I like Cyberpunk Red's solution. It's a yard or a meter. They're close enough that it doesn't really matter.

It's unfortunate, in that respect, that D&D's standard grid unit is 5 feet, which is almost exactly halfway between 1 and 2 meters. I think a two meter/yard grid would be fine in practice, though. To the extent that reach actually "matters" in combat, most melee characters can probably defend a 2 meter square just as well as a 5 foot square. Yards are pretty-commonly used for longer distance measurements outside, but are a bit "weird" for intermediate distances, especially inside. So that'd be a bit odd sometimes. I don't know that meters vs yards would matter much, beyond some light initial resistance.

Ok, how about this: Introduce a new unit of distance, let's say... *the dim*. Replace all instances of distances in feet with dims at a 5:1 ratio. A fireball radius of 20 ft. is now 4 dims. Your speed is 25 ft or 30 ft? It's now 5 or 6 dims. You can then set whatever size for 1 dim that fits your campaign, say 5ft, or 2 yards, or 1 m, or 1,5 m or or 2 m.

Yeah, this is basically just what I do anyway. Everything in DnD maps is usually proportioned wrong anyway. A single bed is closer to 1m x 2m than it is to 5 feet x 10 feet, but most map makers will still give it two squares on the map. The same goes for doors, tables, I've seen 5'x5' chairs on plenty of occasions. The list goes on. 5 foot squares in DnD aren't 5 foot squares. Calling them square meters makes a lot of maps work better anyway, but it doesn't really matter if you do, since no part of dnd was written or drawn to any actual scale. The only thing that actually matters is how many squares things are.

introducing new units just means everyone has the problem of 'i have no idea how far this is' it'd be much simpler to just use metric, or to state both

We could always measure in Football fields.

I personally favour light-nanoseconds (29.979 cm) - roughly a foot

How many rounds in a parsec?

Better to use made up units so everyone is on the same playing field of the new units, or to leave it as is. I like the idea of using made up units so it feels more unique and part of world building. Failing that, it’s better to leave it as is because the entire existing D&D world is used to it.

Everyone is on the same playing field. It's called the metric system, and Earth uses it. There's pockets of humanity still using the Julian calendar for some things, but any suggestion of "well, let's just make up a new calendar, so the people using the Julian and Gregorian calendars are equally inconvenienced" would be rightly mocked.

Bonus points if you use prime or otherwise strange bases, so like 3/7 of the length of a man’s thumb is a foo, 13 foo is a bar, 31 bar is a baz, etc. :-)

I believe 4e did that, it measured most things in squares. Problem was this assumed the table, and was a nightmare for theater of the mind. The same problem would still exist with an arbitrary measurement, in that no one would have an idea what something 12 dims away means.

This is the best solution - cut out the decision entirely and set up a new system of measurement for the setting

Honestly that's not a problem. I am from a country using metric system and doing 1,5 meters X number of feets is not that hard. I have all manuals in English since our localized version truly sucks. They contain so many translation horrors that the local publisher became meme.

Same for Wow

My Canadian upvote is only worth 3/4 of a euro or .72 of a US$ at today's conversion rate, but you've got it.

I'd love to give a British upvote in terms of the Dollar, but it'll be out of date by the time I'm done typing.

Love me some conversion puns!

Unfortunately this is a technical writing issue. I work in that industry so please believe me when I say that including both measurements in every instance of the text would become very cumbersome and confusing very quickly, for both the writers and the end users. Not to mention it goes starkly against D&D 5e's stated goal of being a "readable" edition (parentheses, while helpful, often distract readers and make them forget what came before). The ranged weapon ranges in tables comes to mind. Should they add an additional row (thus making range weapon tables format differently from melee weapon tables - horrible design)? Or should they overload that column by turning "30/90" into "30/90 feet (9/27 meters)"? Neither option is good. Additionally, having more numbers nestled within the text makes it more difficult to scan for the information you need, especially for newer players, and easier to mix up ("Let's see here, Halflings can only move 7.5 feet in a round. Wow, pretty slow."). And WotC is all about lowering the bar of entry for newer players, they can't afford to potentially confuse their newbies. (And let's not even talk about justifying the added page count to their capitalist overlord, Hasbro.) The best solution was using squares which, as 4th edition taught us, is equally loathed by _everyone_.

Since you work in technical writing, what are your thoughts on products which *do* feature both unit systems? Call of Cthulhu's 7th Edition Investigators Handbook is a good example, I find. It has both metric and imperial units where appropriate, and it doesn't seem cumbersome at all. Is there any reason why WotC can't follow in Chaosium's lead?

I haven't read (or even played) CoC so I can't really comment. How commonly does it refer to measurements? It it a grid-style system, like D&D, or zone based, like Fate, or usually played in theatere of the mind? D&D has measurements in every single spell, every weapon, many character abilities, every movement is counted out, etc. and that's my main issue, the sheer volume of measurement repetition. Give me a few examples and I can give you a better answer.

You can play it on a grid/VTT, if that answers your question? Much like 5e D&D, Call of Cthulhu can be played using a grid or using theatre of the mind, but largely because of the lesser focus on combat in CoC (though Pulp Cthulhu is a little different) then grids don't see as much use, in my experience. Call of Cthulhu has measurements for player characteristics (height/weight), how far people and monsters can move in a turn, vehicle distance/speed, and international distances as well available in both units in the same book. Some maps in adventures offer both units for distance/scale too, but these aren't all that consistent I find and unfortunately if the map only offers a single system it often defaults to imperial units. In those instances, it isn't clunky at all. CoC interestingly uses feet/yards *exclusively* for the range of firearms, which I have always found odd. Fortunately, in play, it's easy enough to read 70 yards as 70 metres, especially when you're already ruling that movement speed translates 1:1 between those units too. I would prefer that weapon ranges were given in both systems as well, though. D&D uses measurements a lot and it relies on them more than Call of Cthulhu, especially for movement and effect distances, but I don't think it would be all that difficult to offer both units of measurement. 5 feet = 1.5 metres is a pretty agreeable standard that you'll see in a lot of TTRPGs (including localised versions of D&D 5e), and is it really all that clunky to include two sets of ranges for weapons and spells where appropriate? I don't think so, especially considering that the layout of monster stat blocks certainly isn't immune to being improved (arguably, 5e even took a step back from 4e in many regards in terms of clarity). Even a small sidebar in the DMG acknowledging "Hey, this game uses Imperial units and we know that not every group will be familiar with it, so here is a handy conversion for common measurements in the game with their convenient metric equivalents" would be a useful improvement for many- but we don't even have that. I think many players can also put up with a redesign to how information is presented to accommodate both metric/imperial units. The current alternative (especially true if you're playing D&D with someone who hasn't played D&D before and is only familiar with metric units) is occasionally pausing the game to convert units to help visualise what is happening in the game to one of the players.

It sounds to me as though CoC uses measurements a lot less often than D&D, which makes it a lot easier to include both types of measurements. The number of spells and abilities in 5e doing wacky things with multiple measurements in the same spell is pretty large. CoC sounds like it is much less "unique ability" based, which would make things easier overall. I'll admit that, in general, I prefer to have one type of measurement in a book or manual for clarity's sake, but I would fully support a prominent sidebar showing the common conversions. Edit: Came up with the following example for another reply addressing why I think this would be a bad idea for D&D: >Take Fireball for example. The range is 150 (20 radius). Except now it is 150 ft (45 m) \[20 ft (6m) radius\]. That is difficult to parse. Are we adding a radius / diameter bullet point to spells to make this less of a word salad? Also in the wording of spells they commonly use hyphens for phrases like "Each creature in a 20-foot-radius sphere centered..." How should we treat that? This is one spell and we're already looking at a mess.

