RPGaDay: Ride

Riding has never played a big part in our D&D or Pathfinder games, except as a justification for the halflings and gnomes to keep up with everyone else during normal travel.  Horses by default are thoroughly impractical, and I can't sum it up any better than Strontygirl did at the Tavern.

The only time anyone's done much riding in game is when playing those classes that have a horse as a feature: Paladins, and in Pathfinder, Cavaliers.

Digging through my old Google+ archive, I found the time my husband mispronounced his character class as 'Chavalier':

At first glance, the chavalier might appear to be riding a pony; in fact, he's had his horse lowered.  Note the Burberry barding, low profile horseshoes, reclining bucket saddle and sound system: a pixie bard, whose Light spell is also powering the horse's underlighting.  The horse itself has been trained to rear up and make revving noises.

The Chavalier's armour includes a custom paint job, body kit, helmet spoiler, Adidas sabatons and tinted visor.

The cavalier is a pretty cool class for someone who wants to play the knight in shining armour type without also having to be a paladin, but like the paladin there's always the issue of what do you do with your horse when you're down a dungeon.  Do you rule that all the dungeon corridors are big enough to fit a mounted horse down?  Less of an issue if you're playing a small race riding a dog, but then you've probably got a strength penalty which means you're not so great at the melee combat that's a key part of being a knight.

While horses in D&D and Pathfinder have their issues, they do at least avoid some of the pitfalls of real horses, who do all kinds of awkward things like reacting in blind terror to a perfectly normal pond that was fine yesterday but is now bad and scary for some mysterious horse reason.  Horse training in RPG Fantasyland must be exceptional.

The solution to most horse issues is simple: bicycles.

Sure, in the real world bicycles weren't invented until the 19th century, but it's a fantasy setting and all the required technology exists, so why not?  They're smaller than horses, so you should be able to ride one down most dungeons, and if it's a Brompton style folder you can carry it for the bits where it's not practical to ride, or else shove it in a bag of holding.  In a world with plentiful bicycles, doubtless a manufacturer will be churning out bags of bicycle holding.  They would be optimised for this particular purpose and with a command word that instantly packs away your bicycle making you combat ready - unless of course you're a member of the Chivalric Order of the Double Wheel, in which case you'll be doing all your combat from your bicycle.

Bicycles have practical applications in post-apoc games as well, of course, as a mode of transport that's significantly faster than walking and requires no fuel.  Imagine a post-apoc world where the US has completely torn itself fighting over oil, while the Netherlands is now the world power as they've never had to worry about transport.  The future's bright.  The future's orange.