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Author Topic: Game units of measurement  (Read 4239 times)

Steven Mitchell

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Game units of measurement
« on: October 07, 2021, 04:06:12 PM »
Setting this up as a spin-off topic for an interesting discussion on another topic.  Feel free to post anything you've done with in-game units of time, distance, currency, etc.

dkabq

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Re: Game units of measurement
« Reply #1 on: October 07, 2021, 04:08:59 PM »
For coinage, I went with:
1 gold duket = 100 silver guilder = 1000 copper bob

For size:
copper bob ~ US penny
silver guilder ~ US nickel
gold duket ~ US quarter

If you assume pure metal for those sizes:
100 copper bobs = 0.85 lb
100 silver guilders = 1.60 lb
100 gold dukets = 3.46 lb

I assume that coins have a 50% packing density. A 6"x6"x6" box will hold:
4085 copper bob (34.6 lb)
2569 silver guilder (41.0 lb)
2188 gold duket (75.6 lb)

Steven Mitchell

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Re: Game units of measurement
« Reply #2 on: October 07, 2021, 04:13:59 PM »
For distances, went with "paces" and "leagues" as the primary units.  This decision is in part to make it somewhat vague to modern ears and partly to make in-game conversions simple.

Paces can be defined as 3', 3 1/3 feet, 1 meter, 5 feet, 6 feet, 2 meters or whatever the group wants.  Leagues are set at approximately 3 miles, but are really set to kludged historical 8 leagues is distance adventurers can walk in a day over fields or roads.  Because 8 leagues/24 miles are really easy to subdivide for the system in question and the expected scale of hex maps.  Thus, the pace/league conversion is not fixed.  Lose the fairy tale, "7 leagues boots" as a magical item that lets you take a day's journey in 7 steps, at the more historical approximately 20 miles, but I can live with it for hex conversion simplicity.

I have found in practice that I still give heights in feet, as the players have a mental block against using it for anything but vertical distance.  Doesn't hurt that most of the game is not on a grid, with paces being a little fluid even moment to moment.
« Last Edit: October 07, 2021, 04:15:37 PM by Steven Mitchell »

dkabq

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Re: Game units of measurement
« Reply #3 on: October 07, 2021, 04:27:17 PM »
I still use feet and miles. Battlemaps use 5' squares. Overland hex maps have 6-mile hexes, subdivided with 1.2 mile hexes (per Todd Leback's "Filling in the Blanks -- A Guide to Populating Hexcrawls).

For my players, I give distances in terms of time. For example, a normally encumbered PC can travel two hexes/10 subhexes/12 miles on a road in one day. This accounts for striking camp, rest breaks, stopping for meals, scouting, exploring, and setting up camp. If they wanted to move as fast as possible, I'd up the rate by 50%, but would make them easier to surprise in terms of encounters.

YMMV.

dkabq

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Re: Game units of measurement
« Reply #4 on: October 07, 2021, 04:28:48 PM »
For a calendar, I went lazy. 12 months. 4 weeks/month. 7 days/week.

GriswaldTerrastone
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Re: Game units of measurement
« Reply #5 on: October 07, 2021, 04:29:20 PM »
I use imperial measurements- miles, yards, etc.

Money varies based on where you are. Gold is the usual standard but some places- like Venesha- also use diamonds as currency, leading to a rather interesting set of situations for some hapless characters who stumbled across an island almost made of carbon with tidy atomic arrangements...

Some tribes don't use money at all.

Copper, silver, platinum and in some places brass are typical, too. Paper money is rarely used if at all. Relative values vary somewhat from place to place but is mostly like in the 1977 AD&D rulebooks.

However, since this is Ayundell some do understand the idea of "electroplating," and can literally make counterfeit currency that can pass a typical test since on the surface the material is real. Using that water test is often used to detect this.
« Last Edit: October 07, 2021, 04:35:09 PM by GriswaldTerrastone »
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ArtemisAlpha

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Re: Game units of measurement
« Reply #6 on: October 07, 2021, 04:59:41 PM »
In college, in my physics curriculum, I had a T/A who noted that if we didn't give measurements, he would assume that we meant furlongs per fortnight for our raw numbers. This has stuck with me for decades - and I still think of lengths in terms of furlongs, or 220 yards; and fortnights, or two weeks.

