Over the last 50 years Dungeons & Dragons has become the most well-known TTRPG in the world. Often becoming the bridge that brings new players into the world of TTRPG. However, there is an inherent violence built into the very world and mechanics of Dungeons & Dragons. Slaying monsters and looting dungeons as the core of the adventures. Grace Collins, a former teacher, wanted to bring the adventures and collaboration of Dungeons & Dragons without the fighting. Thus Teatime Adventures was born.

Teatime Adventures was the first game launched by Snowbright Studio in 2019. Collins wanted their children to play Dungeons & Dragons, but without teaching them that problem solving is “stabbing somebody with a sword.” At the same time Collins was running a Curse of Strahd campaign. However, the tone proved to be difficult, “It was really heavy. You have all of these terrible things happening and vampires and all of this sort of stuff. So, during one of those games, I started inserting these bakery challenges essentially just to give people a break because they’re so stressed out all the time. So, then it started being called Strudels for Strahd.”

As the baking mini games became more popular with the players than the campaign itself, Collins pivoted into the realm of cozy TTRPG. A game perfect for children, families, and adults who want a fantasy story of adventure with lower stakes than life or death. In an exclusive interview with Temple of Geek Collins broke down the four books including the core rule book and the solo game “Teatime Adventures: Tea Pets.” Collins also shared details about the other Snowbright Studio games.

Grace Collins:

“We just came out with the second edition [of Teatime Adventures]. It’s called The Wonderful World of Tea Pets. So, inside the box set we have four of these little books. This is the Green book. This is our core rule book. It has all of the information that you need to know how to play as well as ancestry. There’re seven different ancestries that you can be and a whole world and lots of mystery. This adventure that comes in, it is kind of styled like a murder mystery, but murder’s not quite cozy. So, it’s actually like a stolen locket mystery.

We also have a whole dice set that is filled with tea leaves. It’s got black tea leaves inside of them, which is fine as long as children don’t try to drink them. Second book is the Brown book. This one has four adventures in it, and they’re all based on this village of Oakenbend and all of the adventures connect to each other. The first one, the Curious Case of the Hop Top Harvest Pie, is all about a pie competition that’s been sabotaged. So again, really high stakes sort of stuff.

And then we have maps of the village of Oakenbend in the spring, in the fall, in the summer, and in the winter because all the adventures take place in different seasons and we have holidays and there’s all this culture, really focused on designing culture in it. So those all take place in here. I wrote three of them, and then we had some guest artists or guest writers for some of the other ones.

Then this red one is Tea Pets. This one was made because we had a lot of people who love [Teatime Adventures], but they weren’t able to play because they had friends who only wanted to murder things, which is fine, but sometimes you want to just be cozy on your own. So, this one is actually a solo game. It can also be played in a group, it plays really well in a group, but it was designed for solo play as well. In it you actually build a sanctuary for Tea Pets that have been injured.

You bring them in, you rescue them, and then you rehabilitate them and over time you release them back in the wild. It doesn’t have a bestiary, it has a best friendiary. There’s a glitter raccoon who just leaves glitter everywhere. Dust bunnies, you have to be very careful with them. And the accordion cat, every time it walks over, it makes this accordion noise as it walks around. So, the cool thing about this is that you can actually build your sanctuary and then you can go visit it in Teatime Adventures. So, you can build it for a season and then you can play an adventure for that season. Then you go back to building it and things like that. It all takes place on this hex grid.

This is the fourth book in the box. This one has the Crafts and Journals book. So, in this one we have graphs and we have coloring sheets. You can draw your own glitter raccoon. And then we have character sheets and journals because in Teatime Adventures, you don’t level up by slaying monsters, but by having self-realization moments. And then you have all of these are drawable maps. This has all of our harmony magic so you can cast complicated spells. This is a big thing for me in D&D, I hate wizards in the party because they’re always taking forever to figure out what spells they’re going to do. And if I’m like a fighter, I’m like, I hit it. And then the wizard comes up and then we have to wait for half an hour.

But in this one, you actually cast the spells together. So, you decide as a group and then you roll dice to see if you can cast it together. So, the harmony systems on the back of this, and then anyone can use a skill called random facts, which gives you a random fact that is not helpful for the situation. We have 78 different random facts on here because as a GM, some players like to abuse that. My favorite one is that woodpecker’s tongues actually go all the way around their skull, which is interesting to know, but not helpful. We came out with a bunch of other games after that, some a little bit darker. We have a coffee-based game as well. It’s all about death and murder. So, we have coffee drinkers covered.”

Teatime Adventures Offers Cozy Comforts For Players Straight From The Adventure

Fans can buy the books as a bundle or separately with each book being only $25. “Teatime Adventures: Tales from Oakenbend” includes a limited number of adventures. However, the world has ample opportunity for more exploration. “Cozy Companion” is a bimonthly magazine that offers new adventures along with recipes tied to each one. To bring the cozy fantasy world into the real world for a fully immersive gaming experience Teatime Adventures includes recipes and teas that players can bring to their tables.

Grace Collins:

“Every adventure comes with a recipe as well. So, for the Hop Top Harvest Pie Adventure where the pie has been sabotaged, you actually have a pie recipe that you can make to go along with it, and then a tea pairing as well that goes with it. We make tea with our friends at Friday Afternoon Tea. Friday has synesthesia, so she tastes words, and so she reads the adventures and then makes blends based on what they taste like. We continue to release new adventures through the magazine and other things like that.”

The Art Of Teatime Adventures Is Inspired By Beatrix Potter & “Frog And Toad”

The immersive experience of recipes and tea bring Oakenbend into the real world. However, the art truly brings the world to life. With art depicting the different magical animals, the citizens of the town, and the world itself through the books, maps, and more. Teatime Adventures is at its heart a game meant to help players learn the importance of listening. Confrontation is not always the answer to conflict and that sentiment is never more clear than in Teatime Adventures.

