No hookups; yes Jubensha

January 28, 2024 12:01 AM

Equal parts Murder Mystery Party, Escape Room, and Parlour LARP, Jubensha are the Chinese gaming experiences that you've probably never heard of. (NYT)

People Make Games does a deep dive(YT), including discussing differences between Jubensha and the western RPG community and even traveling to Singapore to interview fans and Jubensha operators.

The growing popularity of Jubensha has not gone unnoticed by the powers that be in China which began making Nationalistic Jubensha in 2022 after introducing regulations in 2021.

So what are you to do if you want to try this, as yet, mostly not available to Anglophones activity? You could track down a copy of Death Wears White, the murder mystery board game that started it all. You could also visit Script Games SG, which is keeping an index of English language Jubensha that are available in Singapore. Jubensha also have a lot in common with Parlour LARPs and Nordic Chamber LARPs. The main difference with these LARPs is that they are more freeform, less scripted, and less game-y in general.

posted by forbiddencabinet (4 comments total)

Wow, I loved the People Make Games video--its 'the kids are alright' framing, but also its discussions of safety tools and its call for publicity re: the trend and censorship.

My first convention experience included playing in a D&D LARP called "The King's Birthday Party," where we (~30 people or so) were given ordinary D&D characters in manila folders, each with a brief write-up of hidden objectives to achieve mostly through social interaction at this party, which was of course designed to blow up spectacularly. That was in April 1984, so I'm approaching 40 years of very, very occasional LARPing, including one some friends wrote that worked a bit like these--small, mystery-oriented, etc. I've only played/run a handful over the years and have no contact with any LARP scene, but it's always loomed large in my feelings about what's possible. So a lot of that footage felt almost unreal--like, just amazing to see.

Also thanks for the link to the Parlour LARPs--great suggestion. I have two of them in print, but I had no idea they were all available now as free downloads!
posted by Wobbuffet at 2:24 AM on January 28 [2 favorites]

Nearly posted that People Make Games video yesterday. Interesting topic!
posted by hippybear at 7:09 AM on January 28

My friends and I are obsessed with Blood on the Clocktower, and I'd love to take it a step further and try Jubensha out.
posted by Braeburn at 3:44 AM on January 29

Saw this video the other day and it reminded me of an rpg/larp from almost ten years ago called Juggernaut, which is not quite the same thing as a Jubensha -- it doesn't have a mystery core, there's nothing to solve per se, but it does give you characters that you're expected to roleplay for a few hours, and I think it may have been the first game I ever saw that had something like the now-standardized lines/veils/X-card safety tools.

The plot is that it’s 1950, and some scientists have built a computer that appears to predict the future. The players get assigned identities as one of the scientists or various government people, who are locked in the room with the computer until the testing is finished. It comes with a stack of cards styled as punchcards, that have the computer’s predictions on them; at any point, any player can “run a test” by drawing the next card. And the rule is that the machine does in fact tell the future, and whatever the card predicts must happen before the end of the game.

I never got the opportunity to play it, but it might be a good one for anyone itching to try a jubensha after watching that video.
posted by rifflesby at 5:46 PM on January 29 [1 favorite]