I'm big into my games having downtimes measured in fortnights.

Aglondir

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Re: Game units of measurement
« Reply #7 on: October 07, 2021, 05:11:15 PM »
For a calendar, I went lazy. 12 months. 4 weeks/month. 7 days/week.
You can do:

7 days in a week
4 weeks in a month
13 months in a year

Which equals 364 days. Then add a holy day at the end and you get a solar year (leap day notwithstanding. )

I wish the real world would adopt that.


dkabq

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Re: Game units of measurement
« Reply #8 on: October 07, 2021, 05:20:18 PM »
For a calendar, I went lazy. 12 months. 4 weeks/month. 7 days/week.
You can do:

7 days in a week
4 weeks in a month
13 months in a year

Which equals 364 days. Then add a holy day at the end and you get a solar year (leap day notwithstanding. )

I wish the real world would adopt that.

Or just go with 364 days/yr.  :)

Steven Mitchell

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Re: Game units of measurement
« Reply #9 on: October 07, 2021, 05:26:18 PM »
I'm currently experimenting with coins.

TL;DR version: Bronze Farthing, Copper Penny, Silver Star, Gold Orb, and Mithril Mark. 

Currently set at ratios of 4:1, 5:1, 10:1, and then 10:1.  That is 1 mm = 10 go = 100 ss = 500 cp = 2,000 bf. 

Long version:

For currency, I've done a radical overhaul, building the equipment lists from the ground up.  I'm on my second major revision (and I don't know how many minor ones), trying to strike a compromise between game play, vaguely historical/fantastical sounding units, and a focus on main late dark age, early middle ages technology.   

Complicating it is that I've deliberately left in some late middle ages options under the guise of a previous golden age.  So, for example, a few people know how to make plate armor, but not so many that the weapons list has completely gone into late medieval territory.  Yeah, I know, some of this is mere rationalization for a hodge-podge of disparate stuff in one game.

I also wanted a silver standard, that was easy to convert from many existing fantasy games and from historical sources.  The nod to late dark ages, early medieval is that weapons and clothes are generally much more expensive, and the higher tech weapons and armor are really expensive.  This gives characters something to spend money on before they start finding magic (relatively late in the power levels).

Throw all of that in a blender and do some judicious rounding, and I got those coins.

Seriously considering bumping that last gold/mithril ratio even higher into 20:1, but the "mark" part is about right given the expected purity, size, and ratio of silver and gold (devaluing gold to the lower end of its range, but that's OK given the mixed tech setting).  Even though "mark" isn't a real coin but an accounting measure.  Of course, mithril isn't real either, so maybe that cancels out.

Delta's Hotspot musings on currency helped a lot with this last pass, in particular setting the silver standard at about the level of the "Groat", or about 4 silver pennies.  I didn't use "Groat" because it's a much later coin, but maybe that's me being too picky.  OTOH, after a lot of back and forth with various real-world silver and gold names, I didn't find any that didn't invoke either a much later period or imply ratios that are not at all a match for the above. 

To reconcile it for game play, the above ratios assume all of these coins are about American quarter size (though a little thicker), with the silver and gold relatively pure, the copper a thin coating on a silver shell, and the bronze a relatively impure copper/bronze mix (that is, lots of impurities that aren't valuable). In reality, copper and bronze aren't used at the same time, and would be close to equal in value.   That gives me about 80 silver per pound bar.  Which still isn't technically correct, but is in the ballpark for real-world silver.  It means that I can use Delta's neat trick of of reading historical equipment list "pennies" (d) as "cp" even with copper penny, "shillings" as x3 silver, and "pounds" as x6 gold.  I can also convert most early D&D adventures by dividing treasure values by 1/10th.  This makes copper a little more worth hauling out.

