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One thing I like about cypher system books is that whenever metric units are references, they are told in format "in feets(in metres)". That would be really handy for someone like me who doesn't understand feets and inches at all and it wouldn't add much to word count.
Besides, its global age and all and it was really saddening Starfinder didn't do that :'D Come oooon throw us meter people a bone!
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What's hilarious about this topic is that I just asked about using range bands instead. :P The timing!
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So why do most metric people seem to act like it is simultaneously really easy for imperial measure people to convert to metric(which really it is) but not easy to go the other way? 5’9” is 5 9/12,5.75. A meter is about 3 1/4 feet.. therefore 5’9” is about 1.75 meters. Or to put it another way a meter is just shy of forty inches. The conversion isn’t that hard.(not that I object to providing both for convenience)
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What's hilarious about this topic is that I just asked about using range bands instead. :P The timing!
This isn't just about tactical combat ranges though, its also things like "this ancestry's average height is this many feet" and "These monsters are this many feet tall/long" <_< I can't comprehend how huge giants are supposed to be because I can't remember how feet -> meters conversion works xP
So why do most metric people seem to act like it is simultaneously really easy for imperial measure people to convert to metric(which really it is) but not easy to go the other way? 5’9” is 5 9/12,5.75. A meter is about 3 1/4 feet.. therefore 5’9” is about 1.75 meters. Or to put it another way a meter is just shy of forty inches. The conversion isn’t that hard.(not that I object to providing both for convenience)
Because Pathfinder the RPG is literally only thing in the world I have to worry about feets for and I suck in math? :D
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This isn't just about tactical combat ranges though, its also things like "this ancestry's average height is this many feet" and "These monsters are this many feet tall/long" <_< I can't comprehend how huge giants are supposed to be because I can't remember how feet -> meters conversion works xP
Ah, good point. You'd still need measurements for that and map distances and stuff, so yeah. I'm all for including both.
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70-80% of Pathfinder/D&D sales is United States.
The biggest ROW markets (France, Germany, Italy) have their own language versions of the PF and likely will have PF2 out ASAP.
Loss of word count from having to print every measurement in two units: big.
Gain of having a bunch of Poles and Nordics happy to see metric units: small.
Metric units were requested for Starfinder and didn't happen, so I doubt the above will shift much for PF2.
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So why do most metric people seem to act like it is simultaneously really easy for imperial measure people to convert to metric(which really it is) but not easy to go the other way? 5’9” is 5 9/12,5.75. A meter is about 3 1/4 feet.. therefore 5’9” is about 1.75 meters. Or to put it another way a meter is just shy of forty inches. The conversion isn’t that hard.(not that I object to providing both for convenience)The amount of practice can become meaningful. If you're used to imperial, you'll probably be converting a decent amount of stuff because metric is in common usage, but if you're used to metric, chances are from your perspective Imperial is not in common usage so you only need to convert it when dealing with US grognards. As a Canadian studying physics, I think of speeds in m/s first, km/h second, cm/s third, miles/h never.
I can honestly say the amount of metric I see in day to day life is pretty small, and usually limited to things like liter soda bottles and metric sizes on bolts and such which need no conversion. And meters and such are precisely as arbitrary as imperial measures.
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70-80% of Pathfinder/D&D sales is United States.
The biggest ROW markets (France, Germany, Italy) have their own language versions of the PF and likely will have PF2 out ASAP.
Loss of word count from having to print every measurement in two units: big.
Gain of having a bunch of Poles and Nordics happy to see metric units: small.
Metric units were requested for Starfinder and didn't happen, so I doubt the above will shift much for PF2.
have you read the German language version of PF? Because there's a reason I don't use them
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Speaking of which, why did the U.S. fail to introduce metric properly? I've heard rumors about bin Laden's attack on New York invoking fervent patriotism nationwide having to do with its last straw, but surely that alone can't be the whole story...
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I could see where having an easier understanding of the scale of objects and monsters would be nice, but for tactical purposes just say that a square is 1 or 2 meters (either works) and that 5ft is equal to 1 or 2 as well. It's pretty simple for combat purposes.
Hell, really they should just address everything as the number of squares of movement.
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Speaking of which, why did the U.S. fail to introduce metric properly? I've heard rumors about bin Laden's attack on New York invoking fervent patriotism nationwide having to do with its last straw, but surely that alone can't be the whole story...
