Kids on Bikes - Starter guide
What is Kids on Bikes?
Kids on Bikes is a collaborative storytelling RPG set in small towns with outsized secrets. You play ordinary people - kids, teens, adults - who stumble across something strange and powerful that they cannot fully understand, let alone control. The game draws openly from 1980s coming-of-age fiction: The Goonies, E.T., Stranger Things, Stephen King. That warm, slightly anxious feeling of summer evenings, dead-end roads, and something lurking just past the treeline.
This is not a dungeon crawler. There are no combat turns, no hit points, no loot tables. Kids on Bikes is about relationships, small-town atmosphere, and the particular tension of being young (or ordinary) in the face of something extraordinary.
How does the system work?
The core mechanic is simple. Each character has six stats: Brawn, Brain, Fight, Flight, Charm, and Grit. Rather than numbers, each stat is assigned a die - ranging from a d4 (weak) to a d20 (strong). When you attempt something risky, you roll the relevant die against a difficulty set by the GM. Higher is better.
Characters are built around tropes rather than classes - think Popular Kid, Loner Weirdo, or Blue-Collar Worker. Your trope determines how your dice are distributed across your stats, and comes with trope-specific strengths you can choose from. Flaws round out the character but carry no mechanical weight in this edition; they exist to enrich roleplay.
One of the most distinctive mechanics in Kids on Bikes is the Powered Character - a communally controlled figure with supernatural abilities, think E.T. or Eleven from Stranger Things. The GM writes the character's traits on index cards and hands them out to players. When a trait becomes relevant in a scene, that player picks up the card and narrates the Powered Character's actions. It is an elegant way to give the table shared ownership of a character who is central to the mystery but nobody's personal avatar.
Conflict resolution is lean: combat is a single contested roll between two characters, whether PC vs NPC or PC vs PC. The outcome doesn't just determine who wins - the difference between the dice results shapes what happens narratively. This keeps the focus on story rather than tactics.
What do you need to get started?
A free Early Access Ashcan edition is available through the publisher's website, and a Free RPG Day edition with premade characters exists for those who want to try before buying. Both are worth checking out if you want a taste of the system before committing.
Beyond the core book, the Strange Adventures volumes (Vol. 1 and 2) are fully compatible with the second edition and provide additional scenarios. You will also need a standard set of RPG dice: d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, and d20.
Who is this game for?
Kids on Bikes is a strong fit for groups who love atmosphere and character over mechanical complexity. If your table enjoys moments of quiet dread, small-town intrigue, and the kind of storytelling where relationships matter as much as the mystery itself, this system delivers.
It is also one of the most accessible entry points into tabletop roleplaying. Each book runs around a manageable 100 pages, and a significant portion is aimed at people entirely new to roleplaying games. Character creation is quick, the rules fit in your head, and a first session can be up and running within the hour.
Where it falls short: if your group wants tactical combat, extensive mechanical progression, or clearly defined power growth over a long campaign, Kids on Bikes will feel thin. It is a system built for narrative momentum, not character optimization.
How does it compare to other systems?
Against Dungeons & Dragons, Kids on Bikes is a different animal entirely. D&D is built around structured combat, class abilities, and resource management. Kids on Bikes strips all of that away and puts collaborative storytelling front and center. A session can go by without a single dice roll if the story doesn't call for it.
Compared to Powered by the Apocalypse games like Monster of the Week - which covers similar narrative territory - Kids on Bikes offers more open-ended character creation. PbtA games partly build the character for you through playbooks. Kids on Bikes allows complete freedom in character creation without losing the integrity of its rules structure. The tradeoff is that PbtA's move system can generate more mechanical friction and surprise, which some groups find energizing.
Where do you start?
Start with the core rulebook and read through the character creation section before your first session. Run a Session 0: the book includes relationship questions that help players build connections between characters before the story begins. These questions matter - they are part of what makes the system work.
Pick a small town together, name it, give it a few details. The book includes tools for this. Then introduce your first mystery: something strange that the characters cannot yet explain. Let curiosity do the rest.
For actual play inspiration, Dimension 20's Misfits and Magic uses the closely related Kids on Brooms system and gives a good sense of the tone and pacing. The Free RPG Day module House on Poplar Court is frequently recommended as a clean, focused introduction to running the game.
The game's community is active on Reddit (r/kidsonbikes) and Discord, and the publisher's website has free downloadable resources including character sheets and errata.