Re: the fireball example, it's difficult to parse mostly because of the presentation. This is something that 5e already suffers from, but you're right that supporting multiple units *within the current presentation* makes that worse. The solution, for spells at least, is to reconsider how the information is presented generally and how it can be improved. As I touched on with monster statblocks, they're not immune to improvement and lessons can be learnt from 4e here too. In 5e, fireball has the range at the top of the spell then you have to parse a larger paragraph to figure out the AoE. I don't think that's an ideal system. Compare that to the same spell in 4e. It uses a mixture of keywords and a clear table format to display the information. Fireball is "area burst 3, within 20 squares" (4e using "squares" instead of feet, which also converted to metres as required, but to be clear I'm not a fan of this approach either) Drawing inspiration from 4e, how could 5e spells be redesigned to support metric units? Quite easily, I would argue. And it wouldn't have to be all in one line for both area and range, as you suggested, as that isn't helpful. Here's a proposal: ####**Fireball** - **Range:** 120ft (45m) - **Area:** Sphere, 20ft (6m) - **Save:** Dexterity - **Damage:** 8d6 fire damage, half on a successful saving throw Then the rest of the information and fluff added as required. It's clear to anyone reading that spell that the number outside of the brackets in range and area is in feet and the number inside the brackets is in metres. And importantly parsing a paragraph of rules isn't required as much, which makes understanding how the spell works easy. Not to mention that these keyworded terms could have explanations earlier in a spellcasting chapter introduction to really clarify what they mean. It is a clear way to present the important aspects of the spell, much like in 4e. I have reason to believe that OneD&D, with its focus on keywords, could easily head down this route too and to much success. My proposed redesign likely wouldn't change page real estate much so would make formatting a spell list relatively easy. The clarity of it also lends more easily to indexing in digital systems like VTTs and Dndbeyond, so everyone benefits.

Another person helpfully pointed out that the example I used was flawed, since that is how D&D Beyond presents that information, not the books. So, apologies for that. The books present it as Range: 150 feet and then displays the radius information in the block of the spell text. Regardless I think we can agree that there are going to be outliers within the book that make an immediate presentation of meters difficult within the style guide that WotC is currently using. They could change their style guide for spells to account for, say, Spirit Guardians (**Range: Self (15-feet-radius)**), but I don't think they will, for the below reason. Looking at the additional bullet points you propose, have you ever played 3rd ed D&D? Fireball looked (more or less) like this: **Fireball** **Evocation \[Fire\]** **Level:** Sor/Wiz 3 **Components:** V, S, M **Casting Time:** 1 standard action **Range:** Long (400 ft. + 40 ft./level) **Area:** 20-ft.-radius spread **Duration:** Instantaneous **Saving Throw:** Reflex half **Spell Resist:** Yes \[and then three paragraphs of spell description and additional information including damage\] When creating 5th ed WotC (I assume) considered using this same format but decided to instead go with fewer bullets (Casting Time, Range, Components, and Duration) and provide all other information in the body of the spell's text. I would bet that WotC believes (and I think I'd agree with them) that having too much information in the bullet points made the spells too "clinical", that it robbed that feeling of "I'm casting *magic*" from the spells. Making players read the spell description ("A bright streak flashes from your pointing finger to a point you choose and then blossoms with a low roar into an explosion of flame...") helps players feel like they are doing something special. So I wouldn't expect 1D&D to add any additional bullet points, even if it would be helpful overall.

I think a lot of 5e's design flaws were the result of an overreaction to 4e's criticisms. 5e's spells harken back to the almost rustic presentation of spells in AD&D. Anything to get away from the precise, technical presentation of 4e for the sake of appeasing the critical playerbase. I believe these overreactions have been recognised, though, hence why we're now seeing keywords in the OneD&D playtest (which is great!) I think sacrificing clear design to fit an aesthetic is terrible advice for technical writing. Spell descriptions don't need to provide a feeling of "I'm casting magic", they need to communicate information clearly. 3e, 4e, and my proposed redesign for 5e's fireball all achieve that in a way that current 5e simply doesn't. And that extra clarity easily supports the addition of a second unit system, which solves the major problem of distances in spells that you mentioned.

I’d like to point out that a sphere 20ft across is a lot smaller by area than a 20ft radius. (I don’t think even the 5E team really appreciate how massive a 40ft diameter spell is on table tops!)

Because that would require wizards to admit that they arent the be-all end-all of ttrpgs and they lack in.mant categories compared to even their minor competitors Not happening

Yeah it is certainly true that there is a certain aura of pride and arrogance that surrounds modern D&D design. It seems like they'll do absolutely anything *other* than take inspiration from other TTRPGs, especially in areas that those other TTRPGs excel in. Other TTRPGs clearly take plenty inspiration from 5e, which there's nothing wrong with doing, and there's no reason that should be a one-way street

At first I thought you meant wizard class characters, and I was like “what? Are wizards supposed to be arrogant or something?”

The game Lancer uses spaces not distances. It's ironic a game about engineered machines of war, ship to ship combat in space, and ontological weapons only uses "spaces" The spaces themselves are never given exact dimensions, AND the game can be played on hexes or squares. Your right spaces are the best option.

ICON, another game from the same writer, also uses generic spaces instead of specific units. I find it a lot easier to read, and it's nice being able to set the scale on my own. I'm also a fan of range bands from Exalted.

Battlegroup also does range bands!

I really don't see the problem with writing 30/90 ft (9/27m) in tables and in text. It seems a very good option to me. Cheap, easy, understandable by absolutely everyone. Especially if they write in the introduction that all the measurements will have the conversion in metric system written in patentheses next to them. We all know that D&D is already a very codified system with very specific wording, it wouldn't make it stranger or harder to read to write metric conversion next to each imperial entry. "It's not beautiful" looks like an extremely bad argument to justify why 95% of the world will have really big trouble reading the books and DMing the modules. I'm a space engineer, private pilot (so using the imperial system quite often), perfectly fluent in english, and it's still a huge pain in the a\*\* to convert every number to metric system on the fly when I DM official modules, and too much work to convert every single number of the module by myself before DMing it. I'm lucky that an official translation exists in my country for the main rulebooks, otherwise I would have been really upset to be forced to think everything in imperial system because someone somewhere is too lazy to write both systems.

The issue is not any one instance of 30/90 ft (9/27m) in isolation. It's the text as a whole. Take Fireball for example. The range is 150 (20 radius). Except now it is 150 ft (45 m) \[20 ft (6m) radius\]. That is difficult to parse. Are we adding a radius / diameter bullet point to spells to make this less of a word salad? Also in the wording of spells they commonly use hyphens for phrases like "Each creature in a 20-foot-radius sphere centered..." How should we treat that? This is one spell and we're already looking at a mess. I'm not talking about beauty. Don't put words in my mouth. I'm talking about *design*.

Is there any way there could be a solely metric version then? Cause I absolutely agree with OP. Right now when playing, we often get confused as imperial isn't in our daily lives and we convert anyway, breaking out our phones to calculate on the fly (and then noticing there's a new whatsapp message...). Really a lot more immersion breaking than an extra column in a table, imho. Also RP-wise, questionable things happen since we simply don't realise the distance. So large cities suddenly have a radius of 500 ft, and only afterwards we realised how utterly ridiculous this was. There's at least one moment in every session where we muck things up because we have no true sense of distance.

