Guildworld - Climate and Biome discussion

[waldronate]

So 15 degrees is 1609 km for the 95% of the world's population that don't use metric

From a historical/humorous perspective, this scale makes miles the "natural" distance measure because there are two nice round numbers there. Some cultures would undoubtedly view miles as evil in this scenario because there are 66.66666667 miles per degree of latitude (and sailors would undoubtedly go with 60 nautical miles per degree, just like the do at home - math is hard!) Others would no doubt celebrate the presence of both 2 and 3 in the miles per degree, as those are the first two prime numbers.

Now kilometers as a natural unit: 107.27km (give or take a few meters) per degree. That makes the math much simpler that some other silly system!

Clearly this world needs its own distance units. Probably calculated by lining up the first ten people coming out of church and taking the average length of some appendage or other. Maybe working in how much beast of burden can plow in a day at some random latitude, as well. Possibly a standard fraction of the amount of distance that an army unit in full gear can march in a day. Or take a bad estimate of the planet's pole-to-pole length and divide by some round number with lots of zeroes. Or every culture has its own distance units and maps that are sold into multiple markets will have multiple scales.

Well, then... too much history for today.

[J.Edward]

From a historical/humorous perspective, this scale makes miles the "natural" distance measure because there are two nice round numbers there. Some cultures would undoubtedly view miles as evil in this scenario because there are 66.66666667 miles per degree of latitude (and sailors would undoubtedly go with 60 nautical miles per degree, just like the do at home - math is hard!) Others would no doubt celebrate the presence of both 2 and 3 in the miles per degree, as those are the first two prime numbers.

Now kilometers as a natural unit: 107.27km (give or take a few meters) per degree. That makes the math much simpler that some other silly system!

Clearly this world needs its own distance units. Probably calculated by lining up the first ten people coming out of church and taking the average length of some appendage or other. Maybe working in how much beast of burden can plow in a day at some random latitude, as well. Possibly a standard fraction of the amount of distance that an army unit in full gear can march in a day. Or take a bad estimate of the planet's pole-to-pole length and divide by some round number with lots of zeroes. Or every culture has its own distance units and maps that are sold into multiple markets will have multiple scales.

Well, then... too much history for today.

Yes! That would be good. Multiple scales - once the main part of the mapping is done for the BIG map.
I can envision some of my people basing a measurement related to the mountains and valleys, as they're so prominent there.
Or even related to the circumference of the accepted standard size of a wheel of cheese.