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I've always wondered this. I figure a company founded in England would use metrics. I hope there's some big funny story behind it.

It used to be so you could use either cm or inches.

beigeknight wrote:I've always wondered this. I figure a company founded in England would use metrics. I hope there's some big funny story behind it.

Have you been to England? Ever read Harry Potter? Ever wondered why they're called "imperial system" or "imperial metrics"?

Because GW is British and 40K is also 25 years old.

Because we play with 25mm miniatures........................

Here in the UK alot of people still prefer imperial to Metric, our signs and speed limits are in MPH not Kph, weirdly I prefer inches for gaming, but centimeteres when Im making stuff!

Don't play with your inches too much, you may go blind.

FYI the Inch is a British invented measurement as are most common measurements left over from the British empire.

The switch to metric started in the 60's but still is not really been well adopted.

We still use yards, miles, horsepower as opposed to metres KM and watts. It's a mess really

lampy wrote:Here in the UK alot of people still prefer imperial to Metric, our signs and speed limits are in MPH not Kph, weirdly I prefer inches for gaming, but centimeteres when Im making stuff!

See, I did not know this! Never been there, always wanted to visit.

obsidianaura wrote:Don't play with your inches too much, you may go blind.

FYI the Inch is a British invented measurement as are most common measurements left over from the British empire.

The switch to metric started in the 60's but still is not really been well adopted.

We still use yards, miles, horsepower as opposed to metres KM and watts. It's a mess really

That's progress! Just a few years ago, you were all using rods, furlongs, bushels, barrels, drams, stone, grains, and carats.

In only another few hundred years, the english speaking world may actually catch up to the rest of the world!

Smitty0305 wrote:Because we play with 25mm miniatures........................

28mm heroic, you mean

Because we're British and frankly we love to be different from everyone else. It annoys people, irritates them and confuses them. We love doing that to people and have done for centuries. Basically, we are gits.

On to more serious reasons why GW still use Imperial for 40k & Fantasy (Gothic, Epic & Warmaster use metric, from memory), my guess is this; as the company is over 25 years old (nearer 30 now, possibly older, can't remember their start-up year) the people who came up with the original gaming systems would no doubt have been products of when our education system was still getting to grips with teaching children about metric, when 'old school' teachers would have instinctively kept with what they knew best (the Imperial system), or they may have been children when only the Imperial system was taught. Therefore Imperial may have been what they, and those who brought their games to start with, were comfortable with using and understood fully. Then it may have just carried on from there, Imperial ground into the two main tabletop systems of Games Workshop.

Personally I work quite happily with both. However, ask me to pour a litre & I'll probably get the amount wrong. Ask me to pour a pint & I'll most likely get the amount right - too much drinking in pubs perhaps? Similar sort of thing with weight - I know and can understand my weight in Stone & Pounds but as soon as it's in kilograms I can't help but think 'What? How's that work out? What does 80kg look like? 80 bags of sugar?' (rough numbers - can't recall my weight in Kg).

I'l kick this off with a quote from Wiki:

"In its accession treaty to the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1973, the UK was obliged within five years to incorporate into domestic law all EEC directives, including the use of metric units for many purposes. By 1980 most pre-packaged goods were sold by metric measure, but the mandatory use of metric units for packaged goods only took effect in 1995."

As such, here in the UK have kept hold of the Imperial measurement system on principal. It is a deep routed political thing. I am 28, and personally always measure in feet and inches. But, should I need to do high precision things I revert to Millimetres. Unfortunately there seems to be no funny story behind it, its just down to the creators of GW being brought up in an age of Imperial measurements, when the EEC (Now EU) were dictating certain things.

Epic and BFG for instance are newer systems not reliant on anything from the 40k scale and do use cm.

Inches are a really handy unit for doing manual labor type things. Unfortunately doing anyhting techy with them is a total pain in the bum. Amusingly though an inch is almost exactly 1 attoparsec. It woud make BFG easier to scale perhaps if they used inches

Grakmar wrote:
We still use yards, miles, horsepower as opposed to metres KM and watts. It's a mess really

That's progress! Just a few years ago, you were all using rods, furlongs, bushels, barrels, drams, stone, grains, and carats.

Eldercaveman wrote:

Grakmar wrote:
We still use yards, miles, horsepower as opposed to metres KM and watts. It's a mess really

That's progress! Just a few years ago, you were all using rods, furlongs, bushels, barrels, drams, stone, grains, and carats.