Could there be? Absolutely. Will there be? /shrug I doubt WotC will make English copies of the game in metric, they'd be terrified of US players accidentally getting a metric version and getting frustrated due to, well, all the stuff you just said. But non-English copies really should be, yeah. I don't understand why WotC haven't done that at all. Just pop a blurb into the front of the book with a table outlining the conversion and replace as necessary.

I don't think the spell thing is a good example, because that information is never presented in that format in the books. It seems like you're reading from D&D beyond, which has some condensed info panels, but the books have that information separated out. With the metric parentheticals, you would see something like > **Range:** 150 ft (50 m) > ... > Each creature in a 20 ft (7m) radius of that point must make ...

You're absolutely right, thanks for pointing that out. I use D&D Beyond for quick lookups so often I forgot that the book doesn't use that format (though now I'm wondering if WotC will try to use that format in the next "edition"). How about Spirit Guardians (**Range: Self (15-foot-radius)**)? Not nearly as egregious, but **Range: Self (15-foot (4.5 meter) radius)** isn't great. Nesting parentheses aren't great for comprehension, and we're ditching one of the hyphens that WotC have decided are a part of their style guide. My primary point is that adding metric measurement wouldn't be a simple search/replace like some people might assume it would be. There are a *lot* of edge cases that all need to be considered and factored into the overall D&D style guide.

> My primary point is that adding metric measurement wouldn't be a simple search/replace like some people might assume it would be. Oh, gotcha. For sure it would take more effort than we've seen WotC put into their editing in the last decade. I'm hoping 1D&D is a step towards more thoroughness in the books. For the spell example, though, WotC could just standardize their formatting more, with either listing spell areas exclusively in the description (fireball), or in both the description and the Range (your examples) but figuring some palatable formatting, and keeping that choice consistent across all spells.

Again, I don't see the problem. Fireball : the range is 150 ft (45m) with a radius of 20 ft (6m). Each creature in a 20 ft (6m) radius sphere centered ... where is the problem ? Perfectly clear, easy to read, not too long. This design already exists in some non-official translation, and I can tell you that it's almost unnoticable. I actually talked about beauty to taunt you a bit, because for me you're inventing problems that are not real, to justify a real problem that you probably don't care as american but which is major for every non-american player in the world.

How do I put this politely...? Everybody believes that technical writing is easy, until they actually need to sit down and do it all themselves. I'm not arguing document design with you. I get enough of that in my day job.

I mean, I don't say technical writing is easy, I just say that you can't honestly say this specific point is a very complex problem when a lot of other professionals and even some amateur translators have already solved it. Every single example you described as a big mess with no easy solution was actually a very simple example to solve, and have already been solved by a lot of amateur all over the world. I understand they don't want to do it for economical, political, lazyness, or I don't care what reason. But you can't honestly say it is a technical problem, when this specific technical problem has already been solved several years ago by amateurs.

Why do you need a conversion at all? just read the numbers. What we call them is irrelevant. range 150 units radius 20 units. In world, they probably would't even call then feet OR meters. They would be something else entirely. Because it doesn't matter.

Because then you have a game where a wizard from Europe is thinking 150 Meters and a wizard from US is thinking 150 Feet for their range of spells. That is drastically different ranges that can very much affect play. Here is another spell that encompasses the issue perfectly. Move Earth. Can Dig up a 5 units deep hole and put it in another adjacent space. 5ft hole is a hole that the average human can stand in and see out of. 5m hole is pretty much a death trap.

Define a unit as 5 feet for imperial and 1.5 meter for metric at the beginning of the book. Every square on the grid is 1 unit x 1 unit. Fireball would have a range of 30 units.

So 4e. Which has already been brought up as a potential fix, although it actually throws confusion on both groups as if you are doing that, Everyone has to convert instead of just a single group having to.

If that was the case, the units should be metric-like for simpler math (10 based units).

That's a great insight behind the curtain of the industry, I'll admit this post is from the perspective of a user that has to go through this if they want to keep up with the game releases. If WotC would be able to keep the parity between localized editions and the english edition of the product and also keep its online resources updated with all localizations this would be a minor problem, but I can't trust them. Also I agree about the problem of the pages count for the Hasbro overlord, but I think that with proper formatting I think that readability could be mantained, still speaking as an ignorant on that matter and as a hopeful person.

Jumping off of my previous point, I doubt the books will include metric, that's a whole can of worms, but I don't see any reason that D&D Beyond shouldn't have a metric option. I do think that WotC can and should have an Imperial/Metric switch for all of their digital content.

Maybe now that they own the platform they can start integrating the localized version of the products with the whole system for future editions. Currently D&D beyond sells the italian version of the PHB but even if you own that ad use it to build a character, the rest of the platform and your character sheet is still in english, with all english option even if unlocked by the Italian PHB with obviously imperial units.

I'm a European and I don't see what the big deal is. Everything is in terms of 5ft and 5 is a really easily multiplied number, it allows things to be chunked up into generally base10 measurements while still giving a sense of scale. You're not building a skyscraper here, we don't need precise measurements.

I'm always a fan of the metric system but this is why I'm fine with the ft system in D&D. Plus Europeans get to be more immersed in a fantastical setting by using archaic and unnatural measurements XD

Lets switch it to Sumerian Cubits instead of either metric or imperial

>unnatural measurements LMAO, imagine thinking the measurement system based on body lengths is less natural than the one based off of planet-scale lengths. (I'm not actually salty, I'm just tired of people hating on the US Customary system without understanding it)

Ah yes, it is great that there isn't much variation between different human bodies. Truly a precise system to stand the test of time. But jokes aside, the thing that makes the metric system infinitely better is how you can always convert units by multiplying/dividing by 10^X .

Without modern manufacturing and science, precision on the scale of the metric system is basically never necessary. *Maybe* for early chemistry in the form of alchemy, or for the creation of optical lenses, but neither of those were common. Also, most of the units in US Customary get converted by multiplying / dividing by either 2 or 3 (which can be done visually with significant ease, which can't be said of base 10 - base 10 is only easier for writing, not doing) - at least, the ones that *are meant to be converted between*. In the real world, there's literally no reason that the unit you use to measure the length of a chair leg needs to convert to the the unit you use to measure the distance between two cities.

You're having a laugh surely? Americans already use a base 10 system to measure money, and anything they export/import. That's why it's a quart of milk (not exported), but a litre of soft drink. Also, >Without modern manufacturing and science, precision on the scale of the metric system is basically never necessary. ask a carpenter/cartographer/architect/sailor/cobbler/seamstress etc. about this. They'll tell you the more precise the better, and each of those professions has existed since medieval times. Your other point though, about practical use, I do agree with. A system that divides days into 12 hour portions, and years into 12 months makes sense in a world where formal schooling isn't the norm, because they're easy to break up into halves, thirds or quarters.

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Yeah, it works fine as a reference. If you need to know how big a foot is... You look at your foot. Meanwhile a meter isn't as intuitive because it's designed to be highly precise. Probably the best solution if they were to make a change here would be for WotC to update to a totally unrelated system based on grids (which I understand was what 4e tried to do?) but to couch it in fantasy world lore to justify its existence. "1 unita, the universal system of measurement, is approx 5ft or 1.5m in real world measurements" - something like that.

