Basic Fantasy RPG Forums

tankgo wrote:By the way, most RPG rulebooks I have seen (including my OD&D B/X/C and modules) all used the metric system.

Wow, well, that's curious. "OD&D" generally refers to the 1974 three-little-books, with or without supplements; but B/X/C implies the Mentzer edition, circa 1983. I've read both editions, and both are strictly non-metric. I'm assuming, when they translated them into French, they converted them to metric. Since, as I say, I am American, naturally my rules mimic the classic American editions of the game.

But also, as I said above, I'm more than willing to work with translators. Release 75 of the rules seems pretty solid now, so it would be "safe" to begin translating it. Due to the art rights and the Product Identity License, you can't legally undertake translating the rules without my permission, but that's hardly an issue... just email me and ask, and send the translated rules to me.

You mentioned Simone Felli's conversions; I don't think I've seen those. I'd post them on the site if I had them in hand.

He is talking about the Basic Fantasy Charts & Tables download. It has english to metric conversions at the end.

I do remember that when I first discovered BFRPG there were people translating it into swiss or something.

Converting Imperial to metric is easy-peasy, especially in something where rough estimations are perfectly fine, like an RPG.

1 kilogram is equal to .454 lbs.
So approximating it as half works fine.

1 meters is equal to 3.281 feet, or 1.094 yards.
This is little trickier, but still easy.

Overland movement and ranges are counted in yards.
So every yard is one meter.

Dungeon movement and ranges are counted in 5-foot intervals.
So every 5-feet is 1.5 meters.

I think we are both right, Solo => my B/X/C Moldvay/Mentzer book are French editions and definitely metric...
And I did not know that the OD&D acronym was reserved to the 1974 white books.
Another subject for RPG geeks discussions

I will use this as an opportunity to put out a call for anyone with a secondary language skill to go ahead and put together some translated versions. The Open Office version of r75 is available, one only needs to begin translation... once finished, it can be submitted to Solomoriah to do the finishing work to convert to pdf (as text lengths will vary).

I am sure that if we get some work going, we can put up a forum section specific to the language, so that discussion regarding exact translation can take place.

It is work like this that can expand the player base and really grow the distribution of the game. If you have the skill, please take up the challenge (as I am unfortunately a mono-lingual English speaker).