Ok, how in bloody blazes are either Witchlight, which has some definite horror elements any DM into that kind of thing can easily latch on to, or Strixhaven 'political statements?'
We aren't talking about either of those. We are talking about Radiant Citadel. I however agree with Yurei1453 in that this forum nor this specific thread is the place for diving into that discussion. We are by forum rules, not allowed to exchange the sort of dialogue, and ideas that would be required to detail how and why this type of book is extremely inappropriate and I'm not one for leading a horse to water through subtle overtures. Watch the video, and form your own opinion.
I just watched that video. I think that there are some really interesting things that could go on there.
1.) I like the idea of a campaign world made by black and brown people from the stories they grew up with
2.) These shield bearers have potential. Imagine PCs coming across a minority group who are being horribly persecuted by a dominant group of people. There is a large group of shield bearers present, but they aren't doing jack to stop the persecution, because that would be against their code, they just bandage the wounded. You can show the failures of the shield bearer code and how the adventurers have to step in to make positive change.
3.) These crystal creatures which are manifestations of stories? What if it is a horror story or a tale of oppression?
The fact that a fashion show, an espresso machine, and a pet displacer beast for orphans even are put down on paper in a book that is considered "D&D canon" is all I need to know where WOTC is taking the game. (Oh, and we must not forget "THACO, the angry old gatekeeping clown"). Or, in the new book, where there is no such thing as police (Shield Bearers) that have the option of violence, or as the one WOTC guy says, "harm",in the interview. So no harsh words either. Yeah, that is what WOTC envisions as the direction of D&D.
You're seriously offended by Thaco the Clown from Witchlight? You're upset about the inclusion of an espresso machine and baby displacer beast in newer books? Dude. Grow a sense of humor. If you're offended by the depiction of a joke character in a book as being a grumpy gatekeeper and are getting your feathers ruffled by goofiness in newer D&D books, maybe you're taking the book (and D&D as a whole) a bit too seriously. D&D has always had bad jokes and goofiness in the game. Spelljammer and Planescape were both extremely goofy, and they've both been around since 2e. Owlbears, Beholders, and Flumphs have been a part of the game for several decades. Almost all of the material components required for spells are just bad jokes. D&D is goofy and has been since it came out. None of the newer stuff is any weirder/goofier than the Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, which Gygax himself wrote.
The Shield Bearers give a hook for the party as an excuse for why the utopic city of the Radiant Citadel needs the adventuring party's help. And, in case you hadn't noticed some major events in the past couple of years, there are a few huge reasons why some People of Color might imagine a perfect world as not having a police force.
I want them to create books devoted to creature types, ala Draconomicon style.
Like Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons?
Yes actually, but for other creatures. I’d love to have a book that talks about the other creature types and adds themed player options and tables for creating interesting creatures and plot hooks, and even give us a bestiary of new creatures of the given type. Especially for creature types that need more options like Celestial and Fey.
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"Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup."
I want them to create books devoted to creature types, ala Draconomicon style.
Like Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons?
Yes actually, but for other creatures. I’d love to have a book that talks about the other creature types and adds themed player options and tables for creating interesting creatures and plot hooks, and even give us a bestiary of new creatures of the given type. Especially for creature types that need more options like Celestial and Fey.
The fact that a fashion show, an espresso machine, and a pet displacer beast for orphans even are put down on paper in a book that is considered "D&D canon" is all I need to know where WOTC is taking the game. (Oh, and we must not forget "THACO, the angry old gatekeeping clown"). Or, in the new book, where there is no such thing as police (Shield Bearers) that have the option of violence, or as the one WOTC guy says, "harm",in the interview. So no harsh words either. Yeah, that is what WOTC envisions as the direction of D&D.
You're seriously offended by Thaco the Clown from Witchlight? You're upset about the inclusion of an espresso machine and baby displacer beast in newer books? Dude. Grow a sense of humor. If you're offended by the depiction of a joke character in a book as being a grumpy gatekeeper and are getting your feathers ruffled by goofiness in newer D&D books, maybe you're taking the book (and D&D as a whole) a bit too seriously. D&D has always had bad jokes and goofiness in the game. Spelljammer and Planescape were both extremely goofy, and they've both been around since 2e. Owlbears, Beholders, and Flumphs have been a part of the game for several decades. Almost all of the material components required for spells are just bad jokes. D&D is goofy and has been since it came out. None of the newer stuff is any weirder/goofier than the Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, which Gygax himself wrote.
