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Will SF finally use the metric system or do I still need to consult an app while playing or GMing to translate the gibberish?
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You do realize that the majority of the players are used to the imperial system? (Don't call it gibberish, please. It's not that hard for one-dimensional units.)
This still is a product of an american company, so I don't expect it to change.
This is as much a convenience decission for Paizo as it is a business one.
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I really hope it changes to Metric. Aside the easy of use for people outside USA, the Imperial system would seem totally out of place on Starfinder. That system has a feel apropiate for fantasy, but not for something like Starfinder. Over the years I have more or less adapted the distance system...but I will never understand the Farenheit temperature.
On the other side, I fear that the quest for compatibility with PF means that the system will be Imperial.
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*echoes above sentiments and fears*
It still surprises me when I realise that a 10 ft. by 10 ft. room is 3m by 3m, and it's actually pretty large. I suppose it's just what you're used to, but it's difficult to care about getting used to the bizarre conversions just within the imperial system. I mean, the number of feet in a mile? Who even came up with that?
Ultimately though, when everything's basically just in units of "Squares" on your battle map, you can call it whatever you like. I admit to just crushing distance a little and using 1m squares instead of 5ft. ones, and calling a mile a kilometre. Everything's (approximately) 2/3s the size in actual distance, but it's still the same number of spaces between things, and that's mostly what matters. Also makes it incidentally more practical in normal use.
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I suppose it's just what you're used to, but it's difficult to care about getting used to the bizarre conversions just within the imperial system. I mean, the number of feet in a mile? Who even came up with that?
The Imperial / US Customary (they're not exactly the same*) is based on a few things... but the short version: Arbitrary and what is easily divisible by hand (hence the use of 12 and 16 in such systems).
Speaking as an engineer... It saddens me that the US opted to stick with their customary units rather than convert to metric like the rest of the world. So, so close to a global standard on units and measurements, and the joy that could have been... well, okay, at least the reduced frustration of having to convert things constantly whenever dealing with anything from or going into the US.
*Interesting note: The US gallon is 3.785 Liters. The Imperial gallon is 4.546 Liters.
3.785 Liters of water weighs 3.785 kilograms (convenient!) or 8.344 pounds.
4.546 Liters of water weighs 4.546 kg, or 10.022 pounds.
According to the CRB, one gallon of ale weighs 8 lbs.
Ergo, D&D and its derivatives use US Customary units, not Imperial.
RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
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I'd love to see the US switch to metric - the system makes so much more sense, but 300 million people have a special kind of inertia. The real issue seems to be that people who are not used to a system of measurement have no intuitive "feel" for it - an American knows what a 65 degree Fahrenheit day feels like, but has no equivalent intuition for a 30 degree Celsius day. In fact they likely assume the 30 degree Celsius day is cold.
This can be solved by simply actually using the units, but people resist change. It can be done though - cola companies give us two-liter bottles of pop because they aren't willing to have different bottles just for the US, and everyone seems to be fine with that.
Of course there are people out there who look at you in amazement if you point out that a two-liter of pop contains two metric liters of liquid, and therefore a liter is half a two-liter. Ah, the joys of teaching science in the US.
Well, is just a small poll, but as a indicator there is a threat on OffTopic that puts everyone that postsand gives his/her location on the world map. USA have 56 people of 156 there. Clearly the principal market, but also clearly less than "majority".
I likeour standards of measurement. It's one of the few overt things that we as Americans can see as a cultural norm apart from the Western world at large, and I think that serves a good purpose for most American kids who have never left the states and assume most US customs to be universal. As is, the Imperial system lierally forces schools to sit down and explain that we are not the default, in a meaningful context. And I like that.
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The US as a whole should go metric. But that's a different argument.
On the Farehnheit tangent, though: it makes a lot of sense when you are actually working with living creatures' temperatures: 0 is meant to be freezing point of saline/blood and 100 is meant to be resting temp of a person (of course not exact, but part of the intent is to have those be the benchmarks). We aren't made of pure h2o!
