There's a petition to try to convince WoTC to convert all measurement in the next edition into metric:
https://www.change.org/p/wizards-of-the-coast-please-consider-a-metric-system-version-for-dungeons-dragons-5-5-6th-edition
ROFL
Unless I am reading it wrong, it seems they only thing being requested is the same level of support for the metric system WotC has provided for 5e. I don’t think that request is out of bounds at all.
However, like a lot of change.org, choosing this platform with this approach is laughable, which is where I think you were going with this. There are many ways this request could me made, including…I don’t know…waiting to see a product roadmap, AMA, or maybe wait more than 20 minutes after the announcement to start mobilizing the next quest.
Just looking at the names, the signees are probably more likely to listen to Hasslehoff than Creed, so I can understand the importance of having the metric system version. Of course this way, they get to be a pseudo-activist, so erection achieved I suppose.
As a Mexican the imperial system sucks monkey balls. That being said since I'm not having to do much math with it I can happily ignore it's suckiness.
As a global megacorp, it surprizes me Hasbro hasn't made WotC include a conversion table for easy use, but then again, maybe their main market doesn't use the metric system in their everyday life?
Agreed that this is inactivism at it's finest.
As an American I find metric system sucks because it’s base units aren’t intuitive but are based on arbitrary units like an arc second of the Earth’s average circumference.
Imperial is based on humanistic units; a foot is about the length of a person’s foot, an inch is about the length of a finger joint, a yard is about the span of one arm to your chest, the mile (derived from the Roman mille pacum) is 1000 paces (2000 steps). What they lack in easy division by 10 (which makes it useful for science), they more than make up for in ease of use for everyday purposes.
Naturalistic units also make a ton more sense in a pseudo-medieval setting where initial values of things like the circumference of the globe is unknown, but how long a person’s foot, finger joint or how many steps it takes to get somewhere can be easily determined.
This is why my own game measures combat movement and distance in paces (the Roman unit happens to be almost exactly 5’) because it’s also very useful for visualizing (i.e. “he’s 5 paces from you.”).
As an American engineer, I love the metric system.
As for being arbitrary, the base units of the metric system are loosely tied back to "naturalistic" units (e.g., a meter is approximately a yard; a kilogram is the weight of approximately 1 quart of water). Moreover, Imperial system units also arbitrary (e.g., whose "foot"; 1 inch = the length of 3 barleycorns).
The "ease of use" of Imperial units (pounds, yards, feet, inches) is their divisibility by many factors (e.g., 2, 3, 4, 6, 12, 16). More of a consideration for a medieval merchant than for a modern-day person. Otherwise, I imagine that metric system works just fine for "ease of use for everyday purposes" for everyone else in the world (e.g., GeekyBugle).
That said, for a non-modern setting, I can see how measurement systems other than the metric could contribute to verisimilitude. And, as an American, the English system is the easiest to grasp. Conversely, I know that when I played Traveller and Space Opera in my misspent youth, distances in meters felt SciFi, and I mentally converted them to 1 meter ~ 1 yd.