Because people weren’t comfortable using it in day to day business and life.
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have you read the German language version of PF? Because there's a reason I don't use them70-80% of Pathfinder/D&D sales is United States.
The biggest ROW markets (France, Germany, Italy) have their own language versions of the PF and likely will have PF2 out ASAP.
Loss of word count from having to print every measurement in two units: big.
Gain of having a bunch of Poles and Nordics happy to see metric units: small.
Metric units were requested for Starfinder and didn't happen, so I doubt the above will shift much for PF2.
I didn't, I get headache from words that span two lines of text.
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Speaking of which, why did the U.S. fail to introduce metric properly? I've heard rumors about bin Laden's attack on New York invoking fervent patriotism nationwide having to do with its last straw, but surely that alone can't be the whole story...
You need to take in account that there are roughly 4.12 million miles of road (roughly 6.63 million kilometers), and if there is a speed limit sign roughly every mile, plus mile markers on highways (roughly 164000 miles, or 264000 kilometers), that's a lot of signs that have to be removed and replaced. On top of that, there are roughly 263.6 million cars in the US, a decent fraction of which have speedometers that don't read in kilometers-per-hour, which would mean a not insignificant amount of required work that would need to be performed on those vehicles, either at the expense of the owners, who may or may not be able to afford the cost, the government, which would be contentious, or either manufacturers or insurance companies, who may not (read: will not) be happy about being forced to pay for it. Ultimately, it would be a minor logistic nightmare to try and force a switch-over, even if it was phased over a period of time. And that's not even taking into account the states that would sue to prevent such a change from ever taking effect.
I don't know about most folks, but the games I'm in or run are heavy on players using Hero Lab. I'd like to think it could let you choose the units of measurement.
Tactically speaking, they could define a square as 2 meter/yards and not really change much.
Edit: In the german version, 1 square = 1,5m...
Which is a pretty accurate conversion from 5 feet
1 foot = 12 inches,1 inch = 2.54 cm
so 1 foot = 30.48 cm
so 1 square = 152.4 cm or 1.524 m which is rounded to 1.5 so the game doesn't bog down in ridiculous detail math over less than 2% of effective ranges.
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All the more reason I prefer range bands, but if we can just get those as an option that'd be cool. "Short range might be in the same room" is a lot easier than "15/5 meters away and no further to target him" or the like.
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"Short range might be in the same room"
I really don't like wishy washy range systems like that. Set measurements help identifying the scale of combat in such a way that no one feels disadvantaged.
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I was rather disturbed by Starfinder's use of obsolete units. I feel that Pathfinder is fine in the old measures because it gives it an authentic old-timey feeling.
Mind you, I tend to think of Pathfinder distances in terms of squares or days of travel.
Like in our current campaign, we have to research an ancient artifact (or we'll get "pwnt" by some evil cultists..again), and we have to travel to the capitol .. capital? I can never remember which one... the big city. Anyways, we ask how far, and the DM answers, "about two weeks". Or, another example, I move four squares per move action (yay medium armor~).
As a Canadian studying physics, I think of speeds in m/s first, km/h second, cm/s third, miles/h never.
As a Canadian housewife, I think of speeds in km/h first, m/s second, furlongs/fortnight third, and the others never.
I actually have a strong STEM leaning, but I'm not formally trained. At all ^.^;;
And meters and such are precisely as arbitrary as imperial measures.
Nopers. The last version of the Imperial and American Standard units was redefined to use metric units as the base, so um, it's twice as arbitrary. Or maybe arbitrary squared?
Plus the scaling system metric/SI employs is the same base-10 scaling system our Arabic numerals use, rather than a hodgepodge of random things. Why isn't A.S. always units of 12? Why is it 16 or 8 sometimes? How many pounds in a hundredweight? How many hundredweights in a ton? Why is a gallon sometimes 3.5L and sometimes 4.5L? What's a cable?? Rod?? Fathom?? WhyYYyyy~
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And meters and such are precisely as arbitrary as imperial measures.
Except it's not. The metric system uses the most abundant resource on the planet as its base measurement: Water. 1 liter of water is precisely 1 kg, and 1 dm³.