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I do not understand the USA defense of that mesurament system, but the idea here is not about its Pros and Cons, but what should be the standard for a scyfy game, and I really feel using feets and miles for a space game really hurts the inmersion.
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On the Farehnheit tangent, though: it makes a lot of sense when you are actually working with living creatures' temperatures
and for the other 90% of the population it is way more important when water boils. especially if you want something else to eat than sushi or raw meat
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The bulk of the United States population has answered this question for the next generation... It's going to be Imperial units if for no other reason that to maintain compatibility with the existing Pathfinder game.
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The US as a whole should go metric. But that's a different argument.
The US as a whole pretty much replied.. "No way" to that suggestion. It did go far enough that much of the stuff you buy in the grocery is dual measured... wait another fifty years, and the transition will be complete, but not sooner than that.
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I mean, the number of feet in a mile? Who even came up with that?
That would be the Parliament of England.
Originally, a mile was 5000 roman feet. Romans being relatively small, that actually came out to about 4,850 modern feet.
In the late 16th century Parliament set about standardizing things and felt that 8 furlongs (660 feet) would make a good standard for the mile... close to the historical figure, and easily derived from a 'commonplace' (at the time) measurement that everyone understood.
Indeed, most of the wacky measurement schemes used in the US were not devised by us. We're mostly to blame for railroad tracks being based on the width of a horse, but not much else in this field.
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Right. It's not like we invented that stuff. We were just more resistant to change because we had no pressing need to integrate our measurements like the disparate European systems of measurement existing in the early nineteenth century did.
As something of a typical American, I do my science in metric and my life in US Customary and have no interest in changing. Any benefit to me would be vanishingly small. Plus, metric measurements will never feel "real" to me. If you tell me a distance in kilometers or a temperature in Celsius, I'm always going to have to convert it back to make sense out of it. Maybe my grandkids will have an intuitive sense of what a kilogram is, but I don't. I can do the math, but that's the point. It will never be the base measurement to me.
Besides, we're still stuck with ancient Babylonian systems of time and geometry (there are 360 degrees in a circle, not 100).
HOWEVER, when I run sci-fi games, I use metric measurements. Just seems right. I assume Starfinder will do likewise.
PS: Of course Americans are the overwhelming majority of Pathfinder players.
Indeed, most of the wacky measurement schemes used in the US were not devised by us. We're mostly to blame for railroad tracks being based on the width of a horse, but not much else in this field.
Even that is an urban legend. The standard US gauge is based on Stephenson's gauge from England, but it doesn't have anything to do with Roman chariots.
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We're mostly to blame for railroad tracks being based on the width of a horse, but not much else in this field.Even that is an urban legend. The standard US gauge is based on Stephenson's gauge from England, but it doesn't have anything to do with Roman chariots.
Chariots, no. Horses, yes.
The original trains were horse drawn conveyances. Thus, the track width was set to be slightly wider than the average horse... as indeed is confirmed by the page you linked.
As to Stephenson / England... that's why I said, 'mostly'. The earliest railroads were in England, and thus we could indeed blame them, but the US really built out the technology and exported it to the world... without bothering to adjust it to something making more sense / less horse based, so in large part that one's on us.
We're mostly to blame for railroad tracks being based on the width of a horse, but not much else in this field.Even that is an urban legend. The standard US gauge is based on Stephenson's gauge from England, but it doesn't have anything to do with Roman chariots.Chariots, no. Horses, yes.
The original trains were horse drawn conveyances. Thus, the track width was set to be slightly wider than the average horse... as indeed is confirmed by the page you linked.
As to Stephenson / England... that's why I said, 'mostly'. The earliest railroads were in England, and thus we could indeed blame them, but the US really built out the technology and exported it to the world... without bothering to adjust it to something making more sense / less horse based, so in large part that one's on us.
It could be worse. India, which has a far larger rail system than any country mentioned above has... thanks to the British, three different rail widths.
It's going to be Imperial units if for no other reason that to maintain compatibility with the existing Pathfinder game.
This.
