Murder, They Scripted
January 31, 2020 9:44 AM   Subscribe

“I only found out at the end — I killed the wrong person,” Wang tells Sixth Tone. “Not only that, all the people I thought were human turned out to be robots." Wang, a Shanghai-based news editor, had been playing a game of jubensha, or “script murder,” a role-playing murder mystery activity that has become highly popular among young urban Chinese. posted by storytam (10 comments total) 18 users marked this as a favorite
 
That sounds like SO MUCH FUN! It was interesting too to see how so many problems with publishing--people pushing boundaries into problematic stories, piracy, the need for a constant churn of new material--immediately descended on this gaming genre.
posted by mittens at 10:08 AM on January 31, 2020 [3 favorites]


The article mentions that jubensha are inspired by Western murder mystery games like Clue! There's a whole section about how Mafia and Werewolf came to China.

If you read the article you'll see that the murder mystery game trend is new to China and people in China have adapted it and reacted to the idea in interesting ways. That's like, basically the whole point of the article?
posted by storytam at 1:03 PM on January 31, 2020 [1 favorite]


Mod note: One comment removed; questions based on not reading the article that you suspect the article might answer are a good prompt to go ahead and read the article and come back later if you still have questions.
posted by cortex (staff) at 1:16 PM on January 31, 2020 [4 favorites]


While murder mystery role plays are new, Chinese authors have been writing crime fiction since the 10th century!
posted by monotreme at 2:38 PM on January 31, 2020 [5 favorites]


This is really cool - the influence from dinner party mystery games like How To Host a Murder is really obvious, but I love how the Chinese take on it emphasises roleplay and puzzle solving. How To Host A Murder tends to be a little pedestrian by comparison.
posted by Merus at 7:22 PM on January 31, 2020


Uhhhh this is some live shit.

Liu takes his social responsibilities extremely seriously. For him, role-playing should be about helping players gain greater understanding and empathy by exploring alternative identities. One of his games is based on “The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank.

Yeah, oh cool at least theres some that are more tasteful.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 9:18 PM on January 31, 2020


My friend group would absolutely be down with this. Hell, we have a similar photo of being detectives at an escape room.

That said, these do seem a little....harsh (she says, after playing an escape room involving a sorcerer/vampire a few weeks ago).
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:01 AM on February 1, 2020


Having now read TFA. Looks like a Murder Mystery Party game with elaborate role-playing-but-in-an-"Escape Room"-with-a-lot-of-props setting. Coming from an interest in Mafia and Werewolf.

Not all that innovative I guess.
posted by Windopaene at 5:17 PM on February 1, 2020


I think it is fine. Not particularly interesting, other than how much it has caught on there.
posted by Windopaene at 6:58 PM on February 1, 2020


Those look really fun, so long as I knew there wasn't going to be surprise sexual content. I've done lower-key versions with friends and enjoyed it.
posted by The corpse in the library at 3:17 PM on February 3, 2020


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