The last thing that prompted this particular revision is that I had a slightly easier to convert system before, but the scale and naming was off.  I had two different silver coins and a lot of overlap in the sounds, and it was causing all kinds of issues in play.  You'll note that a player can use shorthand of "bronze, copper, silver, gold, mithril" or use the coin names, even mixing those up, without confusing the issue. Standard sizes also help.  I really wanted to use the dark age "silver penny" as the base, but it just doesn't work with all the other considerations above.  I also like the alternate names of "silver moon" and "golden sun", but that provides more overlap and it inconveniently makes the gold abbreviation as "gs" which has a real-world reference inconsistent with the its value.

Designing this system caused me multiple headaches.  I hope it works, because I don't want to redo it. :D
« Last Edit: October 07, 2021, 05:31:06 PM by Steven Mitchell »

GeekyBugle

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Re: Game units of measurement
« Reply #10 on: October 07, 2021, 05:28:14 PM »
For a calendar, I went lazy. 12 months. 4 weeks/month. 7 days/week.
You can do:

7 days in a week
4 weeks in a month
13 months in a year

Which equals 364 days. Then add a holy day at the end and you get a solar year (leap day notwithstanding. )

I wish the real world would adopt that.

Or go with adding a forthnight of celebration every 56 years, which would bring the calendar into alignment and would mark a celestial year. (Sorta-kinda what the Mayas did but they started anew every 52 years for some reason).
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Steven Mitchell

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Re: Game units of measurement
« Reply #11 on: October 07, 2021, 05:29:09 PM »
I once did a setting with 6 day weeks, 30 day months, 12 months, and 4 "days outside the calendar" at the solstice and equinox points of each season.  Players loved it, especially the magic that happened on the special days. 

Drove me crazy with keeping track of it.  I just couldn't mentally adjust on the fly to having 6 day weeks, either.  :D

Vic99

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Re: Game units of measurement
« Reply #12 on: October 07, 2021, 06:21:32 PM »
For years, before Covid we've used what I call the SSU (standard spatial unit).  It's the size of the room your group is currently gaming in.  "You open the cellar doors and find a musty, dimly lit basement that is about 2 SSU."  Works great as I see players looking around the room that we are in.

Steven Mitchell

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Re: Game units of measurement
« Reply #13 on: October 07, 2021, 07:39:38 PM »
For years, before Covid we've used what I call the SSU (standard spatial unit).  It's the size of the room your group is currently gaming in.  "You open the cellar doors and find a musty, dimly lit basement that is about 2 SSU."  Works great as I see players looking around the room that we are in.

Hah, I do a different thing with creature sizes, using whatever creatures are common in the setting.  I can describe a big spider using measurements, and it really doesn't register.  I can say that it's body is the size of a "small pony" and half the table freaks out. 

Had a lot of fun with that in a recent session.  Party was fighting some 3' foot tall rat folk, and I kept describing them as "about the size of" a particular PC that was playing a hobbit-sized character.  It became a running gag.  Then they ran up against some giant wasps, with foreshadowing of a lot of buzzing.  The first scout finally got a look and said, "about the size of" that PC.  Nope, "about twice the size of" PC name of big barbarian character.  That was all it took, the party ran immediately.

Mishihari

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Re: Game units of measurement
« Reply #14 on: October 08, 2021, 01:03:01 AM »
I've found that messing with the calendar is more trouble than it's worth.  For one world I did 6 days per week, 6 weeks per month, 10 months per year, and 4 extra days on the solstices and equinoxes.  It's nice for color, but always caused confusion in conversation; never could remember if we were talking real-world weeks and months or in-game calendar terms.

I'm pretty happy with the currency for my current game.  There are gold, silver, and copper coins; each is 1/50 of a pound and has the diameter of a dime.  (The thickness of the coins vary to make this work out right.)  In current, real world term, the coin values come to about 4 cents, $4, and $400, which is really convenient for coin changing and estimating values.  Tell the players they looted 100 gold royals from the bandit camp and they'll think that's nice.  But when they realize that's about $40,000 in real-money terms, it adds a lot of impact.
« Last Edit: October 08, 2021, 01:04:54 AM by Mishihari »