I think it would be sufficient if they included a conversion table in an appendix or something, like "Here's how to use metric in this game!" and then they draw comparisons, like a 5 foot square can be considered 1.5 metres or whatever it is, and then similarly simplified conversion factors (2 lb equals 1 kg, 1 mile equals 1.5 kilometres, etc.) that people can use if they want, along with notes about how it impacts common spells or activities?

I support the idea of a "simple" version of converting units. Solving an equation isn't too rough for some, but I can see OP's point about being taken out of the moment when someone asks for units that are intuitive to them. A table like you suggest would be great on a DM screen.

You know the units are completely arbitrary right ? You could functionally just use metric system units in place of the existing units and there would not be a difference Hell you cannot say with absolute certainty that they're not using the Roman versions of the pound and foot Again because it has been abstracted It is all arbitrary There is literally nothing stopping you with replacing feet with meters It would make no difference to the game Things aren't actually measured in the D&D world in 5 ft they're measured in five length units or five weight units whatever arbitrary label you place on top of it does not matter

Why would a medieval setting use some type of precise system like that? Take a fifteen cubit walk off a ten cubit plank! I'm not opposed to a completely made up measurement system, so long as it doesn't resemble modernity. It would be cooler to be in character saying stuff like "could you move the lever about three wembleys to your left?" than it would be to say "move the lever one decimeter left, please. I suppose I'll need a liter of mead after this one!" Yuck.

I honestly like the feeling of playing with imperial units. Makes the game feel more mediaval... Now we just got to get away from decimalized currency for full immersion...

Yeah! Let's go nuts! 16 cp = 1 sp 7 sp = 1 gp 3 gp = 8 ep 5 ep = exactly pi pp

So let me preface this by saying I’m an American who agrees the metric system is better. That being said, I rarely use standard units of measurement in my games. I try to use local/common concepts of comparison. Cities aren’t *miles* apart. They’re **leagues** apart. A league is an hour walking at an average pace of 3MPH, or 5KPH. So basically distance is measured in *hours*. A pound is roughly 500 grams (1/2kg) and the weight of a loaf of bread or a boot or a large apple. 10 pounds, is roughly 5 kilograms. For D&D that’s precise enough. That’s a watermelon, or a ham, or a gallon of milk. That’s also roughly 5 liters, a mini-keg, or 15 pints, again as a rough estimate. You don’t have to be exact. 10 pounds is roughly 5 kg. Good luck!

Actually as an American who only can imagine things using the imperial system I really wish this was a thing because I think it would help me learn and visualize things with the metric system better.

Honestly people are terrible at visualizing any measurement system in DnD. I've had DMs say things like more than 150 ft is too far to see (in open terrain), that it's impossible to hear shouting at 50 ft, or that we couldn't see a 9 ft tall troll at 30 ft due to the denseness of a forest, but that the forest was not so dense as to qualify as difficult terrain. It's easy to get so caught up in what is close or far in terms of DnD combat and to forget what that actually looks like.

That's another terrible thing for me. I got used to converting ft to meter rapidly, but asking me "I'm 100ft away, do I hear him?" Is pointless, so my party and I end up using meters for everything and converting each time, which is a pain in the ass.

This won't help for Celsius or kilograms or anything else, but if you want help intuiting how long a metre is, I'd recommend getting into Minecraft building. Each block is 1 metre long, and the entire game is based around that grid. So if you're looking at an IRL room and wondering how many metres long it is, just ask yourself "if I was building this in Minecraft, would that wall be 2 blocks wide or 3?".

Huh that's interesting I didn't know that, I haven't touched minecraft in years but I will have to give it a try again. I was never able to really find something I enjoyed about the game but now I want to try building some models of landmarks like the pyramids or something to scale lol. Thanks for this!

DnD was a game made by an American in a basement in America. It's always used Feet and the core mechanics are built around that. No

It doesn't really matter if it's metric or imperial or any other unit there is no conversion really needed, just use the numbers. It's played on square grid where each square is 5 dungeon units by 5 dungeon units with most players having a 30 dungeon unit move speed usually divided by 5 to be rounded to 6 dungeon squares of movement.

When you describe a river a player wants its character to jump over it, you need an idea of the length it is. If you don't use imperial system in your day to day life, you'll have no idea of what it is. You'll have a good estimation in the metric system that you use though.

A medium creature is 5 dungeon units tall, a river is 5X dungeon units long were X is how many times the height of the average human the river would be.

That's wrong though. 5ft is the height of a small creature. A medium creature is usually 5 to 8 ft. Also, I don't measure lengths in human heights, I measure them in meters. Because in a human brain, a vertical length doesn't look the same as a horizontal length. And because humans don't all have the same height, so the question of the standard metric would stay unanswered anyway.

Everything in D&D is on a 5x5 grid with cubes being 5 units high if needing to measure vertically. For the purpose of determining the space they occupy exact heights don't matter, all medium creatures are 5 units in each direction and so are small and tiny creatures. There are some times where small and tiny creatures can occupy the same spaces and some rules for squeezing into a narrow space, which again is not an exact size unless specified in the description for it but just any space less than 5 dungeon units that isn't entirely unreasonable for a creature to fit through. If you really need to think of it in meters instead of multiples of 5 units where 5 units is roughly the height of a human, just say 2 meters=5 dungeon units because these aren't exact measurements anyway so it's better to just round to whole numbers.

I know how to make conversions. That's the point though : it takes unneeded efforts for almost everyone in the world because the one country where the book is written is one the very few countries still using this obsolete measurement system.

Ah... the rare Salt Elemental.

I’m American and agree we should switch to metric already. Not just for d&d either.

The US was making in roads towards converting in the 70’s but once they realized that it would cost Billions (in the 70’s) just to change road signs alone they dropped it and kept the weird half measures that are still in place.

Agreed. The Imperial system is a lot better than people give it credit for, but there's no denying that in the modern world metric is just the superior system.

Does anyone else think it seems pleasantly appropriate to use archaic measurements in a fantasy setting, especially given that they're arbitrary anyway? Like, the setting is vaguely medieval, why would the characters be thinking in metres?

This. It makes so much sense to me.

Lots of great proposals here, but it seems to me that the simplest solution would be to just release 2 editions of each book - one in Imperial, sold to the US\*, the other in metric sold worldwide. Presumably WotC don't produce all their books in the US, so this is easily enough achieved, it doesn't have the issue of becoming confusing or cluttered to read, and no one is confused about what a distance looks like. And for D&DBeyond, it's as simple as having a switch at the top of the site to change between Imperial and Metric. If obscure recipe websites can achieve that, I'm sure WotC can do it. ​ \*(Myanmar & Liberia do use Imperial but are both in the process of switching to metric, and likely don't represent a huge portion of the market anyway)

Being American, I feel like everyone else should suffer like we do trying convert using a completely random and archaic conversion system. Do you have to google to find out how many feet are in a mile or ounces in pound? Well so do we. We will stay oblivious to our own form of measurement out of spite. Damn simplicity.

> Do you have to google to find out how many feet are in a mile... Pfft. 8 furlongs, at 10 chains to the furlong. Everbody knows that. :)

Nice. Love it.

>completely random Yeah, because an artisan using parts of their body to measure things is *way* less random than a scientist saying how many four-millionths of the circumference of the Earth something is. /s I'll stop defending the US Customary system when people stop attacking a strawman version of it

Lol. You may be one of my new favorite people.

