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Hello my fellow Dakka Dakkaites! For the past few months, I've been designing my own Table Top skirmish game based in my own series, the Angaran Chronicles, or as one particularly beardy gamer would say The Angaran Chronicles, The Chronicles of Angara. And it's been a lot of fun; it's a d10(s) mostly opposing rolls system based a lot around character customisation. Where you can make heroes such as my own Anargrin, Raleas from my stories etc

I've begun playtesting with my friends, and it's so much fun. We've done it twice. The 1st was against a friend who'd never played a TT skirmish game of any kind, and by the 2nd game, he was playing incredibly well, so that's cool. And each game was quite quick.

Anyway, I decided to make my game based on inches rather than grids, and it seems to work well. Still, I've begun considering having the game go by centimetres instead, mostly to try to differentiate it more from other systems. But I was wondering, why inches over centimetres? I've been mulling over it, and inches seems a bit more simple for games such as this, but is that true?

Art of Anargrin and Raleas from my novel by Veronica Anrathi, well, just because, lol.

There really isn't any reason why Imperial over Metric. Imperial systems of measurements were a lot more popular in the 80's worldwide than now, and it probably just stuck with the game since then.


Could also be that for a skirmish game like 40k on a larger board, it's nice having smaller numbers to keep track of. 12", instead of 30cm for example.

For the same reason the UK has miles on the road; pints of beer and milk and few more hanging on Imperial measurements here and there.

That and when the shift to metric came in the governments forced it on things like food and liquids (except pints!) but didn't force wargames to change.


So we do have this odd situation where the scale, the base size and almost everything is metric and then the movement is Imperial.

Because +D6 movement and 2D6 charge range is a lot easier then breaking out the D10s.

If your system is already in D10 (or D20) then consider it.

Plus, trying to find a cheap tape measure with metric over here is surprisingly hit or miss.

Veldrain wrote:
Because +D6 movement and 2D6 charge range is a lot easier then breaking out the D10s.

Battlefleet Gothic used centimeters for measurement and still used D6s. For example, the 'All Ahead Full' special order could add 4D6 cm to a ship's move distance if it passed a Command check.

Because we all know how long 6" really is..

Veldrain wrote:
Because +D6 movement and 2D6 charge range is a lot easier then breaking out the D10s.

If your system is already in D10 (or D20) then consider it.

Plus, trying to find a cheap tape measure with metric over here is surprisingly hit or miss.

There's no real reason you would have to use d10 wlth cm's though. Maybe if you try to convert 40k rules as they now are to cm's but if we are talking about game designed to cm's from get-go d6 and cm's works just as fine.

Thanks for the answers, dudes! Just for an elaboration. It's a TT Skirmish game on the scale more of Kill Team and Necromunda than 40k.The maximum models one side can field (so far as I have a 'horde system' which might allow for larger scale conflicts) the movement is based more on DH/Necromunda/Warcry, with a half-action/full-action movement so no dice rolls are needed for movement unless the character is attempting to climb something over two inches high. Would that benefit more from centermetres?
I'm going to try play test it in centermetres at a later date some time.

Historical inertia mostly. The figures and the games systems which got the most popular used inches, the models are on inch diameter rounds and it's a good measurement step for the scale of games involved.

Now that the industry is involved in a large amount of scale creep, it probably makes less sense, but changing it would upset a lot of people who fear change.

Epic also used cm. Horizon Wars uses inches by default, but has an option to use cm instead as it works a bit better at certain scales.

Don't use cm simply to differentiate: that's not going to make any difference to my "buy/not buy" decision.

Using cm CAN give a feeling of greater distance differentiation, but it's only a feeling: figure can move 5cm but can shoot 30cm SOUNDS a bigger gap than moving 2" and shooting 12", but it's a just a wrinkle.

I honestly think because inches are less fiddly and it's impossible to be really accurate with a tape measure anyway. If your move stat can differ by 1 cm and that's supposed to be a meaningful difference in ability, you gonna have a bad time when people regularly move a whole inch extra because they are crosseyed morons. And if your stats differ in increments of 2 or more cm... just use inches.

honestly, because the most popular wargames in the world, Warhamster and warhamster 40k came from the UK and became the de-facto standard. Some games offer measurements in both systems, some stick to inches, some, mostly european, offer only cms.
As someone raised on metric, it does however mean I cannot gauge distances in any game using imperial.

If I were you, I would consider going back to grid as a differentiator rather than Centimeters.

Grids have a lot of positives, while Centimeters are just smaller inches. No actual game play difference.

Thanks again for the advice, guys. It seems more and more that centimetres might not work as well.

 Easy E wrote:
If I were you, I would consider going back to grid as a differentiator rather than Centimeters.

Grids have a lot of positives, while Centimeters are just smaller inches. No actual game play difference.