The Shield Bearers give a hook for the party as an excuse for why the utopic city of the Radiant Citadel needs the adventuring party's help. And, in case you hadn't noticed some major events in the past couple of years, there are a few huge reasons why some People of Color might imagine a perfect world as not having a police force.
Edit: Grammar and typos.
So, Beholders, an iconic monster from the 1st edition are "goofy"? Nice try. Same for Owlbears, or even Flumphs. And spell components are bad jokes???
Have you looked at material components? All the ones dating back to TSR are some sort of joke.
So, Beholders, an iconic monster from the 1st edition are "goofy"?
Uh, yeah. Yeah, they really are. Look at this thing:
That's the 1e art of the beholder. If you can look at that and say that you don't think that it looks goofy, you're lying.
Beholders are giant floating spherical heads with 11 magic eyeballs. The most iconic Beholder in D&D's history, Xanathar, has a pet goldfish that he loves more than anything in the world and would try to kill everyone in Waterdeep if he ever discovered that it died. Beholders are goofy as ****.
Same for Owlbears, or even Flumphs.
Again, look at the original art of these creatures.
Look at me with a straight face and tell me that it isn't goofy.
I'm not even going to post the art for the Flumph. The Flumph art in all editions is goofy.
Flumphs are religious psychic floating pancake-jellyfish that live in colonies called cloisters. They're super goofy and always have been.
Methinks thou dost protest too much. D&D has always been goofy and always should be. Flumphs are goofier than anything that has appeared in both Witchlight or Strixhaven.
And spell components are bad jokes???
Uhh, yeah.
The material component for detect thoughts is a copper piece. Also known as a "penny". You know, as in the phrase "penny for your thoughts?"
Gust of Wind's material component is a legume seed. Also known as a bean. A bean that creates a "gust of wind". The spell is literally a fart joke.
Passwall requires sesame seeds. You know, "open sesame"?
Feeblemind's material component is a joke about "losing your marbles."
I could go on. There are tons of examples. A lot of spells' material components (many of which date back to 1e) are just jokes or references.
Thread is for discussing one's most desired change in D&D. Threads meander, but this one is meandering in directions that have already gotten countless threads locked.
Yurei's warning stands.
Keep this thread on topic or create another to discuss the merits and themes of old vs new content*. Continued derailment will be considered non-constructive.
Tbh I wouldn’t change anything about 5e, at least not that I can think of offhand. I’ve played 3e and I’ve read the rules and source material for 2e and 4e and in my opinion 5e is the best of all of them so far. It brought me back to D&D when I thought I had left for good to play World of Darkness and other Onyx Path/White Wolf games, and now I prefer D&D 5e to those games overall. I have never seen a published adventure for 5e I really hated, and I loved the last three. (Even Princes of the Apocalypse, which felt kinda like a video game to me, I was able to make work for my group once I made a few minor changes to the villains to make them more relatable.)
Also, I don’t think the current focus on RP is a fad. As other posters have pointed out, it’s been around at least since 2e (though definitely not all players play that way). It may come and go in waves, but in the end it always comes back because significant numbers of players want that.
I haven't read Pathfinder exhaustively, but I've seen a bit of it (game podcast I love runs it) and heard a bit of it. If I were to change one thing in 5e that I think would improve it, it would be to bring Pathfinder's philosophy on combat actions into it. The 3-action system, being able to hold your action, those things. It makes a little bit more sense, seems to run a little more smoothly, and gives players and creatures alike a lot more flexibility on their turn. (And having to track what things are "actions" and "bonus actions" I mean come on.)
If my table wasn't already chaotic enough with my experimental mentality and constantly changing the rules, and if my players didn't rely on DDB for their sheets, I'd be tempted to try and jury-rig that system into my 5e campaign. As a DM I don't have the time or desire to try and figure out all of Pathfinder, I do appreciate 5e's simplicity, but their action system just seems objectively better.