Grace Collins:

“For the artistic design I know there’s a lot of inspiration from Beatrix Potter actually, and “Frog and Toad” as well. We really wanted to emphasize the fairytale idea that there’s a lesson to be learned in everything that’s going on piece to it. That carries through into the actions in it as well. For example, in the Pie Adventure, you’ll run into a sausage maker and he’s very, very grumpy. I’ve had sessions where people come in and they’re like ready to punch him in the face, and it’s like, that’s not going to solve anything in this game. It’s just going to make things worse.

But if you stop and you listen to him and you talk to him, you start to realize that the reason he’s grumpy is because his oven’s not working. And if you help him, then his attitude changes. The attitude that we meet somebody with isn’t necessarily because of us. It could be because of something going on in their life. So that’s how it starts. It starts in a place where stopping and listening is going to help you understand what somebody else’s problem is and you can help fix it. But by the end of the adventure series, those first four adventures or so, you start getting into more complicated things where it’s like you can stop and you can listen, but there isn’t a solution for it. That happens a lot in life too.

There’s, spoiler alert, one adventure where you actually go back in time and you meet this family over multiple years as they’ve grown up and having kids and things like that. You start realizing that some of the choices that were made in the past affect some of the unhappiness that occurs in the future. That’s generational pain, and there isn’t really a solution to that. Opportunities were missed and connections were severed because of that, but we can make it a little bit better by stopping and listening and being present and getting to understand why people are that way.”

Grace Collins Explains Why Teaching Is At The Heart Of Teatime Adventures

TTRPGs are not only a fun way for friends to spend time together and tell a story, but they are also a phenomenal teaching tool. TTRPGs teach collaboration, communication skills, problem solving, critical thinking, and often math. Teatime Adventures takes this a step further with the mentality of learning baked into the very DNA of it. Collins shared why this was a core tenant from the very start.

Grace Collins:

“A lot of us are former teachers on the staff, and then I actually used to work in games and education policy. I worked at the US Department of Education under the Obama administration, and we worked with Games for Policy. I worked across all of the different agencies for thinking through things. Everything from how can we use games to encourage people to grow victory gardens, to how can we use games to inspire people while they’re at museums, has worked at the Smithsonian Institution and things like that.

A lot of it is baked in there because these experiences are meaningful. I always like to say you learn something from every game that you play. It’s just a question of whether you want to learn that or not. If we’re going to be taking up somebody’s time, whether that’s kids or adults, it’s an opportunity to learn. You might as well give them something that’s worth learning while they’re doing it. That really comes through with all of our games.”

While Tea Inspired A Cozy Game Coffee Brings A Darker Brew To Players

Snowbright Studio also has a darker game inspired by coffee called Ink. Where Teatime Adventures is meant to be cozy, Ink takes on a more bitter and serious topic. With themes of grief, death, and acceptance as tentpoles of the game. Ink is inspired by a difficult time in Collins life and has been used to help others through their own challenges with grief and acceptance.

Grace Collins:

“I mentioned that we had a darker, more bitter game about coffee, called Ink, which is a lot different. In that one you play spirits of characters who have already died and you’re exploring the afterlife. As you go around, you have your characters actually split into two parts. You have a spirit, and this is kind of like your memories and your personality and your skills, and you have a shadow and that’s kind of like your emotions that you’ve brought with you into the afterlife.

Everyone’s goal in Ink is to try to resolve some sort of burden that they have from their prior life, but it’s impossible to do because you can’t go back to the land of the living. So really the goal here is to try and reconcile what you’ve left behind knowing that you can’t actually fix it. We also have these booristas who sell you caffeinated elixirs along the way, so we make things cute too. This one was written actually while I was losing some friends of mine to mental health crises. And it’s like in these sorts of games, we can process some of those emotions in safe ways.

We can go on an adventure and we can meet coffee slinging ghosts and slay hydras, and then also learn something about us in the meantime. One of the things that I saw that was most interesting about this is that in Pax last year, we actually had somebody from Boston Children’s Hospital come by and say that they’ve been using it in the terminal ward with children to help them come to terms with things that you can’t change. But like I said, that’s a thread that carries through everything.”

Snowbright Studio Offers A History Game Inspired By Doctor Who

Beyond beverage inspired experiences Snowbright Studio leans into lessons and stories centered around history with Time Tails and science with Mercurio. Each game stays true to the idea of teaching important lessons as a core element of the experience. However, the fun and cozy vibe is a thread weaving through each game as well.

Grace Collins:

“We have another game called Time Tails, which is about time traveling cats who go back in time and cause a bunch of chaos. They’re trying to help, but of course they cause more chaos than they stop. That one you can learn all about history because that’s part of time traveling. It’s really inspired by “Bill and Ted” and “Doctor Who” and things like that.

And then we have a new one coming up called Mercurio, which is where you’re three-inch-tall mice and in six-inch tall mech suits going around the solar system. And there’s a whole bunch of science in that. You have to know science to do that. But they battle, I call them kaiju, but they’re only two feet tall, but they’re mice, so they’re kind of kaiju. Yeah, it just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to us to make games that everybody has already seen. So, we try to make things that are new and interesting.”

TTRPGs inevitably open up an unexpected vulnerability with people. A running joke about Dungeons & Dragons is it often becomes therapy for the players as their own struggles can bleed into their characters. Teatime Adventures and Ink take this to the next level with self-actualization being the core of leveling up.

The “Teatime Adventures” 2E books including “Teatime Adventures: Tales From Oakbend” and “Teatime Adventures: Tea Pets” are available now.