As a non-American who didn’t grow up with imperial, I still prefer it for fantasy. Metric sounds too modern and scientific. Also I feel like I have more room to fudge distances because it already sounds imprecise.
Would be a fun bit to make the players use metric in a magitech world though.
In the UK the government was considering switching back to imperial (just to pretend we’re not in Europe). Honestly I think they didn’t because otherwise they’d get too many milkshakes thrown at them.
Don’t care. My sheets have all the measurements without major mechanical significance listed in SI units. Length of hempen rope? 15 metres. Darkvision range? 18 metres. Character weight? Kilograms. The only imperial unit I keep using is speed (ft/turn)
Most of them I guess, I only just learned there’s 2 types, one for Americans and one for whoever else is dumb enough to not use metric. Imperial units are dumb, inconsistent, arbitrary increments that make little sense. Metric is uniform, even increments of ten/hundred/thousand no matter how far up/down in scale you go.
Measuring distance, the smallest increment imperial has is the inch. 12 inches make a foot, and 3 feet make a yard. The next increment up is a mile, which is 1780 yards, why the giant leap?
Meanwhile with metric, no matter what you’re measuring, the next step up is just a multiple or factor of 100 or 1000 of whatever you’re measuring. 100cm = 1m, and 1000m = 1km.
And don’t even get me started on Ferenheit vs Celsius, nevermind the fact that Kelvin is better than both.
I say all this as an American who grew up struggling with our dumb ways of doing things.
I mean, I’m European, on metric and fully agree with you.
But you’re not right about the units. They’re just the most well known, and used ones.
An inch is 3 barleycorns. A barleycorn is 4 poppyseeds. A poppyseed (2.11mm) is six points. A point, 0.35mm is twenty twips. A twip is 17 micrometers. 0.0176mm, roughly the width of a human hair.
Which makes it even dumber, because it shows it’s from a time in people could measure things in twips, yet those people still chose to make a unit called “a twip” instead of just saying “fuck this we’re going metric”. Nevermind I checked and point and twip are both typographical measurements, so it’s less unreasonable.
With most common and best known ones, the same things still exist in metric, but they’re just minimally confusing, as people know it’s prefix+unit. A milliliter is very common. Deciliter as well, but probably less so (someone once told me their country don’t use it as much despite being on metric, can’t remember the country), but something like a decimeter or a decigram would sound pretty weird. Hectogram however, isn’t too unfamiliar, pretty used in the drug world. I’m sure a lot of people would be confused by the prefix “yotta” or “ronna”, which I was too. Yonna is above zetta, above exa, above peta. I’m sure a lot of people on Lemmy know at least “peta” and probably exa.
Discounting those amazingly big prefixes, even if I use a less used combo like, say, “megasecond”, you don’t need additional information to figure out how long that is. But with seconds it’s annoying to transform them into days and hours and minutes, because you have to also use base 60, but still doable.
Here’s a tangentially related example: a nice comparison between millionaires and billionaires; if you earned a dollar a second, you’d be a millionaire in a megasecond, a billionaire in a gigasecond. A megasecond is is 11.57 days. A gigasecond is 32 years.
Yeah I just came back from Lowe’s after cutting a bunch of 2x6s into feet, inches, and 1/4 of an inch… wish I could’ve just said cm
I’ve used Celsius for decades in America, I just look up the weather every day in Celsius and figured it out pretty quickly (although I have to use F for all my kitchen appliances for cooking at least my climate control systems in car/home all work with C)
The imperial vs metric thing doesn’t really bother me as an imperial user, since it’s all I’ve ever known and is ingrained. However, fahrenheit is the superior temperature unit. Celsius is too narrow, for effectively portraying temps, at least with weather and cooking, IMO.
Fahrenheit is more descriptive. You could do half degrees, but it’s better to use whole degrees and have more to choose from. It’s better for cooking because it offers more granularity. I personally feel it’s vastly superior but to each their own.
Holy shit dude… You’re acting like I killed your fucking dog or something. I think fahrenheit is better, you don’t. They are both opinions, and your’s doesn’t mean any more than mine.
The reason I think it’s more descriptive is because interpreting whole numbers is easier and more intuitive, which is the main crux of my opinion, and for standard ranges that most people use, I think its clearer to use fahrenheit. You can throw your casserole in the oven at a nice 182.22C, and I’ll put mine in at 350F.
Honestly, what’s worse than the imperial system are metric users than think they’re hot shit because they were born into a different system and can’t figure imperial out.
And pretending imperial measurements are better than metric!