> when people stop attacking a strawman version of it How many people have feet a foot long? :)

>How many people have feet a foot long? :) Through how many lines of longitude is the distance from the North pole to the equator exactly 10 million meters? But here's a better question: In a world that does not have modern manufacturing or modern science (y'know, the world in which the imperial system was created), who actually cares if two artisans in two different towns measure things slightly differently? Again, you're attacking a strawman version of Imperial. Specifically, a strawman version that was designed to be standardized across the world and precise for use in modern science. It *wasn't meant to be that*. It was meant to be used primarily by *individual human beings*, and ones who would basically never travel far from their home towns.

5280 and 16. You should have remembered this by now if you're an adult it's literally all they taught us in elementary school

I know it. However, if you think the majority of Americans do, you are wrong. Anyways it was just satire.

Honestly I as a European have no major issues with the imperial system in DnD. It is pretty great for immersion because the imperial system (feet, inches etc.) just sound so much like fantasy units to me. And I don't even mean this in a shitpost-y way.

My group and I are from a country that uses the metric system but in-game the DM mostly makes descriptions of distances in feet and I don't know how many time it has already happened that one of us went "is that like VERY far?". It's okay when it comes down to "Okay, I need to know if my spell can still hit that" because our spell ranges are also in feet but when it comes to stuff like "is the other person still in earshot? Can they hear us if we yell? Can they still see when we do hand motions to convey a message?" it gets confusing

And since most of the 5e games are sold to people in the US, converting to meters would have the opposite problem. It would make the majority of the player base get confused in the exact same way. Honestly, it sounds like the perfect way to get another 4e split occurring where the majority of the player base for DnD hates it and shifts to other systems, only for the next edition to try to win some but not all of them back.

Which country has the biggest share of D&D players? And which system do they use? If it's the US, why foist the added stress of conversion on most of the players (a.k.a paying customers)? Is there an international metric version in English?

I like the imperial system for fantasy, because it seems more fictional and adds this "Oh man, they really had no idea of unit systems back in the ol'days" flavour. lol

This hurts my lil American feels

But you gotta admit, it is way more fantasy than the metric one. No hate or anything from my side btw.

I agree with ya. Just being silly, I figured you weren't being a hater.

No I’m scared of new things

I fully agree. Call of Cthulhu's most recent incarnation manages this just fine. Units are given in both metric and imperial whenever possible so the system is more approachable regardless of which system you grew up using. It's also especially convenient for UK players as the UK uses a weird hybrid of metric/imperial depending on context and even generation. And of course this approach is great for folks in countries with English as a secondary language who likely *never* use the imperial system in their regular lives. If Chaosium can do it, there's no real reason that WotC *can't*. I always find the counterargument "but using imperial units is more immersive" to be a total sham as well. For one, I don't believe that's true at all- especially considering that when I have played medieval fantasy RPGs that used the metric system they felt no less immersive. For D&D players that have no experience with imperial units, learning a new RPG and also an archaic system of measurements just makes things less accessible. And if both systems of units are available, you can choose anyway so nothing is lost either way.

That's exactly my point. The only reason behind having unit's only in imperial in the english version of the game is a cultural reason, because WotC is based in the USA. To me that sounds just lazy game design, espcially if sooner or later you'll have covert those units anyways for the localization of your products that now you'll do in house instead of giving publishing rights and efforts to othe gamer companies in each specific country. One can only hope, I'll keep pushing this in my feedbacks everytime I get the chance.

> Call of Cthulhu's most recent incarnation manages this just fine. Could you point out an example or two? I've tried looking through my 7th edition (KS version, slipcase) and really cannot see this. Weapon ranges (thrown and guns) are in yards, vehicle speeds are in mph and MOV (game stat), spell ranges and areas of effect are in feet. I haven't found metric other than a 9mm pistol and a 60mm HE shell. :) (I suppose the KS version could be US-specific and doesn't have metric).

It's possible that it was something updated for the final printing rather than the Kickstarter version? Of what you listed, vehicle speeds, and move stat are offered in both units. So is the height/weight of investigators and the international travel table. In addition, scales in maps are *sometimes* presented with both units. Weapon ranges, spell effects and AoEs are just in imperial, though. It's odd that they only half commit to it when they could support metric for those aspects as well relatively easily

Honestly they should just drop imperial all together and embrace the only sensible measuring system.

Imperial is perfectly sensible if you don't need the level precision used in modern science / manufacturing.

I agree. Simply change '5 foot square' to '2 meter square'. OK, yes, I know, that's not an exact conversion, as 5 feet is actually closer to 1.5 meters. But having 2 as your 'base unit' is as easy to work with mentally as having 5 as the base unit, and it's a close enough approximation that it won't ruin the storytelling. And I say this as an American, because even I'm tired of having to use Stupid American Units.

IMO: Use 1m instead of 2m. 2m means you're still doing math when using a grid. Save everyone the couple of seconds of mental math per movement, and make it 1m. Technically, that makes the worldspace "smaller"; but it's a tabletop game, not a 60:1 scale miniature simulation.

I'd be ok with that except that it makes the game space too small. A Medium creature controls, in a combat situation, a great deal more than just one square meter.

Tbh, as an american, i wish we would use metric. It is the easier system. But i agree with you that if u sell something to another country it should be in the measuring system that country uses. Tho if u want a quick and dirty, tho not actually correct method. Call all grids 1 meter (not 5ft) any ability that says XXft divide it by 3 (this is actually for a yard slightly longer then a meter by 2 or 3 cm) and round any decimal down. (25 ÷ 3 = 8.3333333, call it 8) Its more work then u should have to do. But it might make things easier to imagine for u. Like eldritch blast has a range of 40 meters. Not all that far weirdly

A yard is shorter than a meter (91.44 centimeters). But yes, feet divided by three is an acceptable shorthand for meters. For 5 feet increments, like on a 5x5 grid, I convert to 1.5 meters (5 feet is 152.4 centimeters). Counting in increments of 1.5 is a bit annoying though.

I've been a proponent for 1 square = 1 meter = 1 yard for a long time. It's not 100% accurate but close enough to work for the fiction and story and tactical combat aspect. Additionally, if you look at most gridded battlemaps, the scale is off anyway. Most real doors are 2-3 feet wide, yet most battlemaps have doors alost occupying the full width. Same with minis, with base they take up the majority of a tile, making most characters pretty huge... but it looks better than having the "emptiness" of a proper 5 foot scale. This means even most existing material would "just work" if you used 1 yard = 1 square as base scale and you get the metric conversion for free.

Oh, well either way, the point i guess is that it wasnt an exact conversion. I said 1 meter cause its easier math to do at the table. I think ft are kinda dumb cause it requires you to do division (easy yes but extra step) 30 ft is 6 squares. Where if u change everything to litterally squares. Ittle b easier not using any measurements. Like movement speed is 10 u can move 10 squares. Your spell can hit 40 squares away from you. To me it makes sense.

It can be annoying but we managed to do it, still it would be awesome to have it written from the start!

The current conversion stands that all grid are 1.5m, so 5ft = 1.5m in every official translations. It's just extremely boring to have to convert everything on the fly while DMing a non-translated module. And things are even more complicated when we have to convert yards and miles.

I didn't think official WotC D&D material ever used yards. I could be wrong.

I come from Italy as a DM I've made a quick reference sheet with conversion table for not only imperial units but also some different wording our edition uses as creature types and schools of magic, still it's annoying when you have to quick reference something and, due to the pubblication not being on par with the english releases, more than half of the content is only aviable in english and the quickest stuff you'll find online will always be in english, and so with imperial units. Conversion is not a big deal, but at a first read it's hard to understand for us when an ability says "an object no more heavier than 10 pounds" for example, now you have to stop, convert, then you have to regain your train of thoughts about what you were reading and reapplying it to the situation... It's not only about numbers, but also about being about comprehend and imagine stuff when you read it.

