Bicycles are now available as a common mode of single person transportation in a medieval fantasy setting

>bicycles are now available as a common mode of single person transportation in a medieval fantasy setting

How does this change things?

Virtually useless without proper roads.

>transportation becomes easier
>the world effectively shrinks
>the compression heats up the earth
>Ice caps melt, flooding coastal areas and killing millions

You monster!

You seriously never heard of off road cycling? Nor of bicycles predating "proper" roads by about a century?

>gears and coils
>rubber braking and hoses
>hollow metal alloy rods
>air seals

There is enough knowledge in the construction of a modern bicycle to through a fantasy setting into a somewhat-modern setting, if they could figure it all out.

>of bicycles predating "proper" roads by about a century?
400 BC? Doubt that.

Is there a Conneticut Yankee in King Arthur's court?

getting ambushed and run down by monsters on bikes becomes a thing

The former which uses light steel and aluminium, material engineering and clever mechanical knowledge... and the former which were shit and thus largely unused?

Seriously now. Even penny farthings were a bit of a novelty, and rattled people's bones enough that they weren't something you'd ride out of preference, especially when horses were fucking everywhere.

But... if you introduce smooth roads in high traffic areas for whatever reason, then even primitive bikes become far more viable. And they WOULD be primitive.
Question then is how to justify the roads, as bicycles as a concept some dude having isn't exactly difficult to justify.

Yo.
Yo.
That's fucking awesome.

I need to see hobgoblins on bikes now. Doing tricks and shit like flipping over canyons and popping wheelies while attacking a group of adventurers.

I want to see a medieval fantasy RPG where "BMX bandit" is a playable class.

Commoners use bikes for day to day transport while horses are used by others for long distance travel and mounted combat due to better speed, balance, etcetera.

Just gave me a great idea for a GURPS character

Underrated.

>some guy sees a nobleman's amusing, primitive little steam-spewing toy and how it moves itself, then looks at a bike
>"Hey, wait a minute."
>jousting matches on motorcycles

>your party travels through a strange structure that looks like a semicircle was cut out of the stone
>suddenly you hear faint rock
>roll for initiative

Depends how common metal is. Bikes take up more steel than a lot of more useful things in a fantasy setting. I could see it being used by the artisian class up. Maybe Warhammer Steam Tank-esque 'motorsteeds' for knights to do high impact charges.

Wow, it really shows the power and danger of bicycles that they were able freely hunt proper roads for a century before humans got the situation under control!

>Question then is how to justify the roads

Modrons and/or sorceror's apprentice style out of control road building magical constructs.

Not a matter of "can these things be destroyed" as "will doing so make things worse?" so physically attacking them and suddenly you have two road builders for ever blow you land on them etc...

Entier civilisations have to adjust themselve to finding road builders heading in their direction while making use of the roads they make.

Opens up the possibility of "miffed max" style shenanigans like in Pterry's "Last Continent". Except pedal powered with 8 goblins up front pulling Doof wagon casters around behind them.

Ever seen a road get away from a bicyclist?

...

The shit the PCs will come up with. The world could not handle it.

Well, we have to find a way to make allodial land ownership and the contractual nature of it work with large scale industrial production.

>Mad Max + Dark Souls
Not a proper "medieval" setting, but I like fantasy too much to make it super realistic.

>The Knight performs a sick bike trick, What do you do?

as do thin ropes strung between trees.

the very rich have a new toy to play with, and that's about it

It makes almost as much sense as using these. By which I mean no sense.

People already did that to unseat or otherwise harm horsemen.

>use your incredible scientific know-how to try and help humanity
>develop teleportation
>world is now so small it collapses in on itself and forms a black hole

Best post

But why?

Less horse shit on the street.
More metal and wood working craftsmen arround thanks to demand.
Rickshaws as public transportation and way to employ the poor.

Serves her right for not wearing greaves or mail leggings.

Interestingly enough, wood is the best material to make bikes out of for mechanical properties, it's simply insanely more difficult and thus more expensive.