And I think some of Pathfinder's combat maneuvers would be a really nice way to spice up the non-magical classes, but the title says one thing.
This! Along with a conversion to the metric system. I have to constantly keep checking if my imperial to metric conversion is accurate. Using imperial is just a mess and it makes my players confused about distances and weights.
This! Along with a conversion to the metric system. I have to constantly keep checking if my imperial to metric conversion is accurate. Using imperial is just a mess and it makes my players confused about distances and weights.
You shouldn't need to be wickedly precise with conversions; nothing in D&D will break if you treat a five-foot space as two meters for ease of convenience, treat a pound as half a kilo, treat a mile as two kilometers, and so forth. So long as the quick-and-easy conversions are consistently so, the game will work just fine.
Heh...side tangent: I know a lot of folks like to meme on the U.S. for sticking to their guns with the Imperial system, but man. As someone who works with Metric daily for my job, I can say this - we all know Metric makes more logical sense, but that doesn't stop us from knowing intuitively what various Imperial measurements are after a lifetime of using them that we just don't get with Metric. Like, I can know in my head that a kilogram maps to two pounds and change, and when someone tells me they mass eighty kilos it's the work of maybe two seconds to pull up the mental conversion chart and say "Oh, okay, in the ballpark of a hundred-seventy counting the change." But that doesn't mean the phrase "I mass eighty kilos" has any intuitive meaning to me. I can know and agree in my head and heart that Metric is more useful overall, but that doesn't mean I grew up with it and know in my gut what a kilo or a meter is.
Plus, let's face it - Celsius degrees cover a range of, like...forty-five Farenheit degrees per Celsius degree. The range of variance in a Celsius degree is so high you need mili-degrees to get a useful measurement. I can say to someone who grew up with Metric "oh, it's about twenty, twenty-five degrees out" and that person will still have absolutely no idea how they need to dress because "twenty to twenty-five" Celsius covers anything from Farenheit forty to Farenheit two hundred and three :P
Well the thing is that this makes the game confusing for new players. And also different DM:s have their own approximation of the what the imperial to metric system conversion should be. So when you start a game you have to figure this out so that no confusion arises. As a example: "How far can i throw this javelin?" "A 100 feet? How far is that!?" This happens every single game, and i have played DnD for years.
I also think that it is just a case of familiarity that makes the US stick with the imperial system. For me (and i think i speak for the rest of the world) the metric system is much more precise and logical. You guys can keep using the imperial system in the US, but please give the rest of us a metric version of DnD!
Well the thing is that this makes the game confusing for new players. And also different DM:s have their own approximation of the what the imperial to metric system conversion should be. So when you start a game you have to figure this out so that no confusion arises. As a example: "How far can i throw this javelin?" "A 100 feet? How far is that!?" This happens every single game, and i have played DnD for years.
I also think that it is just a case of familiarity that makes the US stick with the imperial system. For me (and i think i speak for the rest of the world) the metric system is much more precise and logical. You guys can keep using the imperial system in the US, but please give the rest of us a metric version of DnD!
This! Along with a conversion to the metric system. I have to constantly keep checking if my imperial to metric conversion is accurate. Using imperial is just a mess and it makes my players confused about distances and weights.
You shouldn't need to be wickedly precise with conversions; nothing in D&D will break if you treat a five-foot space as two meters for ease of convenience, treat a pound as half a kilo, treat a mile as two kilometers, and so forth. So long as the quick-and-easy conversions are consistently so, the game will work just fine.
Heh...side tangent: I know a lot of folks like to meme on the U.S. for sticking to their guns with the Imperial system, but man. As someone who works with Metric daily for my job, I can say this - we all know Metric makes more logical sense, but that doesn't stop us from knowing intuitively what various Imperial measurements are after a lifetime of using them that we just don't get with Metric. Like, I can know in my head that a kilogram maps to two pounds and change, and when someone tells me they mass eighty kilos it's the work of maybe two seconds to pull up the mental conversion chart and say "Oh, okay, in the ballpark of a hundred-seventy counting the change." But that doesn't mean the phrase "I mass eighty kilos" has any intuitive meaning to me. I can know and agree in my head and heart that Metric is more useful overall, but that doesn't mean I grew up with it and know in my gut what a kilo or a meter is.
