Would you play a TTRPG that used Meters instead of Feet?

[Dannyalcatraz]

Noting feet (') and inches (") confuses a lot of people out there, and there are even many Americans and Brits who still get confused about notating them.*

A few years ago, I took my cousin to get fitted for a prom tux, and he put his height at 6”. Hilarity ensued.

 

[Clint_L]

As a Canadian, you learn both systems. Metric is obviously far easier and more logical - I don’t think anyone really questions that, do they? Ask any scientist or military commander, US or otherwise.

However, usage trumps everything else. In Canada, we use metric for anything official, but we still cling to imperial for certain day to day reckonings, particularly height and weight on a personal scale. So even though I am fluent in metric I still think of my height in feet and inches, for example, and my weight in pounds. And I have English friends who still think of their weight in stone.

For D&D imperial feels better to me because it’s more old-timey, but I might switch to metric when RPing a gnome or something. Occasionally I have to do a bit of math in my head (eg how far is 60 metres in feet?) but it’s not much of an inconvenience. Except temperature - I just stick with Celsius because Fahrenheit totally confuses me (water freezes at zero degrees, dammit)!

The units chosen make no difference to what game I choose to play.

 

[Deset Gled]

As a Canadian, you learn both systems.

I used to do a lot of work with a Canadian manufacturing/design company that would alternate between english and metric standards freely and without warning. It was only mildy infuriating, but the threat of stripped threads was omnipresent.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Count me as another person who has heard “klicks” as a major slang substitute for kilometers. Almost every time I see “k” in use, it’s for numbering something, like money or people.

Never heard it used in conversation as a substitute for kilometers, even though I have seen distance or speed signs using them (outside the USA, of course).

It's extremely common as a spoken term in U.S. military and government circles, both on the job and off.

 

[Jd Smith1]

I simply switch it from the measurement system preferred by Stalin and Serbian war criminals into the system that put a man on the Moon and invented RPGs.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I simply switch it from the measurement system preferred by Stalin and Serbian war criminals into the system that put a man on the Moon and invented RPGs.

Thank you for making it weird.

 

[Lanefan]

While not strictly metric by any means, I will point out that using base-ten math for fantasy gaming currencies - i.e., 100 coppers = 10 silver = 1 gold - is also pretty ahistorical.

Which is a large part of why I don't use decimal-based coinage. It's also rather dull and boring.

Maybe we should also rid ourselves of this sort of fetishing of base-ten math in favor of more historical currency arrays based on weights and fluctuating precious metal purity values and not simple conversion?

I've occasionally thought about introducing purity etc. as a feature/bug of different nations' coins but the end result remains that you can always get a smith to melt the impurities out and come up with a pure-metal value, meaning there's no real net effect in the end.

 

[Aldarc]

Which is a large part of why I don't use decimal-based coinage. It's also rather dull and boring.

It may be "dull and boring," but it's also much easier for players who are used to decimal-based currency in real life. It is easier to convert such currency than having to convert between a variety of non-decimal based currencies that use different standards of weights, values, and coinage.

I've occasionally thought about introducing purity etc. as a feature/bug of different nations' coins but the end result remains that you can always get a smith to melt the impurities out and come up with a pure-metal value, meaning there's no real net effect in the end.

If you do that with all of your coins, then you will be out of acceptable coinage. Thankfully most people in history don't act like you assume that they would.

 

[Lanefan]

It may be "dull and boring," but it's also much easier for players who are used to decimal-based currency in real life. It is easier to convert such currency than having to convert between a variety of non-decimal based currencies that use different standards of weights, values, and coinage.

For table-level simplicity I have (artificially, I admit) made it that all nations use a variant on the same coinage system; but even there I can have some between-nations variety in that I've taken the old British system and added in the HP knuts-sickles-galleons system, meaning there's about 9 different types of coin (whose values happen to neatly divide, fancy that!) of which most nations don't use more than four or five.

So, a c.p. equates to a penny, an s.p. equates to a shilling (at 12 c.p.), a g.p. equates to a pound (at 20 s.p.). Meanwhile a b.p. (four to the c.p.) is a knut, an e.p. (2 to the g.p.) is a sickle, and a p.p. (worth 5 g.p.) is a galleon. I also have ha'pennies, thruppences, and sixpences - whose value should be obvious - show up now and then.

For simplicity in treasury-keeping, however, I almost always just give values in the standard five D&D coinages.

If you do that with all of your coins, then you will be out of acceptable coinage. Thankfully most people in history don't act like you assume that they would.

A gold piece has its value due to the weight of gold in it, so something gold and coin-shaped that weighs the same as a standard g.p. will - most of the time - spend like a standard g.p.

 

[Lycurgon]

I am from outside of US. I was born in New Zealand during the process of changing from metric to Imperial, so grew up with metric but a lot of use of imperial especially for people's height. I also grew up playing D&D so had continual exposure to Imperial from that. So I have a good understanding of short distances in imperial, but don't have a good grasp of long distances in imperial, I think Km not Miles. I have to do maths to figure out what X miles is or how fast X mph is.

So now I generally like my Fantasy games in Imperial, but want my modern day or Sci-fi RPGs to be in metric. Using metres for fantasy just seems weird to me, dungeons tunnels should be 10' by 10' or 5' by 10' if they are narrow tunnels.

But measurements aren't the important part of a system and would play a good RPG if the measurements didn't match my preferences.