Where did they got the rubber ?

Dwarven rubber mines.

Already vulcanised, sweet

They are largely ignored by the majority of the population on account of the cloaks getting caught in the back wheel and killing the rider via asphyxiation. This is largely suspected of being a deliberate ploy by the Merchant Houses as this upstart bike maker has not conducted his bussiness by the rules of the Guilds and thus should not be allowed to practice his so called 'trade'.

The Guild of Roadmakers and Pathfinders have agreed to make the roads just rough enough to make the ride unbearable to the rider.

The Guild of Cloaks and Fetching Scarfs have agreed not to shorten the length of any of their most popular styles.

The Cooperage and Wheelmakers have placed a 40% tarrif on anybody buying wheels who is not associated with the Carriage and Cart Cartel.

The Carriage and Cart Cartel has not been available for comment and was last seen firing nail-studded dog turds through M. Bike & Sons Warehouse's windows

>High fantasy Mad Max
>Horsepower-drawn carriages and knights on motorbikes
>Blacksmiths that double as repairmen
>Bandits on dirtbikes using swords and submachine guns to raid caravans of precious goods, like gold and oil
This needs to be a thing, stat

>PEDAL ETERNAL, GILDED AND REFLECTED!

The reason why pedal power is interesting from a mechanical stand point is that obviously it would avoid the problem with driving mechanics often being dominated by DEX based rolls or their equivalents, oftne forcing the creation of hyper-specialist skill trees purely to add some variety in the mechanics - pedalling adds CON stuff for going fast, DEX only for fancy maneuvers, STR for moving your vehicle over awkward obstacles etc...

It's easy to see how a bicyclist party would have variety both on the road and off it, less so with motorised vehicles.

In that case bicycles in medieval times wouldn't be a problem then?
Come on, he obviously means "smooth roads becoming the standard", not "roads exist". You ever cycled on a cobbled road? Very uncomfortable!

>me go too far!
>me am play gods!

> This needs to be a thing, stat
That's called chariot racing in Coliseum, user.

With enough slaves and wheels even a colliseum could join the races

>not fucking with the mortals at your leisure
What are you a demigod?

Vulcanized rubber tires might be necessary for that, and if you had them, why wouldn't you equip them on your wagon and let the horse tow you. Also, desert lands favor the camel, jungle lands favor rust, mountain lands favor three-limbed ambulation, forest lands favor limbs to the face, ...

> Clockwork Golem
> Bicycle-using Hobgoblin lancers with auto-crossbows
> Clockwork siege-engines, including flying ones
> BBEG wizard hides in a clock tower.
> My face when Intelligence s the stat for Know(Engineering)

Have to be careful not to rip-off Nox too much.

Last time i checked, carriage roads is in far better condition then tour paths.
But the biggest problem for the bike, is that you need flexible metal that dampens the entire bike, and metal is expensive.

But the thing is, if you could make things like a equal to vulanized rubber, you could start making shoes with 20-200x the durability, which is severely more important than bikes.
And yes: The number for the shoes are that skewed

Sometimes, just because you find a picture doesn't mean you have to make a thread.

Sometimes an op is so eager to show that he can, he doesn't neccesarily have the time to stop and ask whether he should.

Are.

Are those leg bikes?

The car has legs too

Those are clearly primarily electric and motored, with the pedals as an option to extend the battery-life during use or to charge them in a stationary-bike fashion.

Remember that being a neat little background features of the kamina city, all the cars moved around on robotic legs rather than wheels.

I literally meant high fantasy Mad Max. Like if the world was nuked back to the Medieval era but with magic and the knowledge of vehicle and gun technology was somehow preserved.

I ran a one-shot this weekend with something similar. Kobolds had infested a mine, and were racing mine carts around taking pot-shots at the party.

Group had a great laugh at my descriptions of mine carts drifting around corners at top speed, sending sparks flying. Best part was when they derailed and crashed horribly.