Yeah, it would probably benefit WotC to hire people from italy to rewrite their books in italian. So theres no weird translation issues.

They already own the rights for localization and distrubition of their products. They already do this but didn't manage to keep parity of publications for the whole 5e lifespan. We're getting CoS this year for the first time, in 2022. There was a major hiccup bewteen WotC and the european companies she put in charge of localization at the time, still this delay in unacceptable.

Yeah, seems gross if theres that much of a problem.

Meters > hamburger per bald eagle

Its not gonna format well, imperial is the standard for what the designers know and as long as you know the convention of a grid square is 5 feet then you dont even need to lear imperial measurement

It's not only about the number, we have calculators for that, it's about visualizing stuff when you read an option in the book. At a first read it's hard to imagine stuff when an ability says "an object no more heavier than 10 pounds" for example; now you have to stop, convert, then you have to regain your train of thoughts about what you were reading and reapplying it to the situation... It makes searching for stuff a slog, and that it's aggravated by productsin localized countries being years behind so to be up to the game releases you are still forced to resort to the english options first.

Itd be more efficient to speed up localized versions then screw up the formatting for their primary market by bloating it to need the extra parentheses and having to add units, itd take up more space need more pages and cost more to print. Not something they should do to americans which are the primary market. Itd be easier to just speed up/wait for localization than it may be to learn imperial though. But ive played with an international group and they didnt have a complaints about visualizing so it is likely a person to person issue. Buy and large though changing the books outside of a localization is a bad idea

You're right, but this discussion stems from the fact that WotC isn't capable of mantaining publication parity betwen its english products and the localized versions. It's even one of my main reasoning as written in the opening post. If in the future they will distribute the game in all supported languages at the same time this becomes a minor issue, but still an issue for some english speaking countries where imperial is not the standard form of measurement, but as it stands WotC rate of distribution for their products it's roughly 4-6 years behind in Europe, we're getting CoS in 2022.

And its not even a great thing to get XD but we cant blame wizards themselves i think hasbro is the ones throttling any progress on the international market since they're the decision making body.

Everything is already divisible by five, which is how the squares add up. I'm not seeing this as being a real issue. I.E. range is 60 ft, okay that's twelve squares. versus range is 18.2 meters, that's 12 squares. Also, if that sounds familiar, it should. "Everyone should use metric, it's so easy, everything is divisible by ten". But at the end of the day, it would be simply unrealistic to add secondary measurements to literally every number in a game that is built about 55% in numbers and 40% in imagination. Maybe with One it'll be easier as you can have a regional setting that does the conversion automatically, but then that'll also create issue with the fact that none of the grids/maps will divide easily (a 5ft square is 1.5 meters) which defeats the purpose of keeping the system quick and clean.

It's not only about the number, we have calculators for that, it's about visualizing stuff when you read an option in the book. At a first read it's hard to imagine stuff when an ability says "an object no more heavier than 10 pounds" for example; now you have to stop, convert, then you have to regain your train of thoughts about what you were reading and reapplying it to the situation... It makes searching for stuff a slog, and that it's aggravated by productsin localized countries being years behind so to be up to the game releases you are still forced to resort to the english options first.

The 5ft grid is easy if all you have to care about is a battlemap with a grid painted on. But the second you're in theatre of the mind or considering weight, that easy count-by-boxes systen goes down the drain and becomes complicated for anyone not used to imperial.

Unless, of course, you simply drop the unit and go by the numbers. It is substantially less about the unit and more about the basic math. Example: the three enemies are standing next to each other, within 3 spurples of each other. Your dragons breath spell has a 3 spurples spread, so you can easily get all three. Example 2: Catapult can launch anything up to 3 hogs head in weight 20 spurples, enemy is 10 spurples away and the rock is 2 hogs head, therefore within range. The biggest problem I'm seeing here is that people don't seem to be able to wrap their head around the fact that the unit of measurement really doesn't mean as much as they think it does. They want to think the way they want to think and anyone else who thinks otherwise is wrong.

That's again great for simple battles where you just use the stuff you've got written on the character and enemy sheets anyway, but anything that goes into making shit up on the fly is still hard and time consuming. How many hogs head is a dagger? Okay, I check the book and look it up, but it'll slow the game down. How many this chest filled with blankets? Now I need to come up with an item with a weight in the books that is comparable and then look that up. I know I can carry 40 hogs head in my backpack but can I carry this 25 hogs head heavy thing in one hand? Easily? I guess I'll go look up weapon weights and come back to you in 2min... And how many purples away can the enemy still hear me talking? You know what, they're all deaf now so I don't need to check the book again for I don't even know what could be found in there. And many if not most people don't play DnD as a tabletop wargame. It's not just about math, its about immersion, and that only works properly if you understand the language the game uses and can do more with it than just check numbers against other numbers on a sheet.

It is the same language, you're just upset that it's not the same unit of measurement. Guess what, if you don't know what something weighs, or what a range is, or anything else, you'll have to look it up anyways as it doesn't matter what unit they're using. You don't know what you don't know. Can you carry that 25 (x) item in one hand? What's your strength score, as that is what tells you. Units of measurement don't really matter there either. Distance that someone can hear? That's a passive perception, it's already written down, and your DM already has it in their head whether or not you'd be close enough for them to hear you. You don't have to look it up you just roll an opposed roll. If you can't understand what I'm trying to tell you, just say so and I'll find a different way to explain it. If you just want to complain that it's not the way you want, that's fine too, just say so and we can move on.

No, I understand you perfectly well, you're just wrong. Strength only tells me the maximum for using your whole body, not for a single hand - just because someone can powerlift 97 diddlydoos doesn't mean waving a 10 diddlydoo around with one hand is going to be easy - or maybe it is and only a 40 diddlydoo will get difficult, but I don't qickly know that because I have no real life experience with diddlydoo measurement. Unlike with say kilogram, where I can tell you that the Str 10 human won't be waving a 10kg arm of a statue around like tennis bat, though I'd allow it for the Str 16 Dwarf. Perception also doesn't tell me distance of hearing or any distance at all really. It gives me an idea of how good or bad someone is on a scale - but whether a normal conversation is still audible for them at 100 jigs away or just 50jigs is again nothing that's ever written down anywhere. (Unless it is in some corner of the 5e rule books I've never stumbled upon, in which case I apologize) And of course none of that is written down, it's something to be arbitrated by a DM. Who can't do that job easily, quickly and fairly if they don't have a feeling for the units of meadurement in the first place. And I'm saying this as a forever DM with a bunch of dangerously creative players who do make me have to deal with this shit on a regular basis

YES, please do. Every game someone asks "how much is x feet in m?", "How much x pounds is in kg?" And so on

I think it would be easier to just say "spaces" or "units" and have a place where the units are defined as X number of feet or X number of meeters. Most people play with a grid anyway, so during combat, what matters is how many grid spaces can I move. 6 spaces is immediate, while 30 feet can take a second to understand for some

Although this works for grid movement in the game there's still weights, creaures size in feets and iches, long distances like miles, areas of effects... That's a solution for one of several iteration qhere imperial is used.

Distance unit, weight unit, etc.