As a non-American who didn’t grow up with imperial, I still prefer it for fantasy. Metric sounds too modern and scientific. Also I feel like I have more room to fudge distances because it already sounds imprecise.
Would be a fun bit to make the players use metric in a magitech world though.
I use metric for the fantasy that my country isn’t dumb 😥
Oof lol
In the UK the government was considering switching back to imperial (just to pretend we’re not in Europe). Honestly I think they didn’t because otherwise they’d get too many milkshakes thrown at them.
Don’t care. My sheets have all the measurements without major mechanical significance listed in SI units. Length of hempen rope? 15 metres. Darkvision range? 18 metres. Character weight? Kilograms. The only imperial unit I keep using is speed (ft/turn)
deleted by creator
Most of them I guess, I only just learned there’s 2 types, one for Americans and one for whoever else is dumb enough to not use metric. Imperial units are dumb, inconsistent, arbitrary increments that make little sense. Metric is uniform, even increments of ten/hundred/thousand no matter how far up/down in scale you go.
Measuring distance, the smallest increment imperial has is the inch. 12 inches make a foot, and 3 feet make a yard. The next increment up is a mile, which is 1780 yards, why the giant leap?
Meanwhile with metric, no matter what you’re measuring, the next step up is just a multiple or factor of 100 or 1000 of whatever you’re measuring. 100cm = 1m, and 1000m = 1km.
And don’t even get me started on Ferenheit vs Celsius, nevermind the fact that Kelvin is better than both.
I say all this as an American who grew up struggling with our dumb ways of doing things.
Removed by mod
I mean, I’m European, on metric and fully agree with you.
But you’re not right about the units. They’re just the most well known, and used ones.
An inch is 3 barleycorns. A barleycorn is 4 poppyseeds. A poppyseed (2.11mm) is six points. A point, 0.35mm is twenty twips. A twip is 17 micrometers. 0.0176mm, roughly the width of a human hair.
Which makes it even dumber, because it shows it’s from a time in people could measure things in twips, yet those people still chose to make a unit called “a twip” instead of just saying “fuck this we’re going metric”. Nevermind I checked and point and twip are both typographical measurements, so it’s less unreasonable.
With most common and best known ones, the same things still exist in metric, but they’re just minimally confusing, as people know it’s prefix+unit. A milliliter is very common. Deciliter as well, but probably less so (someone once told me their country don’t use it as much despite being on metric, can’t remember the country), but something like a decimeter or a decigram would sound pretty weird. Hectogram however, isn’t too unfamiliar, pretty used in the drug world. I’m sure a lot of people would be confused by the prefix “yotta” or “ronna”, which I was too. Yonna is above zetta, above exa, above peta. I’m sure a lot of people on Lemmy know at least “peta” and probably exa.
Discounting those amazingly big prefixes, even if I use a less used combo like, say, “megasecond”, you don’t need additional information to figure out how long that is. But with seconds it’s annoying to transform them into days and hours and minutes, because you have to also use base 60, but still doable. Here’s a tangentially related example: a nice comparison between millionaires and billionaires; if you earned a dollar a second, you’d be a millionaire in a megasecond, a billionaire in a gigasecond. A megasecond is is 11.57 days. A gigasecond is 32 years.
Yeah I just came back from Lowe’s after cutting a bunch of 2x6s into feet, inches, and 1/4 of an inch… wish I could’ve just said cm
I’ve used Celsius for decades in America, I just look up the weather every day in Celsius and figured it out pretty quickly (although I have to use F for all my kitchen appliances for cooking at least my climate control systems in car/home all work with C)
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
The imperial vs metric thing doesn’t really bother me as an imperial user, since it’s all I’ve ever known and is ingrained. However, fahrenheit is the superior temperature unit. Celsius is too narrow, for effectively portraying temps, at least with weather and cooking, IMO.
Removed by mod
Fahrenheit is more descriptive. You could do half degrees, but it’s better to use whole degrees and have more to choose from. It’s better for cooking because it offers more granularity. I personally feel it’s vastly superior but to each their own.
Removed by mod
Holy shit dude… You’re acting like I killed your fucking dog or something. I think fahrenheit is better, you don’t. They are both opinions, and your’s doesn’t mean any more than mine.
The reason I think it’s more descriptive is because interpreting whole numbers is easier and more intuitive, which is the main crux of my opinion, and for standard ranges that most people use, I think its clearer to use fahrenheit. You can throw your casserole in the oven at a nice 182.22C, and I’ll put mine in at 350F.
Honestly, what’s worse than the imperial system are metric users than think they’re hot shit because they were born into a different system and can’t figure imperial out.
Removed by mod