You may mock but we brits still work in stones, and horse races are still measured in furlongs

Britain is currently in a funny place...
We are in the middle of Metric and Imperial.
We are taught Metric by school but many things are in Imperial...
So basically we learn both and slowly things are changing to Metric.
It'll take maybe... 2-3 generations for a full switch i think...
Though pubs will still serve pints...

While the metric system is obviously the more logical and rational system, the game was originally made for inches and I don't imagine that will change, nor would I want it to.

American's prefer the Imperial system too after all.

Steelmage99 wrote:While the metric system is obviously the more logical and rational system

The metric system is easy for conversions between units in a base 10 number system. But, it's still just as arbitrary and irrational as imperial units.

A "meter" or a "gram" or a "kelvin" or a "ampere" or a "candela" has no real intrinsic meaning. It's just an arbitrary amount we picked. And, don't get me started on "seconds"! Not only is it arbitrary, but you pro-metric people haven't even bothered to fit it into your base-10 system!

The only real logical and rational set of units is Planck units. They actually have meaning from the intrinsic properties of the universe. It's an all around better system that makes much more sense.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to get to a meeting in 1.11*10^45 T, and the room is 1.23*10^36 L away, and I've got to carry 4.59*10^7 M worth of stuff. So, I better get going.

Just like to throw this out there, It's blatently not related to this post but here goes... THE D6!!!

The British use both systems because we're awkward like that.
There are some things that will not be compromised. I refuse to by beer by the 500ml, it's the pint or nothing damnit.
Anyway inches are fine. I doubt we'll see it change, since you can still get tape measurers with inches on them and it's not difficult. They could use barleycorns if they wanted to, as long as they included a Barleycorn measurer.

Joey wrote:The British use both systems because we're awkward like that.
There are some things that will not be compromised. I refuse to by beer by the 500ml, it's the pint or nothing damnit.
Anyway inches are fine. I doubt we'll see it change, since you can still get tape measurers with inches on them and it's not difficult. They could use barleycorns if they wanted to, as long as they included a Barleycorn measurer.

Again, this is an EEC > EU thing.

beigeknight wrote:I've always wondered this. I figure a company founded in England would use metrics. I hope there's some big funny story behind it.

well BFG is in Cm

Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:

beigeknight wrote:I've always wondered this. I figure a company founded in England would use metrics. I hope there's some big funny story behind it.

well BFG is in Cm

Smaller scale, as is epic.

Flinty wrote:
1 attoparsec

Wow, what an enormously useless form of measurement.

Had to look that one up.

Emerett wrote:

Flinty wrote:
1 attoparsec

Wow, what an enormously useless form of measurement.

Had to look that one up.

Every unit of measurement is a valid and useful one. Especially as it has an exact purpose in mind for it.

SamsStuff wrote:Just like to throw this out there, It's blatently not related to this post but here goes... THE D6!!!

This. The numerics of the game system is base 6. 28mm miniatures ~ 1". D6 inches is between 2.5 and 15 centimeters. 3D6 centimeters would be comparable, but a lot more cumbersome. 2D6" scatter would be 5D6cm, but what about ballistic skill reduction? All characteristics would have to be modified by X2 or X3 to reflect their interaction with the larger numbers. Once you change the characteristics off of base 6 to base 10, then using 6 sided die is obsolete. If you replace them with 10 sided die, then you would have to scale D6 to 3D10 and scatter to 5D10 or so, and now it is a new game with new mathematical statistics. Everything would interact differently.

By the way, I'm pretty sure I used the word 'numeric' wrong.

LoTR Strategy Battle uses both, giving you the option. It simply says that if you want to use centimeters, you need to multiply the inches value by 2. Not true inch to centimeter relations but if you use only centimeters or only inches, it works.

-cgmckenzie

ZebioLizard2 wrote:American's prefer the Imperial system too after all.

No doubt. I hate when we buy European equipment too, then I have to convert all my nice easy mils into microns. Why can't everyone just switch to imperial?

cgmckenzie wrote:It simply says that if you want to use centimeters, you need to multiply the inches value by 2.

That would make a huge disadvantage for assault armies in Pitched Battle and Dawn of War deployments, and less so in Spearhead.

I live in Canada, right next to the USA border and I too use both systems.

Speed is measured in KM/H, but don't ask me what my height is in CM or my weight in KG - I only know it in feet/inches and pounds. Travelling distance is measured in KM and M, except in golf and American football where I use yards. Volume is in L and mL, temperature is in 'C.

It would be great if the world used one system, but that would require the world to agree on which one to use and that'll never happen. :(