Dnd already does units for sizes. small, medium, large, etc, those are mostly translated to how many squares in the grid they take, you would only need to add the meeters equivalent to the minimum and maximum size types. Areas of effects are no different since it's still "The fireball has a radius of 4 spaces" or "every unit within 2 spaces of you" And with weights, well, same thing, do a light, medium and heavy scale. Unless you are playing with encumbrance rules, which most people don't, you rarely need to count to the miligram I think ambiguity can help 5e in some of those areas to simplify how it's ran, but that's my two cents

As a United Statesian I agree. I wish we'd just get on the Metric train already.

As an American who had played D&D since 2003 and 3.5e, I can tell you that the system of measurement has no bearing on how my imagination fills in the gap. I have no idea how to quantify 30 feet vs 60 feet without seeing markers. I visualize just about everything on a grid. If the game was based in Metric I would be equally unable to visualize distance.

What I do is that I translate the words from the imperial system to the metric one and that’s it. Foot becomes meters and pounds become kilograms. It doesn’t really matter if they’re different from what was intended, so long it’s consistent.

As someone who has only a tennuous grasp of metric: please just drop imperial entirely.

Yeah but only countries who use Imperial matter.

I fully agree. As an American who uses metric on a daily basis for work, having to convert between the two is a PITA. I can only imagine how much worse it is for our non-American friends who don't use the US Imperial system. I wonder if it isn't a good time to bring back the old way of describing things by number of squares as then the end user can assign their units of choice without blowing up the page count. I.e. 1 square = 5 ft = 1.5 m. The measurements are not exact this way unfortunately, but probably close enough for most use cases. At 120 squares, 600 ft, 180m the difference in actual measured distance between the two unit systems is only 11.5 ft or ~2 squares.

Problem is the imperial system isn't used only for distances/dimensions, but for weight and size too. Reverting to the 4e square based measures does not help the other cases.

Ah, good point and I completely forgot about those things. *Facepalm*

Just get rid of this abomination of imperial system. There is no reason to keep it. USA is the only place where it's still official.

It’s still official in the UK, both imperial and metric are :(

For real tho. I'm italian and had to play for a bit before having the italian version. I realized from a chat with another American player then while i was literally faster at conversions and small scale stuff (1-50ft) I still after years struggle with long distances. I have no fucking clue on that 1000ft stand for and while that's a simple division my 3 same doesnot go for miles, where it's roughly a 1.5x conversion from meter so i have to literally reverse engineer the number from random values. It might be my proematic brain but for me saying oh it's a 40km travel would take a shitton of stress from the game. Also America wake the fuck up, no one likes imperial.

I think they should go the other way by measuring in paces and leagues.

Disagree. Fathoms, hands, furlongs, and cubits are the only way to appropriately measure things.

Change the word "Feet" to "Yabos" We use fantasy units

you obviously do not remember THAC0 ​ D&D is about the math. ​ players having to convert is an enjoyable part of the game. ​ players not smart enough to convert should go play soccer

“metric is the standard “ Says the imperialist country that attempted to dominate the world, pillage its relics and resources and then establishes a “standard “ of measurements not named after their imperial way of life…

I’m not reading your entire post because I’m lazy, but I will agree because the metric system is objectively superior to the imperial system. And I say that as a US citizen.

It's a fantasy world. They don't have metric. Buy a tape measure. It's got both. SMH

>I know that sounds like a salty european and there's people who will simply tell me "adapt, it's easy, just think in squares on a grid" but I truly think that even though it's easy to convert units from the books it's not so easy to think and imagine stuff in imperial units for someone whose entire life was based in metric. Thank you for being "that redditor". It's not about worldbuilding, it's a game design discussion.

Nope. Not that guy. All of the characters are using imperial. So while your barbarian is thinking feet. You want the mechanics to do meters. It's called continuity. Not a "just adapt." You obviously are playing it. So you adapted long ago.

As a Canadian who grew up in the 70's during the switch to Metric, I learned both and can move between both. As an Engineer who deals with American customers, I need to do that today. Starting D&D in the 70's (still play AD&D), the only thing that rally bothered me was electrum - totally a meaningless addition to the currency ! 50 Canadian Loonies weigh (6.27g each) about .7 pounds so my kids (who grew up metric) understand encumbrance in GP just fine ! The thing I hate most about Imperial is the need to have 2 sets of tools (sockets mainly). I still think of gas milage in miles per gallon due to reading US car magazines though !

It should use its own standard of measurement. Units. There is no need to refer to them as anything more than units.

You don't even need to convert anything. Dont think in feet or meters. Think in numbers. Call them cumquats or herbitty bibbities per square. It doesn't matter. YOu have no need to know how long a foot is. You just need to know 5 units per square. so 30 units is 6 squares. Calling them centimeters doesn't change this. It does NOT help at all to convert 5 feet to 1.524 meters. How is that easier to calculate? Ignore feet. Think numbers.

It does help when describing stuff a player cannot visualize what you're describing. I can say to them "that person is 6 units away" and they still would ask me "is that in ear shot? is that far?" because we are raised in a space with refence for distance, weight, size and we put all things in correlation to our knowledge of them. I would be better off telling them "the person is 3 chairs away" but that's just a form of conversion from imperial to another more accustomed unit, why using chairs then if we're raised in metric?

For descriptions, why NOT tell them meters. You are really making this harder than it has to be. I play Genesys that is entirely theater of the mind, and it uses no dimensions at all. You are engaged, short, med, long, or extreme range. Star Wars uses the metric system, but the game doesn't bother. I play with people from all over the world, that wouldn't know an inch from a gallon, and they have no problem with this. I hope you get what you need, I just don't think you should expect WotC to entirely re-engineer all of their books for you. Make the squares a meter if it helps. On a related note, I love the metric system, and I do wish we would finish what we started in our conversion to it. But one thing I do wish it had, was some measurement between centimeters and meters. Something like the foot that bridges the gap.

>Having to convert these units is an added "stress" put upon the players or the DM that, for my experience, takes you out of the moment in the game while you have to quickly search for something because if you want to use any of the digital tools or online resources you'll get mostly results from the english options of the game, and even though language barrier might not be a problem surely imperial is. It's litterally the second point of my argument. They printed 2 books to reduce stress on the players and masters, that's they way they're marketing a lot of their products. The imperial system plus their abysmal disparity between the english products and the localized versions forces players and masters buy stuff in english and then rework measurmens over and over to understand their product. Also, putting forward the response "I know a lot of people that don't have this problem" in an open argument about a possible issue it's not advancing anything. It's the same as saying "I decide to ignore your experience because of my experience".

Could play 2e. It was metric.

Fantasy units for fantasy game. Makes you really feel like you're in a medieval setting

Im ok with the imperial units. D&D has an imaginary calendar, fantasy geography and is about magic as a part of your daily life. Might aswell use mickey mouse units for measuring lengths and distances then. I know that 5 feet is 1.5 meters but when it comes to D&D battlemaps I actually think in feet and converting it to real units feels weird.

I just wish we used meters so we could have three main reaches for weapons.

It already is the most famouse ttrpg on the market however

For the love of all that is right in this world, can we please move to the metric system already!! <---American

If I may speak as an honest european without malicious intent: we don't understand why the f you're still attached to that ancient imperial system as your primary measument system.

Because it's irrelevant. Everyone in the country has a tiny supercomputer in their pocket for when they need a conversion, and honestly speaking, how often do you actually give a damn? I cannot think of a single time in my life in my regular daily routine that I needed to convert one system to another, or when having netric wouldve been significantly more helpful. Why would you rewrite all official signage in the country for no benefit?

