Thread 96219373

I've seen ample complains about "Common" language or a single universally accepted currency, but few people seem to acknowledge how ridiculous is universal measurement system. Mankind couldn't get there in 21 centuries of civilisation. How could a world with dozens of races that have far more varied morphology?

>>96219373 (OP)
Gods gave it to them, or it's the legacy of ancient precursors who once ruled the whole world, or something of that sort. Alternatively, maybe there's a bunch of different measurement systems in-setting, but the game uses one familiar system when giving information to players instead of spending wordcount on a worldbuilding detail that doesn't matter much to most campaigns.

>>96219373 (OP)
People across the world have used similar units of measure through history, even if they didn't know it or use the same names for it. Paces, lengths of different body parts, etc. Of course they weren't scientifically accurate, but it was better than nothing and for the most part quite consistent. Gold and silver were accepted currencies around the globe for the most part. Of course some cultures might use something different, but if they interacted with the other cultures, they'd start to use the same resources for simplicity.

Hey heres a crazy thought. Rather than converting 7 faerunian bushels at 7 coppers ahead to 9 goranthan bushels at 6 crowns, why dont we use the numbers we already use every day and play the fucking game?

>>96219373 (OP)
Measurement system based on unearthed tools from a more advanced ancient civilization.

>>96219373 (OP)
Not sharing a language is potentially relevant as it affects who you can communicate with. Not sharing a measurement system does not, as you can just convert. It would have no function in the game beyond pointless busywork.

>>96219373 (OP)
>how could a world, which is the product of imagining impossible/highly improbable things, do this thing that was almost impossible for our world to do?
Beats me.
Hey, do you want to talk about games now? I'm tired of talking about history and manga.

>>96219373 (OP)
Set a detail in your world that either it is in a place where everyone is following the currently-strongest nation's sphere of influence ("Common" is just the official language of the empire, so everyone is forced to standardize anyway) or that your not!Atlantis/Hyperborea/SuperRome that eventually fell managed to conquer the entire world and create a standard of measurements before falling, so the current global standards are based on that (with local ones still existing in holdouts).
In either case, there could be a problem caused by the difference in measurements that leads to an incident for the party to solve.
>1 [Standard inch] is essentially 2.07 [Local inches]
>everyone just makes it 1:2 for ease of use
>something requires 100 Standard
>novice messed up converting between Standard and Local
>does 200 Local when he should have done 207
>squabbles ensue, party has to step in

Something smallscale that can establish it as a thing NPCs have to worry about, but it would be presumed to be corrected by the time it gets to PCs from then on, like how we don't tend to question payment processors auto-converting between foreign currencies.

>>96220948
Anyway, to answer your question, nobody questions lizardmen using the exact same units of measurement as humans because they're usually close enough together. The fact that you're usually not having to travel to the exact opposite end of the world to visit them means that you can excuse them understanding what your measurements are and how it converts to their system.

tl;dr - In-universe everyone is assumed to know it through proximity, and no Players want to waste time with the conversions anyway.

>>96219373 (OP)
They just messure based on the weird grid pattern that's always on the ground.

OP sure seems interested in his thread topic, what with all that engagement with the people who replied to him...I think it's fine to ask even kind of silly or pointless /tg/-related questions here, but I'm genuinely kind of pissed off about the amount of fire-and-forget threads we have, ones that someone makes and immediately abandons.

>>96221194
I give it this, it's far more relevant than most of the shitpost threads on here. I know that it'd be more 'realistic' for characters to have communication issues if their character doesn't have a [common] language, but working around it takes up much more time at the table than I'm usually willing to put in. So I sacrifice a degree of realism to skip over certain details like language or units of measurement or currency exchange for the sake of convenience.

Hello, my name is Daniel Fahrenheit, I defined a scale for measuring temperature by dumping a bucket of salt into a bucket of slush and freezing it instead of using normal water because I'm a little bitch.

>>96221544
I'm Anders Celsius, I used normal plain water to define 0 and 100 because I'm not a fucking retard who wastes perfectly good salt by dumping it in a bucket of slush

>>96221554
Unfortunately you chose an incredibly arbitrary measurement in an incredibly arbitrary location so stop pretending you're in any way "more" scientific.
The average atmospheric pressure at the average sea level on planet earth in 1742 is not a constant, bitch. The sea level, the earth's atmosphere, and the earth itself are all inconstant entities.

>>96221935
>Gravity sucks because you might be upside down

>>96219709
Too bad average player can't tell the difference between etalon and ethanol.

>>96221544
Thank you Mr. Fahrenheit for providing a convenient, everyday measurement system relevant to the temperature ranges humans typically experience!
>>96221554
Fuck you, faggot, for providing a useless and arbitrary measurement that provides no benefit beyond making autists stim themselves in glee over nice clean numbers.

