Sometimes you need a pick me up, and some times you need something soothing, and depending on what you’ve steeped you can find both of those at in a nice cup of tea. Hey, not that I;m saying that some soda, or beers, or stars forbid even water can’t accompany your games just fine. Sometimes, however, it’s nice to have something a bit nicer, with a large variety of flavors and energy levels. So lets take a look at some Tea for the Tabletop from Many Worlds Tavern!

Now, I swung by the Tavern at PAX East ’23, had some samples, smelled some bottles and bags, and… didn’t buy anything.

This was because by the time Sunday rolled around and I wanted to buy all the things I scouted out over the previous three days, they had pretty much nothing left. Taking that as something of a good sign, after the con I placed an order for three bags: Verdant Harbor for a jasmine green tea, Spiced Sands for a masala chai, and Sacred Spring for an un-caffeinated cinnamon plum tea. It’s taken me a bit to take a full stock of them, life being life, but lo and behold they phased back into reality at PAX Unplugged and I’ve continued to drink with them, so it’s high time for a review.

Every bag includes very clear instructions for how much and for how long you should be steeping your tea, and even includes the ideal temperature – too high level of a tea game for me so far, that last one, but the attention to detail is welcome. I’ve found each one so far to be delicious, and there are usually a few ways interesting ways to drink one, Spiced Sands is just fine on its own but also recommends steamed milk or apple cider, and I can confirm the latter is great. MWT has a newsletter, and one issue included the idea to use their Hazy Hills earl grey to make an Early Grey MarTEAni cocktail which was a big hit.

One neat thing is that every different style of tea has amazing original art on the bag, with the line overall being contributed to by a whole bunch of different artists. Now, as good as it is that artists are being paid (very), and as nice as they are to look at (quite, in the American sense), you might not want to hang on to an empty bag of tea just for the art. Probably fair. Good news is that the art also gets put to good use for other things, not the least of which is a series of playmats that I kind of want to buy even though I have no day to day use for them.

Their newest offering is a recurring subscription box called Fabled Foliage, a limited release of 1000 bags that changes which tea is involved every month. The first was called Oasis (no caffeine), ‘a botanical blend with quince, lemon peel, and eucalyptus leaves’, and the second one coming our way is a ‘green tea with roasted chestnut and floral aroma’ called Wealdleaf (caffeine). Along with the bag of tea you get a neat little sticker with the tea’s art, a Dungeons & Dragons 5e compatible spell card, and some dice! The dice are nothing particularly fancy (it would be neat to have MWT’s little cat symbol for the 20, or something) but if you’re a dice goblin or – like myself – have ravenous dice goblin children that you need to bribe to keep them away from your lucky dice, the more the merrier!

On top of whatever else you’re getting along with your tea, you’ll always get a little bit extra bang for your buck: Many Worlds Tavern donates $1 from every bag sold to one of four charities. Those charities are The Spiel Foundation, Tabletop Alliance,  The House of Afros, Capes & Curls, and Tabletop Gaymers (who can also be found at PAX Unplugged, PAX Together Intersection, Room 201C).

Now, the one knock I have against Many Worlds Tavern is that they sell loose leaf tea, and they sell several things for you to drink that tea out of, and they even sell a kettle for you to pour the tea into those things to drink the tea out of,  but they don’t have anything for your to strain the tea. So, they can’t quite reach the ‘one stop shop’ award, since you’ll have to get that tech elsewhere. When I talked to them this weekend, however, they expressed an interest in providing that necessary equipment, it’s just not something they can offer quite yet. So here’s hoping!

Oh, yeah, and I guess I should mention they sell coffee too. ‘Coffee for Game Night’ is the first thing they started selling, actually.

I don’t care for bean juice, I’m strictly a leaf juice kind of guy, but I’ll say this much: the coffee all smells amazing, has just as much variety as the Tea for the Tabletop line as well as its own subscription box, with wider equipment options, and sold out just as fast at PAX East as the tea. If not faster.

If you’re attending PAX Unplugged you can grab a tasting and do some shopping at the Many Worlds Tavern’s local planar iteration at PAX Unplugged’s Booth 3354 and save on the multi-dimensional shipping costs. Of course, if you’re not (or they run out again), you can always just visit their site.

Whether it’s during a game, while doing session prep, or helping to power writing review articles, I think this Tea for the Tabletop will help enhance the experience.