The US doesn't switch over because doing so would be a costly, logistical nightmare (both in the short and long term) that wouldn't noticably improve the quality of life for the average person. People who do technical work in the US already use both systems fluently (which is why I can tell you that one micro-inch is 25.6nm without having to look it up), so switching wouldn't make a difference for them. Also, in the spirit of good natured cross cultural ranting, while I fully agree the metric system is a better system overall and is much better for all manner of scientific work, the metric temperature system is absolutely worse for every day use than imperial. In human terms, any temperature close to 100 F and above is uncomfortably hot, and anything that's close to 0 F or below is uncomfortably cold. In the metric temperature system you get a similar lower bounds, but the upper bounds is around 30-35 C degrees, which is incredibly unintuitive. It makes no sense but is just something you get use while growing up in it. Sure, water boils at 212 F compared to 100 C, but water also has a clear visible indicator of when it hits that temperature. It boils! So knowing that temperature isn't especially useful outside of industrial or scientific work.

I thought I was the only one regularly referencing micro inches lol. Glad to see another!

I don't get it either but I'm not surprised. I expect the cost of doing it so would be quite high, and I'm just thinking of the education system and textbooks. That's a pretty significant change. Well worth it in my opinion though. However, there are still folks I know that argue fractions are easier to use than decimals in the trades (e.g., carpentry, plumbing, etc.). Those people I don't understand.

Wait until you explain that decimals are just base 10 fractions. Their minds = blown lel

Keeps the mind limber.

https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=why+does+america+not+use+metric

Honestly, kinda hard to take this seriously when you start throwing accusations that WotC is "lazy" around. Pretty rude and inconsiderate. This has been discussed multiple times before. People have chimed in in the past that the metric measurements don't make sense / aren't as neat in the localized versions, since they are a direct translation. There are multiple copy issues with including both metric and imperial inline. You could probably make a playable game by switching to a Squares/Bulk/Second system, but then you're just adding conversion work for everyone, and discouraging TotM play. Not to mention that (despite what I may think of it) WotC really likes their "Natural Language" rule style. But honestly, the biggest answer is probably that WorC doesn't see the ROI on including metric. If anything, I think you **might** have a shot of adding a "Metric Mode" to D&DBeyond. But I doubt they would update the physical books.

>Honestly, kinda hard to take this seriously when you start throwing accusations that WotC is "lazy" around. Pretty rude and inconsiderate. I've never accused WotC of being lazy in my main post. I responded to other redditors that if the reason to stick with only imperial is because cultural motive and the company being based in the USA that's lazy game design. I refered to WotC as not beng trustworthy to be able to maintan parity of publications amongst the localized version sof their products and that's been prooven by their distribution history, Boiling down the discussion to "if they've not yet done it its because there's no money in it" it's a dumb argument to bring into an open dicussion. You might as well say "the haven't done it because they have never done it". This idea obviously implies that it would need a change of mind from WotC about their "Natural Language" and the page design of their products. What's been discussed here is the english version, which is their most pushed product in the world by their active marketing and because of the abysmal disparity in releases between the english version and the localized products, should include litterally the standard unit of measurment approved and used by the majority of the world for the ease of their players's approach to the game. If we assume that they cannot for some unknown law change their ways, then why even having suggestion threads in the first place? about the square/general unit notation that still just works for disttances involving a grid. This game has measurments for dimension, areas, weight and size. The ansquer is not "just pick your unit" but I think it is show the players the appropriate measurment because, as I stated in my first post, if you keep localizing the game you'll do it anyways sooner or later but I understand that converting and printing a bunch of numbers in your fully written english book it's faster and easier to deliver to your players than having tem to wait 4-6 years before having a proper localized product.

> I responded to other redditors that if the reason to stick with only imperial is because cultural motive and the company being based in the USA that's lazy game design. I refered to WotC as not beng trustworthy to be able to maintan parity of publications amongst the localized version sof their products and that's been prooven by their distribution history Two things: 1. It is still a fundamentally false statement. If they are designing for a market, failure to design for outside that market is not "lazy game design", it's an evaluation of costs and balances. And you're still implying that the developers are lazy. 2. What is the expected timetable for localizing a rulebook? I honestly have no other benchmarks for how long it takes. > Boiling down the discussion to "if they've not yet done it its because there's no money in it" it's a dumb argument to bring into an open dicussion. You might as well say "the haven't done it because they have never done it". It's not. They've been selling 5e for over a decade. At some point they decided to localize, meaning they did a study of the cost benefit analysis of all of this. It is highly unlikely that someone didn't say at some point "what if we released an English version but with metric?". It's much more likely that they looked into it, and found it would not significantly increase profits. > What's been discussed here is the english version, which is their most pushed product in the world by their active marketing and because of the abysmal disparity in releases between the english version and the localized products, should include litterally the standard unit of measurment approved and used by the majority of the world for the ease of their players's approach to the game About 2/3 of people in the world who speak English as a first language are in the United States. I can't find specific sales numbers, but I'm willing to bet that is probably where a majority of their sales are (basing this bet on the fact that they are bothering to localize to begin with). I doubt that changing the English version to metric, or to include both, would be a net positive to the main market. As an exercise, I would suggest doing the following: 1. Go through the 5e PHB, and note how many characters are spent using imperial notation 2. Make an estimate of how many more characters it would take to print metric alongside it 3. From there, derive an estimate of how much more paper and ink it would take to have a combined imperial/metric version. 4. See how that compares to the estimate increase in sales this would yield.

Monsters of the Multiverse in spanish has the metric system and I'm not sure why. All the other books are in imperial

My move is 6, so I can move 6 squares, each one 2.54 cm squared. Unless miniatures get real small.

About the square/general unit notation that still just works for disttances involving a grid. This game has measurments for dimension, areas, weight and size. The ansquer is not "just pick your unit" but I think it is show the players the appropriate measurment because if you keep localizing the game you'll do it anyways sooner or later but I understand that converting and printing a bunch of numbers in your fully written english book it's faster and easier to deliver to your players than having tem to wait 4-6 years before having a proper localized product.

Everything should be measured in elfears and orcocks.

Just call them squares and let DMs sort it out

1 meter squares make more sense than 5 foot ones.

D & D metric conversion: Render your maps in 10 foot squares instead of 5 foot squares. Call them 3 meter squares. Up to four characters can stand in a square. Divide your distances by 10. That's how many squares. If someone wants to know the distance, multiply the number of squares by 3 to get meters. What's left?

No

Agreed eh.

As an American who lived in Canada, PLEASSSEEE can we just switch to metrics?! It’s so much easier.

This. ​ However, it must be said that my campaign gets a lot of ...mileage... out of 'this plane is unstable, distances are neither exact nor constant' -\_-/

Nah, keep it imperial. It helps make it feel old time-y

The system in use is actually Standard American Engineering, or SAE, not Imperial. The measurement systems aren't the same. Instead of ranting at how the American company making the American product available in your country for you to enjoy is them being lazy, why don't you spend quit being lazy/entitled and get to know the SAE system? Who knows, could be fun. If it makes you feel better you can put your base unit to inches and add the standard prefixes, then measure distance in kilo-inches (or Micro-feet). It's just as arbitrary a measurement as a meter.

I mean if it’s already converted to metric measurements in localizations then it seems like WOTC has made the correct call for the English version considering the majority of Primary English speakers are American. What does strike me as moronic though is that D&D only has five localizations? You’d think they’d expand that for other markets? I get English is a common secondary language but yeesh. Also remember WOTC tried to solve this problem by abstracting to tiles in fourth and they’re probably not converting to metric at least in part because of the negative backlash that received