From there all units translate to the next unit by a factor of 10. 1 dm = 10 cm = 0.1 mMeanwhile in the imperial system 1 foot = 12 inch = 0.3333... yards
1 km is 1,000 m is 100,000 cm
1 mile is 1,760 yards is 63,360 inches
Same goes for units of weight. Metric system may have an arbitrary starting point, but from there it's pure and very simple math. Imperial has an arbitrary starting point and from there its just more arbitrary numbers.
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As a non-American, dealing in feet isn't hard.
5 feet = 1 arbitrary unit of measurement. So long as you just use feet as a counting measure and don't try to relate it to real life there is very little conversions involved. If that's not good enough imagine the height of a short person you know as 5 feet. Now imagine how many lengths of their body something is.
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As a non-American, dealing in feet isn't hard.
5 feet = 1 arbitrary unit of measurement. So long as you just use feet as a counting measure and don't try to relate it to real life there is very little conversions involved. If that's not good enough imagine the height of a short person you know as 5 feet. Now imagine how many lengths of their body something is.
Unfortunately not everyone plays their roleplaying games completely without visualizing the situation at hand.
Sure for measuring on the tabletop it doesn't matter how much 5 feet are as long as you know it's 1 square, but when your DM is describing something you might want to have a good idea how much that would really be if it were in front of you right now.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Unfortunately not everyone plays their roleplaying games completely without visualizing the situation at hand.
Sure for measuring on the tabletop it doesn't matter how much 5 feet are as long as you know it's 1 square, but when your DM is describing something you might want to have a good idea how much that would really be if it were in front of you right now.
Whereas I find most people don't do that very well to begin with. Does the average person really have a good grasp of what's exactly 20 feet in front of them or 25? Or how much a given cubic volume of gases really amounts to? Thus my love of range bands that are more narrative and generally relatable, which is less "wishy washy" (as you put it) or disadvantageous-feeling to me than "He's 25 feet away, your range is 20, sorry."
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Dear rest of the planet,
You're trying to make metric happen in the US, stop trying to make metric happen in the US. It's just not going to happen for a number of reasons. I'm not saying metric isn't the better measurement system. But you're asking 300 million people to change all their systems that they've been using for their entire lives. I'm not sure how the rest of the world managed to institute metric over whatever measurement systems they were using before (I'm sure it wasn't easy) but there is a lot of weight and pressure to continue using the existing. Until you can convince Americans in general to use metric, you probably wont get a company like Paizo to institute a measurement system that would alienate them from their primary market.
Sincerely,
An engineer living in America that has to work in Imperial units every single day
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Unfortunately not everyone plays their roleplaying games completely without visualizing the situation at hand.
I'm able to imagine stuff just fine without creating a mental image and ensuring that mental image is accurate down to the cm.
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As an American, dealing in meters isn’t hard. :)
That said, the considerations Gorbacz laid out regarding the composition of PF’s market probably means that switching to meters is a bad idea from a marketing perspective.
As an American, dealing in meters isn’t hard. :)
That said, the considerations Gorbacz laid out regarding the composition of PF’s market probably means that switching to meters is a bad idea from a marketing perspective.
Conversion is easy both ways.
The counterpoint would be of course that switching to the metric system could open the international market more.
But, while I am dissapointed that Starfinder didn't went the metric route, I'm fine with feet in Pathfinder. An archaic, out of date measurement fits the setting more than a contemporary like the metric system would
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Speaking of which, why did the U.S. fail to introduce metric properly? I've heard rumors about bin Laden's attack on New York invoking fervent patriotism nationwide having to do with its last straw, but surely that alone can't be the whole story...Because people weren’t comfortable using it in day to day business and life.
Because (1) the US government made metric optional in the '70s rather than switching fully, which killed any real chance to introduce metric properly as (2) people hate change.
As an American living in Austria, I admit that I still have a difficult time thinking in metric for certain things (e.g., height, weight, speed when driving, etc.) in comparison with imperial, regardless of how impractical they are. Nevertheless, I would prefer to see PF2 (and most American RPGs, for that matter) switch to either metric units or go abstract (e.g. squares, ranges, etc.).
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I'm able to imagine stuff just fine without creating a mental image and ensuring that mental image is accurate down to the cm.
