of the most common kitchen implements here is instead a set of measuring cups, with 1 dl, 10 ml ("table spoon"), 5 ml ("tea spoon") and 1 ml ("spice measure").

http://www.ikea.com/PIAimages/53325_PE157704_S4.jpg

I assume you have approximately the same thing.

Indeed. Such implements exist in all right thinking countries, imperial-using and metric-using alike. Unfortunately, some nations, perhaps driven crazy by the sudden imposition of decimals on generations-old recipes with measurements given in 'thirds of a cup' and 'smidgens', have taken to replacing them with a set of scales.

Also, for some unfathomable reason, the typical set of American measures includes a 2/3 cup, but not a 1/3 cup.

Bah, humbug! Fantasy systems should use Roman measurements, to encourage gamers to learn history. Modern or futuristic systems should use hexadecimal, as this is easier for software folks. And I say this completely objectively, and in no way am biased as a software developer with an interest in ancient history.

It strikes me that pounds and ounces expressed in hexadecimal convey many of the advantages of the metric system. (*Consults Wikipedia* Apparently not stones, though. Fourteen? Seriously?)

I'm one of the few Americans who actually feels comfortable with metric.

I may be arguing pretty stridently in favor of Imperial here, but that's just because I like a challenge. I'm also fairly conversant with metric.

Given that the D&D demographic skews toward both well-educated and technically inclined, I think you'll find that the same is true for many D&D players (except, I suppose, for the computer science types, who have evolved beyond the clumsy decimal system in favor of powers of two)

I got out of highscool 6 years ago. And no it hasnt. Its a small conversion table in the back of the book that no one ever talks about. Its not taught at all.

I finished highschool the same time as ironvyper, and I learned metric in elementary school. In the US, Curriculum standards are set by the state, so there's an absurd variance in what we get taught. Probably one of the reasons that metric never caught on (and for that matter, why we keep getting our butts kicked in comparisons to foreign education).

 

[parvatiquinta]

That sounds awkward for converting distances to squares. The corridor is 50 meters long: it's easy to convert this to squares if the units are 2 meter, but 1.5?

That's why corridors will be 45 metres long (especially since almost all the material published is English translations where the measurements are converted from feet anyway).

You can see why a lot of Italian (and other, I guess) players think all the fuss to avoid the 1.5 diagonal sounds just silly. It's not hard at all to count by "1 and a half".

I know things are going to be in squares anyways, but do many DMs describe the environment in terms of squares, outside of combat? "The tunnel is 14 squares long... the tower is 10 squares tall. The cow is 3 squares away..."

No, of course not. 2 squares = 3m and that's what we really go for. I do think having 1 square instead of 5 feet is going to spare us at least some conversion maths though.

The real problem comes when you have English books, or - even worse - a mix of translated and English books, and you have to constantly turn feet into metres, and then maybe inches into cm (and if feet were bad enough inches are a nightmare) and all that hassle. And then the British gallon is not the same as the American gallon...
And there's a lot of material that just doesn't get translated.

 

[Revinor]

Are you sure about this? I checked, and it's certainly close, but I've always heard it was first defined as 1E-7 of a meridian through Paris. (Of course, they measured it wrong, but that's another story.)

Of course, I was not there when it was decided, so I have to trust wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meter

* 1790 May 8 — The French National Assembly decides that the length of the new metre would be equal to the length of a pendulum with a half-period of one second.

* 1791 March 30 — The French National Assembly accepts the proposal by the French Academy of Sciences that the new definition for the metre be equal to one ten-millionth of the length of the Earth's meridian along a quadrant through Paris, that is the distance from the equator to the north pole.

* 1795 — Provisional metre bar constructed of brass.