Plus, let's face it - Celsius degrees cover a range of, like...forty-five Farenheit degrees per Celsius degree. The range of variance in a Celsius degree is so high you need mili-degrees to get a useful measurement. I can say to someone who grew up with Metric "oh, it's about twenty, twenty-five degrees out" and that person will still have absolutely no idea how they need to dress because "twenty to twenty-five" Celsius covers anything from Farenheit forty to Farenheit two hundred and three :P
I simplify it as 5 ft = 1.5 m, 10 lbs = 4.5 kg, 1 mi = 1.6 km. (The rest of the world is also better at using decimals than most Americans too.) My players all use the imperial system, but the metric makes more sense to me personally. To me, 80 kg makes as much sense as 170 lbs, but 1 m & 1 km are way more intuitive than 3ish ft & however the eff many ft a mile is. 🤷♂️
As to Celsius Vs Fahrenheit, Fahrenheit only makes sense when cooking, for the weather I have to convert it to Celsius to really understand it because 68° and 77° are so arbitrary but 20° makes sense as a comfy temperature, and 25° is starting to get warm. 😉 (it’s actually only 1.8 degrees from F to C, after you account for the arbitrary 32° water freezes at in F. (WTF?!? 🤷♂️)
Well the thing is that this makes the game confusing for new players. And also different DM:s have their own approximation of the what the imperial to metric system conversion should be. So when you start a game you have to figure this out so that no confusion arises. As a example: "How far can i throw this javelin?" "A 100 feet? How far is that!?" This happens every single game, and i have played DnD for years.
30 m
I also think that it is just a case of familiarity that makes the US stick with the imperial system. For me (and i think i speak for the rest of the world) the metric system is much more precise and logical. You guys can keep using the imperial system in the US, but please give the rest of us a metric version of DnD!
It’s entirely a matter of familiarity, what I call “the used to factor.” But this American prefers metric himself too.
As someone who uses both metric and imperial in a worrying mix...I vote to stay imperial. It's much more natural.
Take reach. You could do 1m, but really, that's the range that, if you wanted to be really crunchy, would be at disadvantage. It's little more than arm's reach, and awkward to defend. Make 2m and it's actually pretty difficult to defend and therefore control out to that distance. Make it 1.5m and it's a pretty reasonable approximation of 5ft and not better or worse...except that .5m makes the maths really awkward when I really don't want to focus on maths. 5ft divides nicely into all the common distances, we all learn the five times table and so takes less cognitive load than 1.5m.
Feet also has a much more medieval tone to it than metres.
Temperature I agree with, Fahrenheit is not a logical method. It's probably kept either out of inertia, being part of imperial or just American preference. It doesn't make sense except to Americans or old fogeys in the UK.
I'd be fine with it if they did distances in feet with a metric distance in brackets or something, but I wouldn't want them to be solely in metric. Temperature I wish they'd go metric already.
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
I will admit, the lack of intermediate units in metric annoys the hell out of me. There's no equivalent to the foot in the Metric system. And before some genius says "what about decimeters, huh?!"...point me to one single individual in the whole-ass world that has EVER used a decimeter for measurement. Sure, you could do the one-point-five meters as "Fifteen decimeters", but then every session zero would need to be a remedial math class to remind people that there's technically a unit between Meter and Centimeter. Those roughly-a-foot measurements are important for a number of things, in both D&D and general reality, and it's always been the one real failing of Metric in my brain.
The measurement system a game uses says something about the game. D&D uses imperial units because it's a pseudo-medieval, quasi-renaissance game, and using meters would be discordant with that theme. Star Wars uses metric because it's sci-fi space fantasy, and using feet would be discordant with the theme.
If you don't want the measurement system to be an "in-fiction" thing, that's fine, and the most straightforward solution then is to use 4e's policy where ranges are just measured in grid squares.