What are the positives? I thought inches as it seems a bit more free form and the players don't need a matt to play or what not.

for a historical point, Miniatures being 1" high, on a 1" base and a minimum movement of 1"
(yet for example Warhammer was played with Centimetres in Spain as a game with Inch was kind of impossible to sell there, hence why the old dice sets had 2 different Artillery dice, one with Inch and one for cm)

hence if you want or need a lower minimum movement/range than 1 inch, going with Centimeters makes more sense

both work well and none is superior depending on what you want (a larger game on a large table will have higher numbers with cm, and if you don't want to go with 3 digits use Inch
if the game should scale down, using inch for 28/30mm models and cm for 10-15mm without changing the values is also common

At the end of the day all an inch is, is an unit of measurement that works well with the size of your typical wargaming models on the tabletop. It'd be a pointless change that won't solve anything as there's no problem that needs solving (unless someone has bizarre ideological reasons, who knows).

inch is a horrible unit, but it's a horrible unit that's entrenched in the hobby.

The inch is a perfectly practical means of measuring distance. Its just horrible to do calculations and proper science with, hence the rise of SI.

Personally, I quite like the attoparsec as a unit of measurement. Its about an inch long...

 Argive wrote:
Because we all know how long 6" really is..

To which there is no possible response but 'Fnaaar' or 'Ooooh matron!'.


One possible reason.

The game designers in the late 70s/ early 80s were educated in Imperial during the 60s and considered a nice decimal system as bizarre.

Nottingham, as the Games Central for the world, is the last bastion of Imperial measuring Britishness with a metric repelling field installed as a result.

Its what a Gellar Field actually does

 Flinty wrote:
The inch is a perfectly practical means of measuring distance. Its just horrible to do calculations and proper science with, hence the rise of SI.

that was not the reason for the rise of SI, but that an Inch and other imperial measurements were different in each country because the base/definition was different (hence the idea of the meter to have a length calculated from base that is everywhere the same)
Imperial (englisch) Inch: 2,5cm, French 2,7cm, Austrian 2,6cm, Prussian 3,8cm, Bavaria 2,4cm, Mexico 2,3cm, Japan 3,0cm

hence why also (international) Inch was standardized in 1959 to be 254/1000 meter (with the US Survey Inches being phased out in 2023)

if it is practical or not depends if you are used to it or not
I find centimeters much more practical to be used as inch, specially for everything that is smaller than 2,5cm

Smaller numbers are faster and easier for humans to compute and visualize.

 Adrassil wrote:
Thanks again for the advice, guys. It seems more and more that centimetres might not work as well.

 Easy E wrote:
If I were you, I would consider going back to grid as a differentiator rather than Centimeters.

Grids have a lot of positives, while Centimeters are just smaller inches. No actual game play difference.

What are the positives? I thought inches as it seems a bit more free form and the players don't need a matt to play or what not.

Grids can be over layed on a existing table using a variety of methods. Games like To The Strongest and For King and Parliament use them on normal wargaming tables.

The advantages allow the game creator to account for "uncontrollables" such as terrain, LOS, Movement, and facings much easier than non-grid systems. In a grid you are either facing forward, left, right, or backwards. Therefore, movement is the same, or is blocked pretty clearly. There is no measuring disputes as a grid space is a grid space. Flanks and rears are clearly defined.

Grids remove uncertainty and imprecise measurements, and many players prefer to remove uncertainty and imprecision.

Like I said, Centimeters have all the same drawbacks as an inch; except with the added difficulty of not having easy tape measure access in some places. I would actually recommend if you use Non-gridded movement to change your measurement system into a generic unit of measure that the players themselves can choose to make whatever they like. That way they can scale it to their mini collection and game space with ease.

 kodos wrote:
for a historical point, Miniatures being 1" high, on a 1" base and a minimum movement of 1"

This. It's easy to eyeball stuff in terms of base widths. I bet people misjudge distances a lot more using the 32mm bases than they did the 25mm bases.

Honestly if your writing rules for sale probably use both. Puttting 6"/15cm might be annoying but will save translation work. Changing between units won't actually change much if the distances are the same.

 Las wrote:
Smaller numbers are faster and easier for humans to compute and visualize.

Sure, but there's no significant difference in computing power between 5 inches and 20 cm. They're both small numbers. At that level it depends purely on what you grew up with. I can tell you how much 2,5cm is, I cannot tell you how much an inch is despite both being roughly the same.I have to translate that inch into cm.

Didn't LotR give measurements in both?

A lot of systems don't use either - X-wing, Gaslands, Song of Blades and Heroes. And Inquisitor used Yards!

Anyway, as an engineer - metres or millimetres, none of this centimetre stuff. If you're going for SI units, go the whole way.

I mean, for scifi or modern it makes sense to just not have ranges at all, just about any gun can hit accurately the other side of the table. But that's another discussion.

I always figured that in 40k it was done as a joke.
Because of course the imperium would use imperial units.