Bicycles in fantasy?

[Bedrockgames]

Please note that this is not ment to be an overly serious thread

IRL bicycles are a relatively new invention and therefore very poor choices for quase-fantasy environment, BUT I'd like to have something new for the regular D&D. Something not too powerful but a fresh breeze into the game. Before I introduce this idea to my group, I'd like to sniff out the general consensus of Enworlders

So just out of curiosity, would you mind something like bicycles in your game? And also, how to stat them out according to... let's say... 3.5? Gnomish Warbicycle anyone?

Thumbs up or down?

I think it totally works. It isn't like your introducing a new level of tech just a new use for existing tech. I can easily see bicycles in a fantasy setting. Also woth noting that while bicycles were invented in the 1800s, tricycles have been around since the 1600s (not too far off from some fantasy settings).

 

[Bedrockgames]

I had a dream one time that I was transported in time back to the early Roman empire, and, since I had to make sufficient income to save myself from slavery, I invented the bicycle - which proved to be an enormous success because the Roman roads were as no other time in antiquity suitable for bicycling. Thereafter, the power of the Roman legions was greatly enhanced, as being moved by bicycle power about the Empire they could travel 100 miles or more in a day, and a whole system of depots was ordered by Augustus to support the feared bicycling Legions of Rome.

I think I'm just wierd that way.

That is a wonderful image: thousands of legionaries cycling to war.

 

[the Jester]

I had a dream one time that I was transported in time back to the early Roman empire, and, since I had to make sufficient income to save myself from slavery, I invented the bicycle - which proved to be an enormous success because the Roman roads were as no other time in antiquity suitable for bicycling. Thereafter, the power of the Roman legions was greatly enhanced, as being moved by bicycle power about the Empire they could travel 100 miles or more in a day, and a whole system of depots was ordered by Augustus to support the feared bicycling Legions of Rome.

I think I'm just wierd that way.

OMFG that's awesome.

I sincerely hope you don't mind if I steal that for a story some day.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I included a travelling tinker using a Penny Farthing cycle as a DM a few years ago, and my players didn't express any reservations. (Of course, we play in the world of Ptolus, which had been steampunk a few centuries ago, and which is now falling into a dark age.) I thought it worked fine. Basically, it's the game equivalent of a horse you don't feed, but which is much more fragile.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Gnomish Warbike, aka "Screamers"

Gnomish artificers combined a Decanter of Endless Water with a tiny trapped fire elemental to create a steam engine to power a cog & geared trike to carry light cavalry units armed with repeating crossbows and shortspears.

 

[Celebrim]

OMFG that's awesome.

I sincerely hope you don't mind if I steal that for a story some day.

I have 5 or 6 stories in my head that I never tell anyone precisely because I'm afraid someone would steal them, but since I told that one, that isn't one of them.

But it was a really cool dream.