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

[WhatGravitas]

What, you've never baked? You use cups of flour, etc. Heck, my oatmeal this morning was measured using volume (yeah, I could eyeball it instead of measuring but I'm picky about my oatmeal. Call me Goldilocks.)

Of course I baked. Here, a totally randomly googled recipe in German: Chocolate Cake. Everything in weights, if it's bigger than 2 or 3 spoons. Metric and weights. And it looked that way in my grandmother's recipe book.

But Germans seemingly have the discipline to pull off the scale thing (I never thought other people would do that differently!). Especially when you're baking!

So, people who grew up with metric... Which do you say, that an angle is 45 degrees, or pi/4 radians?

45°. At least, most people will do that. I like pi, but that doesn't matter. Also, I prefer radians, because you can plug them into e^(i * angle). But degrees are the way to go for most people, usually.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Halivar]

Of course I baked. Here, a totally randomly googled recipe in German: Chocolate Cake. Everything in weights. Metric and weights. And it looked that way in my grandmother's recipe book.

But Germans seemingly have the discipline to pull off the scale thing (I never thought other people would do that differently!). Especially when you're baking!

French recipes on the 'net are the same way. For an old imperial like me (what strange phrase to say ), it's intensely aggravating. I gotta keep google open so I can ask "How many hogsheads in a microgram?" and stuff like that. First thing I did when I found a good recipe for coq au vin was translate it all to imperial and save it for me to use later.

 

[TwinBahamut]

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.

And I find it quite unpractical to walk on walls and furnitures to take measurements, and very bad form when it comes to people so i use a tape most of the time.

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.

 

[Derren]

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.

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.

 

[Victim]

Metric measures, in my experience, have huge advantages for calculation - especially for things involving force, mass, and volume type figures where any conversion factor has to be cubed.

However, Dnd doesn't really call for those sorts of calculations. Therefore, there's not really any inherent advantage to using metric; it's all a matter of familiarity.

 

[TwinBahamut]

Of course I baked. Here, a totally randomly googled recipe in German: Chocolate Cake. Everything in weights, if it's bigger than 2 or 3 spoons. Metric and weights. And it looked that way in my grandmother's recipe book.

But Germans seemingly have the discipline to pull off the scale thing (I never thought other people would do that differently!). Especially when you're baking!

I can't imagine using a scale in the kitchen... I always thought it was the pinnacle of convenience to be able to measure off the amounts of flour, sugar, oil, water, and other things you need all with the same measuring cup, and maybe a set of measuring spoons. I never knew people used mass as a measurement in the kitchen. I guess you learn things every day.

45°. At least, most people will do that. I like pi, but that doesn't matter. Also, I prefer radians, because you can plug them into e^(i * angle). But degrees are the way to go for most people, usually.

Radians really are an amazing tool for mathematics. However, for daily use, I just can't get over the fact that the radius of a circle is defined using an irrational number, and that I need to express a quarter of a circle using a 1/2 fraction...

 

[The Shadow]

1 meter was originally a length of pendulum with half-period of 1 second.

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.)

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Radians really are an amazing tool for mathematics. However, for daily use, I just can't get over the fact that the radius of a circle is defined using an irrational number, and that I need to express a quarter of a circle using a 1/2 fraction...

Wait until you work in the weapons community like I do and get into arguments about minutes of angle (1 MOA equals 1" at 100 yards) versus mils (ie milliradians; 1 mil = 1 meter at 1000 meters).

As much as I favor imperial units for D&D, metric is far, far superior for engineering work. Used to drive me nuts doing aerodynamic calculations in standard units (they made us use both in my AE program, since some of the US aerospace industry uses standard units still). The slug (~32 lbf) is the stupidest unit of mass I've encountered.

 

[LowSpine]

Imperial because it is more in fitting with the period (from an English POV)

England has gone metric but we are pluralists in measurements (at least at my age)

I don't know all of them but for example of the top of my head:

1" = 2.54cm
1ltr = 1.76 pints

20shillings in a £
12 pennies in a shilling.
1£ = 240 pence. (1 pound of silver cut into 240 silver pennies)
1/2 £1 = 120 pence
1/3 £1 = 80 pence
2/3 £1 160 pence

1 mile = 8 furlongs

I'm rusty but there a chains, links, rods/roods/poles - acres, square rods - firkins, hog's heads, etc - can't remember now but I used to know all the conversions - it would take 2 mins to refresh.

I like the imperial because they have much more interesting, flavourful names.

(Just as they use the standardized medieval King's measurements - King's Rod, etc. If you go back to the middle ages all measurements were local so different.)

 

[Crazy Jerome]

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.

Really, I think D&D should make up its own units of measurement, directly designed to make playing the game easy as possible. These should only be close enough to Imperial and Metric common units to encourage people to make approximations instead of worrying too much about exact conversion.