Plus, let's face it - Celsius degrees cover a range of, like...forty-five Farenheit degrees per Celsius degree. The range of variance in a Celsius degree is so high you need mili-degrees to get a useful measurement. I can say to someone who grew up with Metric "oh, it's about twenty, twenty-five degrees out" and that person will still have absolutely no idea how they need to dress because "twenty to twenty-five" Celsius covers anything from Farenheit forty to Farenheit two hundred and three :P
20 Celsius is 68 Fahrenheit, 25 Celsius is 77 Fahrenheit. The real difference between Celsius and Fahrenheit is that Celsius is way more useful for science, as it is based around the boiling and freezing temperatures of water, while Fahrenheit 0 is based around the lowest temperature that Mr. Fahrenheit could get a solution of saltwater down to (Salt lowers the freezing temperature of water.)
Despite the fact that Americans don't have an intuitive knowledge of Metric like you do Imperial, it would be FAR better for you guys to switch to what the rest of the world uses. In 1999 there was miscommunication at NASA about what system measurements to use and it resulted in a Mars orbiter worth 125 million dollars crashing. If schools started teaching kids in America metric, then they would have the same intuitive understanding of it that you do now.
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“I will take responsibility for what I have done. [...] If must fall, I will rise each time a better man.” ― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer.
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I just watched that video. I think that there are some really interesting things that could go on there.
1.) I like the idea of a campaign world made by black and brown people from the stories they grew up with
2.) These shield bearers have potential. Imagine PCs coming across a minority group who are being horribly persecuted by a dominant group of people. There is a large group of shield bearers present, but they aren't doing jack to stop the persecution, because that would be against their code, they just bandage the wounded. You can show the failures of the shield bearer code and how the adventurers have to step in to make positive change.
3.) These crystal creatures which are manifestations of stories? What if it is a horror story or a tale of oppression?
You're seriously offended by Thaco the Clown from Witchlight? You're upset about the inclusion of an espresso machine and baby displacer beast in newer books? Dude. Grow a sense of humor. If you're offended by the depiction of a joke character in a book as being a grumpy gatekeeper and are getting your feathers ruffled by goofiness in newer D&D books, maybe you're taking the book (and D&D as a whole) a bit too seriously. D&D has always had bad jokes and goofiness in the game. Spelljammer and Planescape were both extremely goofy, and they've both been around since 2e. Owlbears, Beholders, and Flumphs have been a part of the game for several decades. Almost all of the material components required for spells are just bad jokes. D&D is goofy and has been since it came out. None of the newer stuff is any weirder/goofier than the Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, which Gygax himself wrote.
The Shield Bearers give a hook for the party as an excuse for why the utopic city of the Radiant Citadel needs the adventuring party's help. And, in case you hadn't noticed some major events in the past couple of years, there are a few huge reasons why some People of Color might imagine a perfect world as not having a police force.
Edit: Grammar and typos.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
Don't forget the Bullette
Like Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons?
Yes actually, but for other creatures. I’d love to have a book that talks about the other creature types and adds themed player options and tables for creating interesting creatures and plot hooks, and even give us a bestiary of new creatures of the given type. Especially for creature types that need more options like Celestial and Fey.
"Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup."
Characters for Tenebris Sine Fine
RoughCoronet's Greater Wills
That’s a great idea!
Have you looked at material components? All the ones dating back to TSR are some sort of joke.
I have a weird sense of humor.
I also make maps.(That's a link)
Uh, yeah. Yeah, they really are. Look at this thing:
That's the 1e art of the beholder. If you can look at that and say that you don't think that it looks goofy, you're lying.
Beholders are giant floating spherical heads with 11 magic eyeballs. The most iconic Beholder in D&D's history, Xanathar, has a pet goldfish that he loves more than anything in the world and would try to kill everyone in Waterdeep if he ever discovered that it died. Beholders are goofy as ****.
Again, look at the original art of these creatures.
This is the original owlbear.
Look at me with a straight face and tell me that it isn't goofy.
I'm not even going to post the art for the Flumph. The Flumph art in all editions is goofy.
