This idea is sticking with me. So, my thoughts are:

- Historically, tea was quite prized by various seafaring empires and trade companies. An era of empires and colonies can make for some engaging PlotFuel/political-machinations.

- In our world, many cultures have many different approaches to the importance and meaning of tea; you could mutate these into the various local approaches to the drink of choice, and extrapolate culture from there. (You could also pull from coffee and such if you felt like that.)

- Eh, I guess it'd be cute to brew game-relevant tea for the tea-drinkin' gamers who are playing the game.

This would require more research, of course. How a setting would be used:

(a) Sandboxy fantasy adventure. You land in one of the colony towns that's doing brisk trade in tea, but boats from the Empire come to shore bringing plot, while combat encounters roam free in the wilderness. (Dwarves drink their teablack straight, without any strange interminglings, while those infernal gnomes brew a drink with unnatural herbs and hardly any teablack at all.)

(b) Political intrigue. Basically, things are going to dissolve into awful/awesome sea battles over the control of the world's prime tea crops and/or sovereignty. Throw the colonial governor overboard, etc.

Great idea, though I'd be tempted to make it more of an opium war thing (that actually happened in our world, after all).

The advantage of tea is that it allows you to think up lots of different variants. Teas to make you memorize spells better, teas to make you feel less pain, teas to give you hallucinations, teas to boost endurance, teas to aid healing, etc. etc.

the power of the east india company. opium wars.. ooh add in the rum rebellion that'd be pretty sweet.

I did something similar in my campaign setting with tea, and mixed it with colonialism and piracy. Very fertile ground for adventures, and tea is something that people understand. You can even incorporate cups of tea as "handouts".

Don't forget the spice trade, include spices with teas and you have a very good luxury grouping for trading empires in conflict.

Or in fact you cold expand to concept to a vast range of trade goods. Ever since the days of Ancient Egypt there has always been a plethora of highly valuable merchandise that could only be created in a few locations.

at that point one could just play settlers of catan with pirate expansion

Seems like there could be a great Space:1889 campaign in there too...

Quote from: jgants;351690Seems like there could be a great Space:1889 campaign in there too...

I definitely agree. Instead of opium, tea, or what not just use Liftwood, Bhutan spice, Gumme, or Moabite fire jewels.

If the tea had genuine mystical properties, the situation would be more intense.  Depending on the level of the tea's power, it could go from people feeling they need tea (not just desire it) to a situation like Dune.  In a game, a tea-ish item might might act like a low level healing potion, be a required component for some classes of spells, or boost one or more attributes.  The in game benefits might give players a more personal interest in the proper flow of trade.


iirc, tea played a role in the opium wars.  Britain realized that it was losing currency to China from tea and looked around for something to tip the balance of trade.  Opium production was ramped up and markets were created.

Yeah, generally speaking Tea lacks the essentialness and the scarcity that would be required for there to be serious trade wars over it.  Of course, if tea had magic powers in your world (beyond those it already has in this world, I mean!), then all bets are off.

RPGPundit

Rum, opium, tea - there are lots of fun substances with which to run an empire.

I'm on the fence whether magical tea would be awesome or lame, but I have indeed started sketching out vague magical effects for the different kinds of tea, so I'm clearly attracted to this idea.

Quote from: DevP;351788Rum, opium, tea - there are lots of fun substances with which to run an empire.

I'm on the fence whether magical tea would be awesome or lame, but I have indeed started sketching out vague magical effects for the different kinds of tea, so I'm clearly attracted to this idea.

Sounds like you have an interesting home brew idea going there, pardon the pund!

Quote from: RPGPundit;351747Yeah, generally speaking Tea lacks the essentialness and the scarcity that would be required for there to be serious trade wars over it.  Of course, if tea had magic powers in your world (beyond those it already has in this world, I mean!), then all bets are off.

By no small coincidence, I'm currently re-reading Frank Herbert's Dune, and this is all totally relevant, along with the "What system for Dune?" thread.

By the by, after playing the Wii boxing and sword fighting games, I realised that a Dune knife-and-shield-generator fighting game for Wii would absolutely rock.

!i!

Neat thread.

FWIW tea has and likely still is somewhere been used as currency usually in the form of stamped bricks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_brick

I think XPS (Expeditious Press?) has a Silk Road booklet that covers trade goods in detail, though more overland some of the basics like trade goods still apply to oversea trade too.

Have there been any wars or skirmishes fought over coffee or chocolate (or its unrefined form)?

And if nations can go to war over BAT SHIT, going to war over tea isn't beyond the pale...