They already said the systems are going to be compatible to some degree so I think it's all but assured an imperial system.
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the compatibility is, excuse me, a BS excuse. call the 5 ft. squares 3m squares and nothing would change. call it 5m squares, which is close enough, and you don't even have to do math.
other than a few distances for ranged weapons and spells I don't think there are any other important rules involved
They will have to change it on a lot of spells for example. So instead of cut n paste it's more work.
I prefer imperial but I don't really care.
You're free to call the 5 ft square 3 m.
Personally I would prefer Starfinder use the metron/round/planck mass system. :)
the compatibility is, excuse me, a BS excuse. call the 5 ft. squares 3m squares and nothing would change. call it 5m squares, which is close enough, and you don't even have to do math.
other than a few distances for ranged weapons and spells I don't think there are any other important rules involved
I think you mean "1.5m squares".
The US Customary (because they're not Imperial) units are workable for single things and everyday life (they're based of daily convenience, basically), but somewhat painful to work with mathematically, and yet are still the basis of engineering in the US.
As an example:
- Distance is measured in fractions of inches, inches, feet (12 in.), yards (3ft) and miles (1,760 yards)
- Area is measured in square inches, square feet (144 sq-in), square yards (9 sq-ft) and square miles (3,097,600 sq-yd)
- Mass is measured in drams, ounces (16 dr), pound (16 oz) and ton (2,000 lbs)
- Speed is measured in feet per second
- Acceleration is measured in feet per second squared (ft/s2)
- Force is typically measured in pound-force (usually abbreviated to "pounds", but more usefully to lbf) which is the force exerted by 1 point in one standard gravity (32.174 ft/s2). .
- Moment/Torque are measured in foot-pounds, which specifically is 1 pound-force applied with a moment arm of 1 foot.
- Pressure/stress is measured in yea olde PSI, which is one pound-force per square inch.
Now, at first glance that might not seem to bad, until you need to start solving problems with it.
To compare with metric:
- Distance is measured (typically) in millimeters (mm), centimeters (10 mm), meters (1,000mm) and kilometers (1,000m)
- Mass is measured in grams, kilograms (1,000g) and tonnes (1,000kg)
- Speed is measured in meters per second (m/s)
- Acceleration is measured in meters per second squared (m/s2)
- Force is measured in Newtons (the force of 1 kg at 1 m/s2 acceleration), and kilonewtons (1,000 N).
- Moment/Torque is measured in Newton-meters, that is, 1N applied at a 1m moment arm.
- Pressure/stress is measured in Pascals (1 Newton of force applied over a 1 meter area), kilopascals (kPa) and megapascals (MPa)
So when dealing with second moments of area (with a unit of meters to the power of 4) and such, having everything be multiples of 10 of each other makes things way more convenient.
Taken beyond the context of regular human life on earth (such as most sci-fi / space fantasy), the system is clunky and needlessly inefficient, especially compared with SI (aka Metric) units of measurement.
I'd love to see the US switch to metric - the system makes so much more sense, but 300 million people have a special kind of inertia.
This is, last I checked only the US (319 million), Burma (53 million) and Liberia (4 million) hadn't adopted the metric system as their national standard. That's 376 million out of 7.45 billion people on earth, or about 5%. The other 7 billion-and-change use the metric system.
Because having a common scientific and mathematical language is actually rather useful :P
Honestly I don't really see a reason for one way or the other, since most of the time, you're just counting squares. I'd prefer feet but that's admittedly from just the status quo point of view.
Eh, the fact of the matter is that Paizo is an American company, and as such has a player base draws disproportionately from a group that sees nothing wrong with the ACU.
I'm afraid that the "Imperial" system is here to stay.
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As a Canadian with an engineering degree I have no problem with using imperial for simple things, which is all you will need for the average game of pathfinder or starfinder. But using Imperial for any kind of scientific or engineering calculations is complete and total heresy and makes everything way more complicated than it needs to be.
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"We don't want to change therefore we're right" is... sad.
Not so much sad, more like "is the human condition".
