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I'm fooling around with a wargaming engine to incorporate into roleplaying games I play with the buds. I have been tinkering around with it for about two weeks and think its time to look into choosing a system to use for distances(movement and range). The initial thought was to use standard measuring but as I thought about it I wondered if metric would be a viable option as well. It has the advantages of changing scale easily, like using the same rules for Starships traveling at thousands of kilometers per second and infantry moving a couple meters at a time or what not. And also would be easy to translate our RPG stats into. For the past few nights I've been staring at a ruler and moving models around a table to help me visualize the concept, but obviously that doesn't quite get you there. If you who reads this would be so gracious as to share some thoughts and experiences you may have in a positive way, it would help me get a better handle on what I'm dealing with.

Please feel free to stream of consciousness on either or both measuring systems and remember to keep an open mind. Proceed to be awesome!

EDIT: I guess you were more interested in gaining verification and information. Please ignore this post.

Personally it doesn't bother me but I'm English and in my late twenties therefore I'm pretty much interchangeable between systems based on what feels right.

I use inches at work all the time, our machinery comes from the US. We've had a big wave of French migrant workers come into my area, and they look at me like some sort of barbarian everytime I use inches.

GW did it wrong with an edition of LotR, I believe. It was more advantageous to use metrics for some movements. I think they had used a 1 inch=3cm but 2 inches= 5cm...

Most games I've ever played have used Inches and Feet, but I can comfortably work with either, it's a minor perk of being a Brit.

Or a Canadian!

Hehe, I'll bet. But believe you me I'm not the only American who believes we are backwards buffons still holding on to Standard. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get the right bolts and nuts in this country? XD

I'll check back again tommorow. Thanks All!

Standard? Don't you mean Imperial?

 ExNoctemNacimur wrote:
Standard? Don't you mean Imperial?

Imperial is "standard" for the USA - kind of ironic really

Personally I am used to using Imperial for wargaming, but would not really have a problem with using SI/Metric. After all, all our tape measures have both on them as standard

And it is "metre" not "meter"

 SilverMK2 wrote:

 ExNoctemNacimur wrote:
Standard? Don't you mean Imperial?

Imperial is "standard" for the USA - kind of ironic really

Personally I am used to using Imperial for wargaming, but would not really have a problem with using SI/Metric. After all, all our tape measures have both on them as standard

And it is "metre" not "meter"

Same, I've been using inches for moving figures around since I was eight and got my hands on my first red whippy-stick I can't stand using Imperial measures for the modelling aspect of wargaming though, it just seems so ludicrous to express things in "thousands of an inch" or imprecise fractions when we have millimetres - even in the UK we're still stuck with Imperial for a lot of supplies, since all the old train and historical grognards are still the main market for plasticard, brass rod, lead wire etc etc.

Imperial in wargaming is a foul conspiracy to favor mad dogs, americans and englishmen. Not to mention carpenters.

 ExNoctemNacimur wrote:
Standard? Don't you mean Imperial?

There are slight differences between UK and US "wrong" measurements. If it was a standard, it would be the same between them, innit?

I was born two years after Australia went metric, but grew up with both measurements. School taught me one, family the other.
I've played games that used either. 40k has always been in inches. Epic uses cm. Epic is still played, moreso since GW completely dropped the ball with it.

I'd prefer Infinity to use cm in the ENGLISH language edition - to show them that some of us English Language using former colonies CAN actually use them.
It would have eliminated a translation error from several of the tables in the book as it is.

I really liked the centimeter scale used in the old Titan Legions game.. the hard part was finding a tape measure that had the scale..

I may be the only one but for the life of me if I am estimating a small distance I have to do it in Imperial - metric just does not compute (even though I grew up with metric)


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Kaptajn Congoboy wrote:
Imperial in wargaming is a foul conspiracy to favor mad dogs, americans and englishmen. Not to mention carpenters.