Unfortunately not everyone plays their roleplaying games completely without visualizing the situation at hand.
It has nothing to do with going down to the centimeter, but if you have literally 0 concept of what 20 feet means, that adult dragon may as well be the same size as your dog.
Five feet is 1.5 meters therefore twenty feet is easy. 1.5*4.
As an American living in Austria, I admit that I still have a difficult time thinking in metric for certain things (e.g.[...] speed when driving, etc.)
50 km/h in cities and villages, 100 km/h on country roads, 130 km/h on the Autobahn (and 30 km/h in 30 km/h zones), a look on the speedometer does the rest, usually. At least that's how I handle it. If my speedometer says 70 while driving through Vienna, I know I'm too fast
50 km/h in cities and villages, 100 km/h on country roads, 130 km/h on the Autobahn (and 30 km/h in 30 km/h zones), a look on the speedometer does the rest, usually. At least that's how I handle it. If my speedometer says 70 while driving through Vienna, I know I'm too fast
I have only been here for 2.5 years and without a car. I am sure that I would have a better grasp of traveling speeds if I ever had a car here. So far, I have not needed one, and I would also likely need to gain a proper license here. But your handy guide is useful. Thank you.
. If that's not good enough imagine the height of a short person you know as 5 feet. Now imagine how many lengths of their body something is.
Quoting because this point seemed to have been overlooked. Of course, not everyone is going to know a 5 ft person. But it's meant to be a rough approximation anyway.
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I recently bought a map with 20 foot square rooms marked in 5 foot square grids
I spent a whole day converting that map to rooms that are 6 meters square with 1.5 meter square grids
it was exhausting
Why didn't you just leave it as is and just keep things in terms of squares of movement?
It doesn't matter what abstract (or not) units you use in the tactical grid, whether its feet, meters, or squares.
Edit: Unless I'm missing a joke here
RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
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As an American who would drastically prefer the metric system here, let us all know if you figure out some way to make several hundred million stubborn people change their minds. I'd love it if we went metric. Of course, I also think the world should switch over to universal time instead of time zones, so maybe I'm a bit of a kook when it comes to measurements.
For some reason nobody here has problems with 2 liter bottles of soda pop, but if you tried to switch milk over to liters instead of gallons there would be rioting in the streets.
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For some reason nobody here has problems with 2 liter bottles of soda pop, but if you tried to switch milk over to liters instead of gallons there would be rioting in the streets.
The alcoholic beverage industry is pretty stealthy with their switch for wine and hard liquor. Almost everything is sold in metric volumes these days.
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Bear with me, here. I think we could have it both ways, with little fuss.
Distances in most adventures work well in the abstract, and an abstract system already exists in spells, that's well established: touch, near, far...
...this sounds familiar, right?
In a sidebar, include suggested distance for each term. "Close" is x feet or x meters, for example.
This would also mean fewer translations between publication zones, and fewer errors.
Maps may need a little adjustment, but this should work, and I've met GMs who already run this way. It felt like a natural extension of PF already.
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For some reason nobody here has problems with 2 liter bottles of soda pop, but if you tried to switch milk over to liters instead of gallons there would be rioting in the streets.
Liter bottles are conveniently sized for travel, parties and the like. Few people have reason to bring an extra liter of milk on the road or to a get-together, and if they do, we invented half-gallons for that.
The other reason people wouldn't want this change is that I can guarantee you that $3.29 gallon of milk would end up costing at least $0.99 a liter. Buying things in smaller sizes is a value-loss proposition. It's why most people buy bread by the loaf and not the slice, and the household staple of milk, by the gallon instead of the liter. Better for the environment, too, as there is less packing in one gallon container than 3.75 one-liter containers.
But this is all really tertiary to the real reason, which is stubbornness to change and the considerable financial and disruptive impact of switching the country's processes and signage over to metric.
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No no no you are doing this all wrong. You are appealing to Americans after all. You need to say "metric sucks the rest of us global citizens are converting to standard!" Then, the Americans will ditch it and convert to metric.
You can really convert on the fly and do what D20 Modern did, phrase everything that used to be a multiple of 5 feet as a multiple of 2 meters instead. Sure, 2 meters is actually 6.5 feet, but really, who cares. Whenever you see "Range 100 ft" just read that as "Range 40 m" and roll with it.