Amused to get serious responses about the origin of the mile, and while not especially helpful for remembering how many feet are in a mile, at least it's insightful information, I suppose? The point of it was really just that stuff gets really awkward when you have to convert within the system.
Anyway, I think I'd be perfectly fine to just have everything in units of squares, since that's what it all comes down to, really. Call it 5 feet, or 1 metre, or what have you. Even just a little conversion table in easy reach within the book to convert from squares on the various scales into metric/imperial would be a start.
Anyway, I think I'd be perfectly fine to just have everything in units of squares, since that's what it all comes down to, really. Call it 5 feet, or 1 metre, or what have you. Even just a little conversion table in easy reach within the book to convert from squares on the various scales into metric/imperial would be a start.
That would really solve many issues (though you create some for the editing team):
personal scale (humanoid measures): squares (for combat mostly: speed, range of weapons and spells...)
planet exploration scale: hexes (overland maps similar to Kingmaker, and space combat ship to ship)
galactic scale: AU (astronomical units), lightyears, parsecs...
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Could be worse. Paizo/Pathfinder could have decided to use Harry Potter currency . . . .
Shorter Romans would have made a pace equivalent to 5.0 feet instead of 5.28, so we could have had 5,000-ft mile instead of a 5,280-ft one. :) C'est la vie.
I think now that I've had time to think on it and sleep, I'd rather stay with feet. Personally, I generally find counting 5, 10, 15, etc easier than counting 1.5, 3, 4.5, etc. Especially going from 3 to 4.5 slows me down a bit.
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I think now that I've had time to think on it and sleep, I'd rather stay with feet. Personally, I generally find counting 5, 10, 15, etc easier than counting 1.5, 3, 4.5, etc. Especially going from 3 to 4.5 slows me down a bit.
If they did switch to meters - they'd probably switch to each square being two meters to prevent that kind of issue. (Yes - I know that two meters are a bit over 6.5 feet.) I think that was what d20 Star Wars did. (I think both Revised & Saga.)
As long as US of A (and Canada) is 70-80% of global p'n'p RPG market and something like 90% of "D&D and related" market, it's inches and pounds, baby.
Canada mostly uses metric, except for some relatively short distance measurements and people's weight.
Though we also frequently measure long distances in the time it takes to travel rather than kilometers so we aren't always that logical.
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As long as US of A (and Canada) is 70-80% of global p'n'p RPG market and something like 90% of "D&D and related" market, it's inches and pounds, baby.Canada mostly uses metric, except for some relatively short distance measurements and people's weight.
Though we also frequently measure long distances in the time it takes to travel rather than kilometers so we aren't always that logical.
Maybe, but they're so nice that they don't mind the game being full Imperial.
Shorter Romans would have made a pace equivalent to 5.0 feet instead of 5.28, so we could have had 5,000-ft mile instead of a 5,280-ft one. :) C'est la vie.
The mile was increased from 5,000 feet to 5,280 so that furlongs would divide evenly into a mile.
I have a question for the metric players, something I've been curious about for awhile now. What scale grid do you play on? Are 25mm grid battlements easily available, or are you forced to be inventive?
Shorter Romans would have made a pace equivalent to 5.0 feet instead of 5.28, so we could have had 5,000-ft mile instead of a 5,280-ft one. :) C'est la vie.
The mile was increased from 5,000 feet to 5,280 so that furlongs would divide evenly into a mile.
I have a question for the metric players, something I've been curious about for awhile now. What scale grid do you play on? Are 25mm grid battlements easily available, or are you forced to be inventive?
To me when using a battlemat the size of the squares isn't a huge deal since scale is normally tied to squares in some way. Counting squares is easier that using measuring tapes if you are using a grid. But if you aren't using a grid centimeters is better than inches because you can fit 2.5 times more space into the same table.
So that's two votes for be inventive? I don't mean to be obtuse, but I honestly can't tell if you guys are saying that 25mm battlemats are available, or if you shift Pathfinder's 1 inch = 5 feet to 1cm = 5 feet.