>>96219560
And while we're at it, let's assume the characters share a language so we can communicate meaningfully in character.
The game isn't called conversions and translations OP.

>>96221544
>dumping a bucket of salt
That's the story he told, but I'm sure he pissed into the bucket and observed when it froze. Why? Because the eutectic water-brine solution he described doesn't have a freezing point of 0°F. He froze a bucket of his own piss and passed it off as hard science.
>>96222376
Fahrenheit's scale is also calibrated to the freezing and boiling points of water, just that he used the weird-ass numbers of 32 and 212. And he also added the body temperature of a human experiencing severe hypothermia and the freezing point of his piss in a bucket, as mentioned above.

>>96219373 (OP)
That is what the fallen ancient empire whose ruins your adventurers are probably bumping into at least once or twice is for
Thank Rome for making it plausible

>>96219411

"We don't know what it says or who made it, but buildings fall down less if we all use the same measurements."

>>96223958
Sir, this is /tg/. I believe you're looking for /lit/.

>>96222150
This is true, though. Gravity would suck if you were upside down.

>>96223958
>>96224256
>STOP WORLDBUILDING
>JUST MAKE A DUNGEON

>>96224974
See those words? The green ones, after the little arrow? That's my unironic opinion :)

>>96223040
IIRC he sold/made thermometers and the arbitrary points of boiling and freezing were just the most convenient to put on said thermometers. Still better than metric

Metric is gay. We use fingers in this house.

>>96219373 (OP)
Traditional games?

>>96225184
It's not better than metric just because you're more used to it.

>>96219373 (OP)
It's easier to just say everyone mostly speaks one language and all then have 4 or 5 different languages often coming around. Especially since most people only known one or two. So yeah, it's a "Wizard did it" handwave mostly.

Though I have been writing a story and game system where things like measurements and language has more than one type and no "basic." Though there are languages that are heavy towards for reasons. Like many bards and casters will learn elvish due to many poets and wizards being elves or taught by elves. Where crafters might learn drawish for the same reason. Also makes having the one guy do all social checks needing to know the correct language.

>>96225217
Fingers? Just use the whole bottle.
Bottles and football fields, that's how we measure in this house.

>>96221214
I once went on a jidaigeki bender and tried to base monetary units in my games on ancient Japanese rates of exchange lmao
It didn't go over well with my players

>>96221194
The board is so slow it's hardly worth checking any thread, including your own, more than once a day. Twice at most.

>>96224974
Based, if your gameworld doesn't look like this, I don't wanna play

>>96222376
water boils at 100 and freezes at 0 celcius, how is that not relevent to day to day

>>96226745
I rarely need to precisely boil water.

>>96226745
Himalayan sherpas would disagree

>>96226892
Figures that you sank the tea in Boston Harbor.

>>96225442
It's better than metric because it put men on the moon.

>>96226589
For me it's school busses

>>96221057
I was genuinely not aware how much shit descended from Egyptian hieroglyphs. Like Greek, I could've assumed. Not shit as far as India and Thailand.

>>96231440
Airbuses, Boeings, Humvees, Elephants, and recent favorite "combined power of all cars in Formula 1 race"

>>96219373 (OP)
>I've seen ample complains about "Common" language
makes the game simpler because the player characters not understanding each other is dumb for gameplay purposes

> or a single universally accepted currency
even back in the ADnD days, it would say different coinages existed and each place had its own
they were all just gold at the end of the day and everyone accepted foreign currency as long as it was also gold

and also for gameplay reasons, you could instantly tell how much treasure was worth in terms of gold
this includes any coins you find

>>96226892
The point is to have a physical point of reference to calibrate thermometers. Provided your local pressure is near 1 atm (and let's be fair, most people in need of calbrating thermometers in Celsius's and Fahrenheit's day would be near sea level, the Nepalese were not known for their thermometer manuafacture), you can verify by boiling water for celsius. It's a physical constant that easily created in any lab. Using a brine instead of fresh water for defining the lower point is ok, just a little less practical, but using an approximate body temperature on the upper end is just dumb, which is why people working with Fahrenheit scale thermometers will typically also use boiling water to find 212F.
Fahrenheit chose bad reference points, which is why today his scale is defined in reference to the SI scale, while SI has physical points of reference.

>>96219373 (OP)
where is the OP image from?

>>96221544
>>96221554
Gentlemen, please, how could there be such a thing as negative amount of temperature?

>>96231398
Nasa uses metric, you inbred mixed race retard.

>>96234000
Wasn't that standardized after Mars Climate Orbiter debacle?