Apparently I'm a mad dog

I think of imperial measurements as a "convenience" form of measurement while metric is more "scientific".
I always liked comparing apples with oranges so here is a chart I liked:

I had seen this sign around and think it appropriate:

 Talizvar wrote:

I had seen this sign around and think it appropriate:

But Beer comes in Pints

KnuckleWolf wrote:

It has the advantages of changing scale easily, like using the same rules for Starships traveling at thousands of kilometers per second and infantry moving a couple meters at a time or what not.

Don't let specific scales be a concern. If you want to have consistency across the rules, then do it regardless of the system. If infantry can move a foot in a turn and a starship can move a foot in a turn, it'll work just fine.

As for the system to choose, this is likely going to be a system that just you and your friends use. Thus, tailor it to them - if they're more accustomed to standard, then do that.

Narlix wrote:
But Beer comes in Pints

568mL=20 imperial oz = a "pint"
In Canada the long neck bottle is 341mL (12oz imperial UK).
Does not roll off the tongue as well as "pint" but there you are.

Run with Metric ..much simpler to scale down from Room to table top ..(1/100th scale) figures I use 1 cm = 1 meter..simple easy peasy ..for models I use 15mm thru 25mm models for height weight variants ..aliens, monsters, various races etc..Makes life simple..for vehicles the sheer volume of small brialle scale (1/100th ..16-17mm (foot to eyes) or 20mm(foot to top of head) which is 15mm heroic/chubby) is crazy large making it simple to wargame in metric at a scale thats not to big or to small ..


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oh small metric measures and rulers can be found at big box stores and department stores all over the US ..in the tools section ..


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Oh and beer comes in all forms..the standard 1/2 Keg being my favorite (it fits in the bottom of my garage fridge) and sits nicely in a wash tub surrounded by ice ...My Mugs are 1 litre each when topped with a proper head ..My pilsners are 1/2 liter each when topped with a proper head ..

for purposes of drinking beer
Pint = 1/2 Liter = with dinner after work
Quart = 1 Liter = afterdinner if I am sore from a long day at work
Keg = a Party or a long night of wargamming

I don't know, it's all 6 in. one, 15.24 cm the other to me.

Honestly I'm more comfortable with inches because aside from a half-hearted attempt to teach us children about the metric system in grade school, almost everything I do is in inches. Defining ranges in both inches and cm (so 6"/15cm) is probably better than giving just one measurement and having conversion rules. Conversion forces people to add an extra step to everything they do in the game, which makes it just a tiny bit harder to play without really adding any depth. Plus I can see frustration over having 12 inches come out to 30.48cm, and being just BARELY shy of being rounded up to 31cm (and other such shenanigans.)

Coming from Germany, we have the metric system here. But in wargames it is inches as I grew up with that. It feels very strange to play metric to me. I can guess ranges in inches decently well but much less so in metric. ^^ Seen objectively, metric is more sensible. ;-) But who cares for that?

Well generally speaking for wargames I measure everything in terms of inches, feet and yards. If distances are abstracted I will use metric (like RPGs) or for anything bigger than a literal metre generally speaking (or if I'm doing handiwork, in which case precision is all about millimetres, not fractions of an inch).

Heck I still measure height in feet but also measure weight in kilograms

I always carry around a double sided metric/imperial ruler, it makes life so much easier.

I've always used Imperial for wargaming, because I grew up playing GW games, and the guys that wrote THOSE grew up with Imperial.

I use metric for everything else.

However, we're talking about a game played all over the world, and the majority of the world uses metric, so it seems like Metric would be more sensible.

EDIT : And surely it can't be THAT hard to find a metric/imperial tape measure in the US nowadays?

 ArbitorIan wrote:
I've always used Imperial for wargaming, because I grew up playing GW games, and the guys that wrote THOSE grew up with Imperial.

I use metric for everything else.

However, we're talking about a game played all over the world, and the majority of the world uses metric, so it seems like Metric would be more sensible.

EDIT : And surely it can't be THAT hard to find a metric/imperial tape measure in the US nowadays?

I'm pretty sure using the metric system in the US gets you put on some sort of government watch list (same as how any American who calls soccer "football" has to register with the local government and inform the neighbors what he's done when he moves into a new neighborhood).