Flumphs are religious psychic floating pancake-jellyfish that live in colonies called cloisters. They're super goofy and always have been.
Methinks thou dost protest too much. D&D has always been goofy and always should be. Flumphs are goofier than anything that has appeared in both Witchlight or Strixhaven.
Uhh, yeah.
The material component for detect thoughts is a copper piece. Also known as a "penny". You know, as in the phrase "penny for your thoughts?"
Gust of Wind's material component is a legume seed. Also known as a bean. A bean that creates a "gust of wind". The spell is literally a fart joke.
Passwall requires sesame seeds. You know, "open sesame"?
Feeblemind's material component is a joke about "losing your marbles."
I could go on. There are tons of examples. A lot of spells' material components (many of which date back to 1e) are just jokes or references.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
Yurei's warning stands.
Keep this thread on topic or create another to discuss the merits and themes of old vs new content*. Continued derailment will be considered non-constructive.
*Those threads never end with happiness.
Tbh I wouldn’t change anything about 5e, at least not that I can think of offhand. I’ve played 3e and I’ve read the rules and source material for 2e and 4e and in my opinion 5e is the best of all of them so far. It brought me back to D&D when I thought I had left for good to play World of Darkness and other Onyx Path/White Wolf games, and now I prefer D&D 5e to those games overall. I have never seen a published adventure for 5e I really hated, and I loved the last three. (Even Princes of the Apocalypse, which felt kinda like a video game to me, I was able to make work for my group once I made a few minor changes to the villains to make them more relatable.)
Also, I don’t think the current focus on RP is a fad. As other posters have pointed out, it’s been around at least since 2e (though definitely not all players play that way). It may come and go in waves, but in the end it always comes back because significant numbers of players want that.
This! Along with a conversion to the metric system. I have to constantly keep checking if my imperial to metric conversion is accurate. Using imperial is just a mess and it makes my players confused about distances and weights.
You shouldn't need to be wickedly precise with conversions; nothing in D&D will break if you treat a five-foot space as two meters for ease of convenience, treat a pound as half a kilo, treat a mile as two kilometers, and so forth. So long as the quick-and-easy conversions are consistently so, the game will work just fine.
Heh...side tangent: I know a lot of folks like to meme on the U.S. for sticking to their guns with the Imperial system, but man. As someone who works with Metric daily for my job, I can say this - we all know Metric makes more logical sense, but that doesn't stop us from knowing intuitively what various Imperial measurements are after a lifetime of using them that we just don't get with Metric. Like, I can know in my head that a kilogram maps to two pounds and change, and when someone tells me they mass eighty kilos it's the work of maybe two seconds to pull up the mental conversion chart and say "Oh, okay, in the ballpark of a hundred-seventy counting the change." But that doesn't mean the phrase "I mass eighty kilos" has any intuitive meaning to me. I can know and agree in my head and heart that Metric is more useful overall, but that doesn't mean I grew up with it and know in my gut what a kilo or a meter is.
Plus, let's face it - Celsius degrees cover a range of, like...forty-five Farenheit degrees per Celsius degree. The range of variance in a Celsius degree is so high you need mili-degrees to get a useful measurement. I can say to someone who grew up with Metric "oh, it's about twenty, twenty-five degrees out" and that person will still have absolutely no idea how they need to dress because "twenty to twenty-five" Celsius covers anything from Farenheit forty to Farenheit two hundred and three :P
Please do not contact or message me.
Well the thing is that this makes the game confusing for new players. And also different DM:s have their own approximation of the what the imperial to metric system conversion should be. So when you start a game you have to figure this out so that no confusion arises. As a example: "How far can i throw this javelin?" "A 100 feet? How far is that!?" This happens every single game, and i have played DnD for years.
I also think that it is just a case of familiarity that makes the US stick with the imperial system. For me (and i think i speak for the rest of the world) the metric system is much more precise and logical. You guys can keep using the imperial system in the US, but please give the rest of us a metric version of DnD!
