GURPS Spaceships Series

[Þorkell]

Originally Posted by ronom

I believe certain GURPS books possess conversion charts and there are simple formulas that help: KM to miles divide by 2 and add 5 for example.

What? I don't get it. 10km are just over 6 miles. 10 miles are roughly 16 km.

I don't see where divide by 2 and add 5 fits in here.

[Paul]

Originally Posted by David L Pulver

GDW got major sales in the eighties with books that were all-metric, though...

That's true. But were those sales a result of being metric, or was it the content, independent of the measuring system, that generated the sales?

[walkir]

Originally Posted by Paul

That's where the vast majority of our consumers live, yes.

Of course - how many tenth of a percent of the gamers outside the US are willing to pay for your products as long as those aren't metric?
In my opinion, it's the same reason Vehicles 2e didn't sell too well. While gaming, People want to have fun, not headaches or having to think about how big a person or item is in convenient units.

Don't get me wrong, I like GURPS. But I don't like the idea of having to use some units I am not able to see a system in if there already is a good system used by roughly >99% of the world's population and most scientists.

Steve Jackson Games does not produce any foreign language versions of our games; we license the properties to local publishers who do the translations.

And you would be able to get a lot of the money earned by them for your own company. As the vast majority of your customers are US americans, it shouldn't cannibalize much of your sales on the original editions, too.

[Pmandrekar]

Originally Posted by Paul

Once our primary target audience goes metric, we'll be happy to.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter

I work in scientific research, and I had to bring this up. Mars Climate Orbiter *crashed* because of confusion between whether data to upload was in metric or Imperial measurement systems... Just goes to show one of the dangers of working in different systems.

Also goes to show that sometimes even rocket scientists aren't, necessarily, rocket scientists :)

But having said that, I have to support SJ Games decision here. You write a game system for an audience, and if the audience works and thinks in feet and pounds, then you write the game system accordingly.

I would certainly prefer that everything were metric. I drive 9 miles to work, only to start working in millimeters and microliters all day.

-P.

[SCAR]

Many people in the UK use imperial measurement, Europe recently gave up trying to force Metrification (I've no idea if that is actually a real word) on us, so shops are still allowed to sell in Pounds and Ounces.

I know my height in inches and weight in pounds, in metres and kilograms I have no idea.
Distances are in Miles, Speeds in MPH (conversion to KM and KPH is easy enough).

So I for one, non-US citizen, support SJG in the use of Imperial measures!

Si

[Arazael]

It has to be said that sometimes metric is simply easier. I'm a scientist of sorts (physics and acoustics) and when performing calculations, SI units are much easier to use. That said, in real life I use imperial units. I'm English, not American, and I likewise think of distances in miles, speeds in MPH, my weight in stone, length of boats in feet, etc. Small distances are an exception, I can think in either, though people's heights I'm used to in feet.

[hackbarth]

In Brazil, the translated version of GURPS 3e was metric. The much-delayed 4e will also be, because no one here know about the imperial system.

I understand that SJGames need to sell books in imperial, doing otherwise would hurt sales, hurt the company and in the end hurt players because a company that sell less produce less.

But the rest of the world cant understand the head-in-a-hole mentality of the americans, rejecting a perfectly rational system for a "12 inches is a foot, 3 foots is a yard, 220 yards a furlong, 8 furlongs a mile, 16 ounces a pound, 14 pounds a stone, 2 stones a quarter, 4 quarters a hundredweight (with makes a hundredweight 112 pounds not 100, and do not confuse these quarters with quarter-pounds!)" system... It is enough to explode the brain of any rational being.

[balzacq]

Originally Posted by hackbarth

But the rest of the world cant understand the head-in-a-hole mentality of the americans, rejecting a perfectly rational system for a "12 inches is a foot, 3 foots is a yard, 220 yards a furlong, 8 furlongs a mile, 16 ounces a pound, 14 pounds a stone, 2 stones a quarter, 4 quarters a hundredweight (with makes a hundredweight 112 pounds not 100, and do not confuse these quarters with quarter-pounds!)" system... It is enough to explode the brain of any rational being.

This is akin to saying "Those crazy Russians, they have a different letter for everything!" You get comfortable with what you learn as a child, and that's all there is to it.

I've been comfortable with using the MKS system since at least junior high science class (30+ years), and I still have no intuitive, sense-memory idea of how much a kilogram weighs in the hand or how far a kilometer is to walk.

Basically, Americans don't need to change domestically, and the country and population are big enough that most people can get by on the English system just fine. It's not as if the definitions change every fifty or hundred miles (80-160km) or so like they did in pre-19th-century Europe.

(And by the way, nobody I've ever heard of still uses hundredweights; furlongs are only used in horse racing; and only Britons use stones and quarters, never Americans.)

[seasong]

I grew up with Imperial, but I can and do switch between the two. When I have to do a lot of calculations, I prefer to use metric. When I have to do a lot of estimates (and rely on my Imperial-trained eye), I prefer to use Imperial.

Still, I'd love to see a conversion to metric for all units of measurement: space, mass, energy, and time.

I've found kiloseconds to be very useful as a replacement candlemark, for example, and I celebrated my birth-gigasecond a few Earthling years ago. And 100 kiloseconds is closer to the natural human sleep cycle than this 24-hour day-night thing.

I can't understand the head-in-a-hole mentality of the Earthlings, rejecting a perfectly rational system for a "60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week, 30 days in a month, except for all the other months, 365 days in a year (so weeks don't divide evenly into a year)" system . . . It is enough to explode the brain of any rational being.

Especially when the Earthlings' own years don't even match up every time. And what are they going to do when they colonize Mars?

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Paul

That's true. But were those sales a result of being metric, or was it the content, independent of the measuring system, that generated the sales?

Largely content, but there's actually a content advantage for an SF game to use metric, because to the American consumer metric units look high-tech.

Of course, this applies in reverse to Fantasy.