Well the thing is that this makes the game confusing for new players. And also different DM:s have their own approximation of the what the imperial to metric system conversion should be. So when you start a game you have to figure this out so that no confusion arises. As a example: "How far can i throw this javelin?" "A 100 feet? How far is that!?" This happens every single game, and i have played DnD for years.
I also think that it is just a case of familiarity that makes the US stick with the imperial system. For me (and i think i speak for the rest of the world) the metric system is much more precise and logical. You guys can keep using the imperial system in the US, but please give the rest of us a metric version of DnD!
I simplify it as 5 ft = 1.5 m, 10 lbs = 4.5 kg, 1 mi = 1.6 km. (The rest of the world is also better at using decimals than most Americans too.) My players all use the imperial system, but the metric makes more sense to me personally. To me, 80 kg makes as much sense as 170 lbs, but 1 m & 1 km are way more intuitive than 3ish ft & however the eff many ft a mile is. 🤷♂️
As to Celsius Vs Fahrenheit, Fahrenheit only makes sense when cooking, for the weather I have to convert it to Celsius to really understand it because 68° and 77° are so arbitrary but 20° makes sense as a comfy temperature, and 25° is starting to get warm. 😉 (it’s actually only 1.8 degrees from F to C, after you account for the arbitrary 32° water freezes at in F. (WTF?!? 🤷♂️)
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
30 m
It’s entirely a matter of familiarity, what I call “the used to factor.” But this American prefers metric himself too.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
As someone who uses both metric and imperial in a worrying mix...I vote to stay imperial. It's much more natural.
Take reach. You could do 1m, but really, that's the range that, if you wanted to be really crunchy, would be at disadvantage. It's little more than arm's reach, and awkward to defend. Make 2m and it's actually pretty difficult to defend and therefore control out to that distance. Make it 1.5m and it's a pretty reasonable approximation of 5ft and not better or worse...except that .5m makes the maths really awkward when I really don't want to focus on maths. 5ft divides nicely into all the common distances, we all learn the five times table and so takes less cognitive load than 1.5m.
Feet also has a much more medieval tone to it than metres.
Temperature I agree with, Fahrenheit is not a logical method. It's probably kept either out of inertia, being part of imperial or just American preference. It doesn't make sense except to Americans or old fogeys in the UK.
I'd be fine with it if they did distances in feet with a metric distance in brackets or something, but I wouldn't want them to be solely in metric. Temperature I wish they'd go metric already.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
I will admit, the lack of intermediate units in metric annoys the hell out of me. There's no equivalent to the foot in the Metric system. And before some genius says "what about decimeters, huh?!"...point me to one single individual in the whole-ass world that has EVER used a decimeter for measurement. Sure, you could do the one-point-five meters as "Fifteen decimeters", but then every session zero would need to be a remedial math class to remind people that there's technically a unit between Meter and Centimeter. Those roughly-a-foot measurements are important for a number of things, in both D&D and general reality, and it's always been the one real failing of Metric in my brain.
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The measurement system a game uses says something about the game. D&D uses imperial units because it's a pseudo-medieval, quasi-renaissance game, and using meters would be discordant with that theme. Star Wars uses metric because it's sci-fi space fantasy, and using feet would be discordant with the theme.
If you don't want the measurement system to be an "in-fiction" thing, that's fine, and the most straightforward solution then is to use 4e's policy where ranges are just measured in grid squares.
20 Celsius is 68 Fahrenheit, 25 Celsius is 77 Fahrenheit.
The real difference between Celsius and Fahrenheit is that Celsius is way more useful for science, as it is based around the boiling and freezing temperatures of water, while Fahrenheit 0 is based around the lowest temperature that Mr. Fahrenheit could get a solution of saltwater down to (Salt lowers the freezing temperature of water.)
Despite the fact that Americans don't have an intuitive knowledge of Metric like you do Imperial, it would be FAR better for you guys to switch to what the rest of the world uses. In 1999 there was miscommunication at NASA about what system measurements to use and it resulted in a Mars orbiter worth 125 million dollars crashing. If schools started teaching kids in America metric, then they would have the same intuitive understanding of it that you do now.
“I will take responsibility for what I have done. [...] If must fall, I will rise each time a better man.” ― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer.