@@chinapoliticsfromtheprovin6133 He went to Singapore because playing Jubensha without being able to speak Chinese is a no start in China. The introduction about the popularity in China, which used clips from Bilibili and Chinese TV, is accurate.
@@GalianMode The clips and comments are from 2-3 years before. It had been popular then, but is much less so now--something he would know if he actually visited the country he purports to be talking about. That he cannot speak Chinese and has never visited China means he should not speak about developments in China.
@@jeremyarcus-goldberg9543 If you want a wide understanding I'd suggest you check LARP forums/reddit/google, but for a specific game I'd recommend looking into Juggernaut by Bully Pulpit Games.
I also came here to say this. Sounds like somewhere in between American parlor/convention LARP and "blockbuster" LARP in terms of production values. I'm pretty deeply involved in these scenes in the US, and am a LARP organizer and writer and attend lots of LARP conventions
Something people might be interested to know is that there are jubensha shops in several American cities! I researched jubensha in grad school and was surprised to find there was a jubensha shop just blocks away from where I live. I’d previously had no idea because the signs are all in mandarin and it doesn’t have an English language website. If your city has a Chinatown or a large population of international students, it’s worth looking into. My local jubensha shop normally only stocks Chinese language games, but they were able to special order some in English.
As someone who doesn't speak Mandarin, How would we even look into this? Can you tell us of some of the English Jubensha games so we can look for them online?
@@Superkia75 I have tried to reply to this several times and it keeps getting deleted. First off there’s a blog from Singapore that has collected a list of English jubensha, they’re a top search result. Second, I found mine through a friend, but asking on local forums and social media may also prove fruitful. Apparently being more specific doesn’t allow the comment to actually post, unfortunately
My hidden shame as a DND GM is that the one session my players talk about the most was a side-quest I converted from one of these murder mysteries. Even amongst pretty experienced DND players it really did hit different and everyone loved it and thought I was the best writer in the universe. Obviously ill never tell them, but I do hope more of these boxes get translated so I can give them something else to talk about.
What struck me in your description of Jubensha is its diffuse nature. This isn’t something like Clue or D&D sweeping the country, where it’s a singular game distributed by one company. It’s a concept. And it almost has to be, due to the core mechanic revolving around how plot is revealed. It effectively makes every individual game a one-time experience, which would simply not be sustainable if an individual publisher was responsible. Im reminded of the Sherlock Holms board game, which is also a set of one time experiences. And even though it’s brilliant, eventually you run out of provided scenarios. Meanwhile Jubensha, despite being an order of magnitude more convoluted and involved, if you know Chinese, could be played indefinitely
I mean, there are individual book publishers that print hundreds of different mystery novels every year; there's no reason in principle a single company couldn't be dominant and produce enough different material to satisfy the market. It's just that you can't copyright a general concept, so competitors would inevitably enter the market once it took off.
@@LightPink around 15 to 30 dollars per person for average stuff, don't know about the ones with actors though since that doesn't seem like average consumer level but hey the app one is mostly free and you don't have to walk anywhere so that's neat.
I think the difference between murder and sexual assault is that you're far less likely to be playing a game with a person who's been personally affected by murder.
Yeah, and the genre itself is kind of a trigger warning for themes of murder. A murder mystery always has a murder, but it doesn't have to have sexual assault.
As someone who used to work in murder mystery dinner theatre, I wanna just throw this out there to please be nice to any actors at these things you come across! I can't tell you how much verbal, physical, and even sexual abuse I both experienced and witnessed just in trying to carry out my job over the course of an evening. People get rude fast when they are a) frustrated that they can't figure it out, b) drunk (if there's alcohol around), or c) asked to be part of an interactive bit -- they think they are allowed to touch you inappropriately.
@@gombocdimensional9050Absolutely agree. The nights where none of that stuff happened was super fun, but some nights that shit came outta left field and ruined the entire experience for everyone involved 😓
I've heard this is a chronic issue for people working in horror attractions too. A combo of people's who's flight or fight is definitely fight, and people who see an opportunity to use the darkness and their power as a customer to sexually assault actors.
I did one of these a while back. While playing a character for the better part of 6 hours was exhausting, the GM coming out at the end and revealing that all of us had been playing 3 roles at the same time while explaining minute details in the set and other people's appearances had me grinning ear to ear like nothing beforehand. Can't wait for these to become more mainstream in the West!
@@mobius273it has the same role-playing potential as every other role-playing LARP. As far as I can see, all it has special going for it is a massive audience
@@deadlock_problemIs it niche? Yes, every RPG is a niche game. Is it a fad? I don’t believe so, I can see it remaining a staple game type throughout decades like how D&D was in the 80s.
The largest difference between murder and sexual assault is justifiability in our minds. We can think of situations (self-defense) where a homicide could be justified. We can also think of as understandable but WRONG reasons for murder. There are NO circumstances where sexual assault can or could be justified.
The trouble I have with it is that although it is realistic, such crimes are devoid of a reasoning motive which is what makes a thoughtful game compelling to begin with. It would also fundamentally change the perpetrator as being ultimate evil - so that must be accounted for in some way. It just doesn't add anything useful to the game mechanic.
This was my first thought too, but I feel like it can't be the only factor because we still don't have a problem even with absolutely vile definitely-not-justified murders in fiction. I think it has more to do with the social impacts -- as someone else already commented, a LOT more people (especially women) have experience with sexual assault than murder.
@@sparksbet when i muse on this topic my mind goes to how we are generally introduced to these topics (and in what context). death and non-graphic murder has been a staple of children's media since its conception, and also features a lot in children's play (especially games with an elimination component). it's also usually framed as either a bloodless, off-screen moment or so over-the-top as to be ridiculous ("he exploded", "she got smashed flat by a hammer", etc). most people are introduced to murder in this fashion and by the time they understand the reality of that type of violence, they've already familiarised themselves with the fictionalised version of it on the other hand, children do not typically roleplay sexual assault (those that do are usually victims re-enacting abuse), nor are they exposed to it in media. if they are taught about it at all, it is usually something that is (rightfully) framed as Serious Business from the outset. when adults roleplay as murderers, this is just the 'grown-up' version of a kid poking someone with a sword and going "i killed you!". but there's no play equivalent for roleplaying SA.
I think the Jubensha difference is not that it's a larp/parlour larp, or that we haven't been writing these for decades in the UK and beyond, but the commercial model behind it, the fact that it offers the experience off the shelf, with high production values, and is so embedded in the mainstream. The players simply book, pay and turn up. We don't have that (coupled with the high production values) in the UK.
Right! I loved playing parlour larp games back in uni, and it was always such a diy experience, I totally wouldn't mind it to be commercialised, if that means having more of them😂 On the other hand, there's no way a box game would include all the candles and curtains we used to decorate the play area :)
I played Goodbye Carmen yesterday as an online playtest, and it looks like Jubensha has as many flavours and styles as LARP but is in fact a specific kind of Parlour LARP. It did work online as a collab puzzle, and it was fun, really fun, but at no moment did anyone feel immersed. If you like Blood on the clock tower you will love Jubensha games. Whether or not you take the roleplaying seriously. I predict several to choose from in English off the shelf (and commercial ones) by Christmas.
While D&D is/was popular recently, I think it was more popular as a means to do roleplay than as a table-top wargame. These games - basically a shortcut to a pre-written one-shot with clear objectives and characters to embody, without all the combat, rules, and stats... I think it definitely has potential be a hit here. As mentioned, it's like combining the puzzle room and D&D fads together.
And ironically, while that was true of D&D in the west, it WASN'T true of D&D in the east. The entire divide between western RPGs and JRPGs more or less stems from the fact that while western RPGs stem from D&D and other tabletop games as a communal roleplaying experience, JRPGs stem from the fact it was approached as sort of a communal dungeon-delving and puzzle-solving experience. I'm seeing this as a funny sort of mirror. Similar to how RPGs are embraced as a roleplaying experience in the west but a puzzle-solving experience in the east, I think murder mysteries in the west really knuckle down on it as a mystery, a puzzle to solve, while Jubensha found success leaning into the emotionality and character of it.
@@EinDose this isnt the entire picture. both western and jrpgs roots draw from ultima and wizardry (which in turn draws from D&D). in the west crpgs maintained a close dialogue with tabletop; fallout, planescape and baldurs gate the obvious examples. in japan, tabletop (tabletalk or trpg in japan's parlance) established a niche, but strong cult following centered around call of cthulhu and today, it still maintains a focus on communal roleplay, just like the west. the major difference is that this community remained largely separate from jrpg development unlike the west and dragon quest and final fantasy would continue and influence developers without the influence of tabletop.
D&D also for a long time was nearly entirely dungeon crawls, certainly the vast majority of the 1st and 2nd edition modules are. probably up until the early 90s when as D&D novels pushed it a bit more towards epic LOTR style quests, and only really recently has become comparatively character driven to how it used to be.
my mum used to play D&D in the 80s, mostly with a bunch of dudes, and told me she learned to stop playing female characters when a particular guy was DMing, because he always wanted to involve female characters in storylines where they were sexually assaulted or got pregnant. she just wanted to roleplay being a badass fantasy warrior like everyone else! glad safety tools have become much more of a thing in TTRPGs, and people think more about consent these days.
I think the thing that made me appreciate safety tools was a plot where the GM had the group find and decide what to do with a mutant infant in the Warhammer universe. I'm not someone who considers myself to have much trauma generally, but I was a premature baby and I have a couple of mild disabilities as a result and this plot hit me very hard in a way I wasn't really prepared for going into the game. Not in a 'I am upset now' but more in the 'I have gone very quiet and if anyone says the wrong thing I might throw my computer across the room'. Not a good state to be in unexpectedly, and I think a really good reason for more open-ended, less prescriptive safety tools like the X card or self defined one like letting players list things they definitely do not want to be in a game.
I think it's relevant to point out that if the genre has a lot of SA, mostly against women from the sound of it, and players are encouraged to play characters of the same gender, female players are going to be taking on more of the burden of dealing with that content (and are also far more likely to have experienced it IRL), while murderers in mysteries tend to be more evenly gender split IME and no player can possibly have experienced being murdered. But also if someone close to you was murdered or you've experienced attempted murder, the clue is in the name of the genre.
This is an extremely good point! The most likely people in the room to have had a history with it are also the ones to also have to portray being a victim of it. Also it creates a circumstance where a male player could depict someone who's committed SA, and perhaps within the game scene that character is ostracized, but then outside of the game they get to just go hang out afterward -- I wonder how that desensitization would play mentally?
Also, I think there's a broader trend of using SA as "set dressing" as I like to call it. There's so many situations where a story uses SA for nothing other than shock factor (the worst case I,'ve seen ended a dnd campaign. The dm heavily implied an npc had been SA'd and killed... with at least two of the players around the table having been scarcely close to that situation😢. Super messed up when any random murder would have done the same job of setting up a murder mystery.
I did a murder mystery night on New Year's, and it was my first time doing it. It sounds closer to Jubensha than the murder mystery night you're contrasting it with: we were each given little booklets, though we only read the first four pages at the start of the game, as in addition to us to actually notice things other characters are trying to do in the course of playing the game (and various pieces of evidence around the house), we would be helped along by our characters also noticing things other characters were doing to help further inform who we should be wary of and for what information. I do wish that instead of the slightly contrived "phases" of the game, we were given even more information up-front and just left to figure things out, but for a casual but still interesting RP-heavy 4 hours, it was neat. There were also a fair few "couple" pairs of roles. I am definitely interested in doing something more hardcore.
I think I played something from that same brand of murder mystery nights and I agree, I also felt that I wanted it to be more role-play based instead of essentially following a script (it even included dialogue to read out). Jubensha sounds exactly like what I was wishing I was playing then!
@@MikelPagano Oh yeah, ours also had scripts to be read out, and that was frustrating! We were allowed to riff and add detail, but several components of the game relied on extremely slight wording differences between a guilty and innocent party for a given aspect of the game.
So I’m a tabletop roleplaying game designer and this sounds so much like a LARP! Nordic LARP, in particular, is highly structured and actually has developed tools to help navigate some of the issues you mention here regarding gender and sensitivity.
Is there a way to take a look at some of your work? I want to try and get into (TT)RPG with my friends and while there's a bunch of great official material out, I would love to check out and see if there's indie stuff that works and could benefit from feedback and advertisement :3
Thank you for pointing this out! I thought I was going insane because of all the talks about how revolutionary this is for the gaming scene. This is just straight up larp! We do larps like this in germany for over 40 years now!
Glad that the Korean TV show Crime Scene got a mention here. Well worth watching if anyone is interested in this type of game but doesn't have the buddies to play it any time soon - really fun show and easily found with English subs!
I was thinking exactly this as well! When he started explaining what the game was about my head immediately went to "sounds like crime scene!". If you liked Crime Scene you should totally check out Chinese spin off 'Who's the Murderer', which had a bigger budget and which I enjoyed more! Speaking of which, have you watched the latest season of Crime Scene? The pre-season episode came out and I was pleased with the new additions of Key and An Yu Jin, although it's sorely missing Jinho!
@@Cadaveralien I assume you're asking for ways of the sea since a simple google search would lead you to your answer. I'd give out links but it's not a good idea in a public place since that's how those places get taken down. If you're new to this whole thing I'd rec the piracy subreddit wiki, lots of good info to avoid anything sus. Otherwise search fmhy and see where the sea takes you
7 месяцев назад
For those who are interested, take a look at the subreddit for The Genius, where the community for these brainy korean variety shows congregate.
A quick warning: Be very wary of a company called Anzir who's planning to start marketing jubensha as "FableTops" in the near future - they're trying to get English jubensha produced under a *super* exploitative gig work model where writers aren't guaranteed to get *any* compensation for the work they do writing stories.
Officially a game design student now. I personally can’t wait to have a crack at Jubensha. It seems to reliably (in terms of all parties understanding what’s going on) yet flexibly (in terms of having potential for extended play) occupy that awkward gap between short werewolf games and multi-session dnd campaigns. Thanks for sharing, this is genuinely super exciting development, especially thinking of how to include safety systems into these games.
I'm an American in China and I did a harry potter themed Jubensha and it was so much fun. Wizard duels, magic mirrors, thematic smells and drinks and objects. We even got chased by a death eater. Jubensha was the most fun I had that month.
As someone part of a online western community that has developed a pretty similar system to Jubensha, I need this video to pop off I gotta experience this in person. Its especially interesting to me because our community started off with a big focus on murder, growing pretty directly out of Mafia, but we now also often prioritize narrative and emotion in what the community puts together. I wonder if that correlation means anything, like its easier to create systems with strict focus at first that can then grow into more complex varied emotional experience.
Sound similar to what in germany is "Krimi Dinner" The version we played you get a box with suggestion what to cook, a small narration and every person a booklet for their character, which you read a part and a bit later in the dinner. It is recommended to dress accordingly. We solved a murder of a professor who invited us to his dinner party. I was his chinese associate for something in his field, but in truth a professional burglar he worked with.
Every 👏Video 👏is 👏 a 👏 Banger👏! Seriously how he heck do you all manage to keep making some of the best content this industry has ever had. Could not be more proud to support this. Keep it up.
Introduce them to your local boardgame cafe yourself. Or go ahead and create such shop yourself. The English market is so lacking in terms of entertainment in the real life that people either retreat to home, or to alcohols and parties and recently "battle bars". With the new generation of adults who tend to avoid alcohol (which is a good thing), I'm sure this concept of social gaming would be great for them. The video also explain this is a great way to meet people. And today everyone knows that online dating is no longer as good as we hoped it would be, + it's a great way to make friends outside of work. This social gaming concept, without being a total nerd (like video gaming, cosplaying...etc) would easily be popular. Look at Among us the video game - People of all sorts enjoyed that game. Sure Covid helped a bit but the concept of the game was great. And this is similar to that. It'll also be a good way to bring people to the city centre, which is a huge issues.
You have a local LARP group - go join that. You will be chased around abandoned malls by Zombies, crash land on swamp planets and be chased by Zilons, there are murder mystery weekends at statey homes where you will be chased by waiters. None of this will involve 'play rape' story lines. This whole SUB-genre sounds gross.
In Germany we call them "Krimi-Dinner" (crime-dinner) and you eat during/between rounds/phases. But we don't use a game master, everyone gets his booklet and then the booklet tells you what to do. And the characters who aren't the killer usually aren't allowed to lie, though of course they are allowed to obfuscate.
I love that this absolutely scratches the same itch I was dealing with when I was watching a bunch of Agatha Christie adaptations, y'know Poirot and Miss Marple. The idea of deep roleplay of those kinds of wild stories absolutely rules. Now the sexual violence that seems prevalent in some of them is weird, but I won't let that detract from all the extremely cool stories that really are Agatha Christie levels of wild.
I'm glad you talked about the need for content warnings. My girlfriend is a survivor of prolonged sexual assault, and I couldn't imagine the sudden discomfort of directly confronting that subject in what is supposed to be a fun place. Even more so if she ended up with the character who was assaulted, or if i was the character who did the assaulting, that would probably sour the mood real fast. I think it's totally fine to portray that kinda stuff in a story, because thats just real life, but it's always better with a warning. I also just don't like when sexual assault is boiled down to essentially be a plot point and nothing else.
but in a fictional setting, what else can it be? where is your comment for the survivors of murder? we are living in a strange world where merely being exposed to an idea holds immediate and material power over us, and instead of attempting to reconcile this behavior we seek to censor or hide disagreeable ideas in a much broader sense. in your suggested future world, all stories are explained via cliffnotes that go into explicit detail about every meaningful or important event within the story, so that when first experienced there remains no possibility of discomfort or unexpected emotional reaction , and this is somehow an ideal way to experience fiction, or somehow a moral experience
If people are doing something for fun, it shouldn't veer into very dark or serious topics that could upset somebody without any warning. A simple list of trigger warnings is actually the responsible way forward as it lets people decide for themselves if this content is appropriate for them.@@missingsig
@@missingsig Murder Mysteries have that warning in the name, don't you think. There are dozens of ways of doing content warnings that don't affect the average player at all. A common way for webnovels, for example, is to hide them in a spoiler tag (something you actively have to click on to see) - and these aren't a full breakdown, but just something like "description of past sexual assault". PEGI ratings on game boxes (back when people bought physical copies) held much the same standing - most of us outright ignored them, but they were useful for the people who needed them. A game shop like this could literally offer you a folded sheet with potentially sensitive topics: If you had something you wanted to avoid you could cross it off and they'd direct you to the appropriate games. If you don't you don't even have to unfold the sheet, all potential surprises still there and waiting. So no, no one wants every story spoiled. The vast majority of warnings are ignored by the vast majority, because they're not for the vast majority. The point is that the people who do need it can access that information. It's like allergen information on food.
Great video! It's interesting, Jubansha seems to share a lot of elements with the murder mysteries we run in my college TTRPG club(Heavy focus on complex characters and relationships, lots of secrets , everyone has personal objectives, searching for clues around the room, last for around 4 hours). The main difference is that the ones we run have more of a LARP focus and usually involve 12-16 players. It's very cool to see how they evolved in China, it's like a distant cousin. I can confirm they are extremely fun to play, and watching people as a GM is always amazing. I think this style of murder mystery has existed for a long time in Europe (we have a script from around 2000), but it never got big. It's mostly an amateur kind of thing, where scripts are shared as free pdfs. I would love for this kind if murder mystery to get more popular over here too.
Do you have any specific resources for people looking to host this sort of thing? I would love to play one of these but making one is way too high a hurdle
Hope it's not too nosy to ask, but what college? I am also a larper who got into one-shot LARPs through my university. In my case it was Stanford, which at the time was running a lot of LARPs written at MIT
@@noahnavarro1008 Hmm, seems like I can't send links here. There is a large database of murder and murder adjacent scripts, google Rpgnet larp scenarios and you should find them. Most of the stuff there is made by amateurs, so not all of it is good, but it's free. I have also heard good things about freeform games, but i haven't tested any of their stuff.
I think it's important to mention that there's a big difference between wanting content warnings vs the governmental restrictions on what is created. Content warnings mean that more people can safely engage with the content -- like without content warnings, someone with big debilitating trauma triggers may just have to make the choice to not personally engage in the medium, because they don't feel safe. With the content warnings, they can make a more informed decision to participate. I don't think we should say that games with dark themes shouldn't be made (which is what the government censorship does), it's that they SHOULD be made, with a little note at the front for people who need it.
I got to the part where you're about to play the jubensha, and I remembered that this was something that they lampooned in The Onion Movie way back in 2008. They do a sketch that basically takes all the elements of your misadventure. Daniel Dae Kim is in the sketch! But, I'm going to push back a bit on the idea that the reason that people are uneasy about playing a game where they might be someone who is committing assault vs. murder is because they don't want to think about it. I think the reason that murder is ok for people, but assault is a no-go is because "murder" is literally in the genre of the game. Jubensha roughly translates to "scripted murder" and it is an offshoot of murder mystery games. Being party to a murder was part of the buy in for the experience.
ive been following Blood on the Clocktower since SU&SD's review, and much more actively for the last year or two, and suddenly its huge popularity in China makes a lot more sense
I'm on the same boat! Makes a lot of sense. BotC is amazing. I still think it provides a lot of these kinds of emotions, but packed quite nicely and with replayability. Of course, I guess Jubensha has more emotional impact since the storylines are crafted. By the way. I didn't quite get what's the difference between Jubensha and a traditional murder mystery dinner or whatever. Is it the emotional part of it? The fact that you meet strangers in a designated venue?
A friend of a friend started a company for a short while in Cincinnati doing this. He didn't call it Jubensha. He was a GM for hosting murder mystery parties. He had something like a dozen games for groups sized anywhere from 6-20 people. It did do a lot of the stuff here. Characters had secret motives and objectives. They had individual inventories and special abilities. It was super fun. I'm sure other RPG GMs out there are probably doing some similar work.
Quinns' excitement is so contagious! I'd love to try this, but our group would absolutely need safety tools. Multiple people among us have trauma around sexual assault. I think a good solution would be a subset of games with the opposite of content warnings on the box ("Comfort advice?" "Safety promise?") e.g. "This game contains zero material about sexual assault." They could easily exist alongside the games without warnings that can surprise you with any kind of content. I'd play the shit out of safety promise Jubensha!
I am so pleasantly surprised that you dedicated a fair portion of the video to addressing the murky waters of the brutal content. I firmly believe that any genuinely talented writer should be able to craft a scenario for these sorts of games without relying on gratuitous violence for shock value. Of course, whodunnits are classic and fun… but they can be written in a way that doesn’t hinge its entire weight on real daily threats! The unfortunate truth is that violence and abuse in entertainment has glorified the suffering and disregards the victims. I fully endorse the idea of content warnings provided with each of these games! Dark topics can indeed be explored within these environments, but they should never be the driving factor! An environment like this should be a safe space for creativity and escapism. Hell, I’m so passionate about this that I may just try write one of these myself!
As a French that have played the original Murder party 20years ago (yes, I'm old -_-) I'm amazed of the work and creativity of this spin of the Murder party concept... It's a unhinged version of the point system of some french murder party but with a larger emphasis on the roleplay to the point that the LARP element take over a bit.....
Just found your channel about an hour ago and really appreciate this video. I've been living in China for about six years now. I know about 剧本杀, have some friends that work at them, and knew it was fiairly popular, but I didn't realize how in depth they can go nor how crazy big it is. My Mandarin is decent, but not quite at the level to play one of these yet I fear. However hopefully in the fall I'll be starting my translation and interpretation master's in Beijing, and I think this video has just given me a potential focal point for it! Also, working as a voice actor in China and providing voices for several war movies, I see the very nauseating patriotism in the film industry recently, and can very easily see jubensha going down the same road unfortunately.
As a almost permanent werewolf moderator, who has run and introduced the game to dozens of people, I've wished many times to have a more permanent space to run werewolf, perfectly themed, maybe with alterations to make it mafia, deep space or any other theme my players would like... In my country there barely is any demand for normal escape room, I could not afford to set up something like this, makes me happy that something similar is happening somewhere else
i think something significant that differentiates murder and sex crimes from the perspective of being a victim myself is that you can be absolutely certain nobody playing with you has been murdered before, whereas you cannot be sure at all whether someone at the table has not been a victim of a sex crime. additionally, i think the pervasiveness of sex crimes might make a lot of men uncomfortable for living in a patriarchical society as you mentioned. i was not aware of the x-card system in DnD and that seems really good, it might be a bit exposing for some and something more subtle, or some way to communicate exclusively with the DM, might be a bit better, though that is well outside the scope of this video
@@devforfun5618 I think what Ouroya is trying to get at is, dead bodies have no agency and you're not robbing a dead body of agency by investigating them. But SA victims trauma is related to having their agency taken from them, and regularly suffer a lack of agency in our society.
I don't think that is a fair comparison. Some people, including myself, have had our loved ones suffer violent death. Some of us have even experienced both sexual assault and the violent loss of loved ones. As someone who takes part in communities centered around depression and mourning, I can tell you straight up that most people who have suffered graphic forms of loss would rather be sexually assaulted or killed than have their loved ones violently taken away from them forever. It really is just a cultural thing, nudity and sex in general is a very touchy subject in the US, to the point where it makes people more uncomfortable than violent acts in fiction. We are desensitized to a lot of graphic subject matter and overly sensitive to other matters, like he touches on in the video. It can be confusing when you look at the popular culture around something like D&D, where violent murder is perfectly acceptable but sexual assault is seen as this forbidden taboo, it just doesn't make sense from a neutral perspective. There is no logic behind it, only cultural bias. (I am not defending people who take these things too far if you know what I mean, just saying it shouldn't be outright forbidden as a story element imo.) I do think it's very important to be clear with players before starting about what sort of elements may occur during play. No one should be forced to partake in something they don't want to. I do agree with your point about a subtler substitute for the X card, or a direct way to signal the DM privately, seems a lot safer and more effective. It's a good idea.
I hope I'm not coming off as rude or attempting to downplay the suffering you have personally lived through, I'm sorry you went through something like that and it never should have happened. Part of the reasons why I feel the way I do about this I suppose is that I feel like my personal suffering has been downplayed by the RPG community, to be honest I felt a little bit triggered by you saying these things are not comparable. My main point is that someone at the table CAN be a victim of murder or violent crime without you knowing it. I meant no ill will or aggression toward you. I know communication via text alone can be difficult without the many subtleties of tone and body language, so I just wanted to add this little disclaimer to make clear my intentions. I hope you are well and wish you the best.
@@zensuufu thanks for explaining your perspective on things, i can see now that i was rather short-sighted in my original comment and will take time to think about my perspective on the topics of death and related tragedies.
People interested in this sort of thing might like to play the roleplaying game Alice is Missing. It has similar themes but varies slightly in the mechanics. A reviewer that looks a lot like the guy in this video said it was the first game to make them cry.
It strikes me that there is a lot in common here with some LARPs, especially those with pre-written characters that only last a day or two. Granted, said LARPs are almost universally for more people, and they are not necessarily as easy to access, but there are definite elements of this in the West. Some of the elements you describe also remind me of Blood on the Clocktower.
The US theater LARP scene is full of short one-shot LARPs that only last a few hours, many of which are for fewer than 10 people. This is most common in New England though, but there is a community in the Bay Area, CA, Chicago, and a few other hotspots
This was so cool, as always, thank you guys! I did want to ask, was there anything regarding gender that got cut from the video? I noted in the beginning Quinns had mentioned that most designers were women, and then that point wasn't really returned to. I was especially surprised this was the case given the nature and themes of the stories that are commonly told; though obviously the dating culture aspect of it, often with 3 men and 3 women, was definitely explored. PS The Hawaii Fridays think you're doing a great job Quinns
I started this video thinking Jubensha was like Blood on the Clocktower, but the role play aspects really elevate the social interactions. Also congratulations on making another banger of a video! You have broken one of the biggest stories in gaming that I haven’t seen covered anywhere else.
Great video!! Super insightful and considerately made!! Although i might argue that the reason we're more put off by sexual assault may also be because you're more likely to know/be a victim of assault than murder, so those concepts feel a bit more real? Suicide/assault/domestic violence are not worse than murder, but if you make a joke about any of these topics, youre probably more likely to come across someone who has been affected by the first three. I'm not entirely sure though, but i definitely think that topics like sexual assault shouldnt be removed from these games, but there probably should be some sort of system to make sure you're not accidentally making a victim go through a terrible time.
My first experience with LARP (and specifically what we call "murder party" in France) was actually Death Wears White, with probably a few tweaks as it was run by experienced LARPers. Part 1 of the video had me thinking "well yeah that's basically every murder mystery" and what you played looks more like an elaborate game of Werewolf than anyting in my experience. I think it's always interesting to show the different cultures of play and (lack of) commercial structures that exist in the same continuum of game practices. I'd like to see what Sam Dunn did for metal music, but about LARP and LARP-adjacent games, investigating the different types of games in different countries, etc.
there’s a million comments so i’m sure someone else has already said it, but regarding your surprise at how frequently sexual assault plays a ‘shock value’ role in these games: i think the biggest reason we find it worse than murder is because it’s never defensible. you can’t accidentally SA someone in the course of defending yourself, for example. but, there’s plenty of scenarios like that where murder would be completely understandable, if not sympathetic. maybe i’m missing something, but barring a “saw” (the movie) situation, i can’t imagine any scenario where your options are to either SA someone or die. plus, i think due to there being a lot of stories where the protagonist is a murderer (often justifiably, but not always), we’re quite desensitized to it. not so with SA, and since it’s also so common an experience, it’s jarring to have in a ‘game’. very interesting that this perspective seems to be different in asia though.
The thing about SA in these games is pretty similar to how I see people view films in the United States. There's an unwritten rule that children can't die in films or that any kind of sexual content should be sex-positive, but that's not how real life works. Sometimes truly awful stuff happens. Without a story to help you work through either trauma you've had or a fear you've experienced, you might feel lost. That said, I completely understand and agree with having content warnings. There is no reason someone should have to experience a thing they don't want to.
Your talent for finding the best 'man on the street' interviewees is absolutely unmatched. The research was amazing too, but Jay absolutely knocked it out of the park
The clips of Quinns waving awkwardly in every shot as he travels to Singapore, then saying he was underprepared for the weather was great lol. Such an interesting topic and thing to look at, especially for someone who is going to start studying Asian culture and society at University at the end of the year. Keep up the great work, PMG.
I GMed "Death wears white" when it came out in France. In the years 1995 > 2005 there was many "Soirées enquêtes" (Murder parties) published in France, like "Dieu est mort", "L'ivresse des profondeurs" etc. Following tabletop rpgs success many were published with the basic game design idea that each player both plays a role but also that all the script or the complete scenario is partially shared among the roles from the beginning. The game itself then arises from the players confronting their informations, points of views, secrets and objectives. The GM just has to keep things on the rails and make the system works (one commonly used was "action points" that a player can spend to do something outside the physical scene of play, like investigate a bank account, call a contact, etc). This is also how LARPs are played ! Nice to see that it is becoming "mainstream". I always thought that escape games / rooms were a simplified and accessible murder party, lacking the role playing part that is really the most fun !
I don't think using This War of Mine as an example of "PTSD that mostly affects men" is a good idea. It's a game about being a civilian in the ocupied territory, not a soldier.
It's an exploration of civillian ongoing trauma, NOT the post-traumatic state, for like 95% of it. And it is NOT about soldiers, except as viewed from the outside.
Sounds like somewhere in between American parlor/theater/convention LARP and "blockbuster" LARP in terms of production values. I'm pretty deeply involved in these scenes in the US, and am a LARP organizer and writer and attend lots of LARP conventions and weekend-long games around the country. There are several different communities around the world that write and run games that could be classified as "parlor LARP." I'm most familiar with those in the US, as that is where I live. It is especially popular in the New England states and may also be referred to as "theater style LARP", generally for one-shot games with pre-written characters and plots and no live combat. You should into the history of theater LARP in New England, particularly the MIT Assassins Guild (which has been writing one-shot LARPs since the 80s, murder-themed games and otherwise), as it was highly influential on the culture to this day. These games are not just murder mysteries, and can be in any genre and have widely varying structures and rules, as they are mostly written by hobbyists and run at conventions, clubs, and private homes. Also, the US scenes are getting better at terms of including content warnings, having more options in terms of letting players gender their characters or to "cross-cast" in games with definitely gendered characters, and using safety tools, some of which are imported from the indie TTRPG scene. This is a big area of discussion amongst organizers now. The best way to learn about these subcultures is to participate. If you can attend any LARP event, I'd recommend Intercon the most. It's a 4-day convention in Rhode Island of just one-shot LARPs mostly written by community members. About 500 people attend from multiple countries. There are also other styles of "parlor LARP" that don't involve pre-written characters. You may want to google the term "American freeform" if you are curious. I work for a LARP festival that runs more of that style of game (Make a Scene! Scenario Festival in the Twin Cities, Minnesota). I have a whole Google doc of resources about LARP, primarily theater/parlor style and the "online LARP" subculture that arose when theater larpers were in quarantine: docs.google.com/document/d/1JHijKbw6CWZIEpHYs8VqzxD8AhhPgtzq2x07w0B0FHY/edit?usp=sharing I also maintain a wiki page of downloadable LARP scenarios in English here: larpwiki.labcats.org/index.php?title=List_of_downloadable_LARP_scenarios
So fun to see how this genre exploded in China and I'm surprised I'd never heard of its wild popularity. I'm pretty sure I'd like it since in my own GMing for TTRPGs, I usually co-write lengthy backstories for my players with secret information, give them all separate secret objectives which both band them together and also cause friction at times, and try to construct scenes where the planned revelations of secret information carry a lasting, usually emotional impact on the short campaigns that ask the characters to make difficult decisions.
Incredible video, guys. As a video game designer and TTRPG player it's incredible to see this whole world of games I wasn't aware of before. I especially appreciate your exploration of the appropriate way to explore dark themes and trauma in role playing games. Keep up the great work PMG!
Some major context missed here. 1. As the comments mentioned, these aren't new at all, and I hate translating the same idea in another foreign language to treat it like something new. The suffix ~sha (lit. kill) comes from langrensha (lit. The Werewolf Murder), the simple social deduction TRPG that popularized in China circa 2010. People got too familiar into the game and reacting so fast that the game doesn't help people connecting with each others anymore, this is where more sophisticated scripts came in and later snowballed into full sets of costumes and scenes. 2. The popularity of these LARPs in China was boosted by the social culture/pressure of getting in a relationship and then married, this is why there is huge demand on everything that helps people meeting new friends and develop new relationships. The demand for extremely corny drama content is also huge too. This is exactly why the same idea has existed in the western for years but it never becomes a trend and even if this "jubensha" somehow gets reinvented in the west, I doubt it will develop into something like what's currently happening in China.
This sounds like An Inspector Calls, the game, where everyone in the room can uncover how they're related to the "victim". Absolutely fascinated by this.
wow! so excited to learn about this. I think with the prominence of tabletop roleplaying games in the west, this could easily translate over. I personally love murder mysteries but perhaps the barrier to entry is the time sink? playing a 3 hour game is something difficult to get 6 adults together for
27:10 hey PMG i know this probably wasn't intentional but after featuring the Jubensha scene in Singapore earlier in the video, I think this statement that Jubensha is not available outside of China implies that Singapore is a part of China, which is not true. just a little mistake I noticed. Singapore is one of the larger Jubensha markets outside of China, but the Good news is that Jubensha is still on the rise and it is also emerging in other nations like Japan, Malaysia and Australia!
Yeah that wording is a little clumsy on our part, thanks so much for pointing this out! We should have made it clearer that there are new scenes developing in countries like Singapore and those you've mentioned, but that China's Jubensha is on a whole other scale and it's *that* which isn't available elsewhere. -Chris
I hope it can go viral in English speaking countries via Singapore and Australia! Because without an English template it won’t go local in my country and I want to play one 😂
You should really look into different kinds of LARPs (Live-Action Role-Playing). There is a very mature and diverse scene of designers and players at least here in Czechia and in Nordic countries AFAIK. There are epic battles and immersive RPG worlds, but I grew up playing and designing "Chamber LARPs" which are very similar to Jubensha (several hours max, prewritten characters with relationships, goals and secrets etc.). I've always wished for LARPing to become more mainstream. But that it's happening in China is crazy unexpected. Love the graphics in every video, btw!!!
I come from the American New England theater LARP/Intercon scene, where there have been people writing short games with pre-written characters that are distinctly LARPs since the 1980s. There's even conferences occasionally to discuss LARP on a meta level (I attended one last weekend!)
highly recommend the korean show crime scene!!! whoever gets voted as the murderer gets locked in a literal cage at the end of each episode (regardless of guilt) it's delightful lmao
I was on work trip with coworkers. We were joking around and our boss put one of those rubber severed arms on the shoulder of one of the employees. She did not even look at it. She growled to our boss about what it was like picking her friends severed arms off the floor at her last job. Really killed the mood. She got over it, our boss did not. Sometimes trigger warnings are to protect other people.
I'd definitely want content warnings for my own PTSD, but having flashbacks sometimes is also just part of my life. But true, if I have a flashback, it's not just my night that gets ruined, it's everybody's, because you can't continue the game if even just one player drops out 🤷 It's a group effort, after all. Whining that people are too sensitive just reveals who's not a team player. (Sorry for this I'm just mad at some folks in this comment section. They are not getting invited to game night)
The history of this kind of play goes back QUITE a bit further than 2001. ILF-style LARPS have most of this play structure and have been around since the 80's. There have been a number of previous boxed games that fall into this style predating Death Wears White from the 80's. And yet, having been into these types of freeform LARPS, I had no idea this was going on. This is awesome.
I have been obsessed with TTRPGs for ten years...how did I never heard about this??? Absolutely incredible. Had to reup my patreon after this. Thank you!!!!
I came here from Nebula just to leave a comment about how much I now LONG to play one of these. I love detective games and murder mysteries already, and one of my biggest struggles with the roleplaying in Western TTRPGs is that I'm not good at the non-mechanical side of building a character for a game. This seems like the perfect fusion of roleplaying and detective games that I'd LOVE, and it also involves someone else doing the work of building a compelling character for me to try and roleplay.
My friend in China owns one of these places. It's been popular for like 10 years. The CCP is actually making these themselves now, my friend was asked to create a bunch of patriotic ones. It's a shame there aren't any in English! Although I don't think it would really be popular overseas. If you're in London there is almost certainly a murder mystery rpg company in your city, but again, all in Chinese.
Ive literally been doing games near identical to this in the UK since the mid 90s with as many as a 100 (though more often 30-60) people over a weekend with characters backgrounds and information that runs to a 20, 30, 40 pages. The phenomenon may be new but this kind of game is not at all. We called them Freeforms (though others use that term for other kinds of game) and they were magnificent. I've done them in stately homes, on a boat, on a train, outside at campsites, in a castle in Wales. The games usually have multiple interconnected plots running simultaneously, huge amounts of secrets objectives, groups within groups etc
Ah, hello UK freeforms person! I'm an Intercon (like the US equivalent of Consequences) person! I've played in some online runs of UK freeforms during the quarantine, but never been to the UK. Yet
@@ParadoxRevealed11 Hi. I didn't want to bore everyone with too many details because the core group doing these games back then was about 50 people, others drifted in and out. The style of what we were doing was extremely specific to that group and so I don't think it quite matches what anyone else was doing (my few outside experiences were considerably less plot dense). I just wanted to be clear that they weren't megagames or trad LRP (both of which I've done) but much closer to these games Quinns is discussing (but more elaborate). I get his excitement, they are a complete rush and can be very addictive. I've heard of Consequences but never strayed in that direction though I'm sure some of the people I played with probably have.
Fascinating stuff. Turned out my missus was well up on this due to her interests in East Asian culture and wotnot. Very interesting, like a sideways evolution of parlour LARP. Cheers, PMG.
I really appreciated the maturity with which some key issues were discussed. I thought it was done really well, and though this is the first video of yours I've watched, I'll look for your other content because of it.
"how do you sustain a conversation for seven hours?" Considering I played some TTRPG sessions that took 8+ hours it doesn't seem so different, especially when you are playing something not focused in combat, like Storyteller
While this is more structured, it reminds me a lot about a company here in Finland (founded in 2008) which organizes murder mysteries in the spirit of Nordic LARP. Very fun, highly recommended if something similar is available in your neck of the woods. Great video as always.
As the English translator for Death Wears White, yeah, it was considered a flop at the time of its English release as it barely sold (the English edition was released in 2008), and that put a stop to the planned translation of the next game in the series, Beverly Place (think 90210 meets Scream).
it is so weird to read about this being discussed as, like, a shocking new thing, when you're someone who's been doing freeform larp (NOT boffer larp - it's exactly this sort of thing, prewritten booklet and social interaction, sometimes with puzzles, no physical combat) in the US/UK since the 1990s.
Yes! Even in the 80s in some parts of the US, mainly New England universities and communities of alumni! I'm a part of that lineage myself. I got into "theater style LARP" at Stanford, during a time when they mostly ran games in a style invented at MIT (where they've had a continuous LARP culture since the early 80s), and now I'm a LARP organizer, writer, and I attend Intercon and other LARP conventions frequently
Woah, this is awesome! Drop in, low commitment RP sounds great. The content warning thing is gonna be a battle though, CWs can sometimes give a twist away, so some changes may be needed to how these stories are constructed for a western audience
I wish we could get dope fads like this in the US instead of the literal worst side of consumerism like NFT/Stanley Cup rushes, overcompensation gurus for insecure boys, and Drop Shipping/Tiktok business tutorials.
Singapore is a good choice for the hub on these games. Since being an English speaking country. They can translate the stuff to English. And at the same time, they can localize the games to fit the western audience. Watched enough Chinese drama that their story and plot is really cultural driven and redundant that might not translate well to global audience.
I'm really quite curious, so sorry for the negative tone of the comment, but I feel like you really failed to explain in what way these games are unlike typical murder mysteries. I've participated in a small number of murder mysteries and nothing you covered here struck me as unique in any way.
Anni's animations are amazing, she always nails the style and contents, soooo good! Thanks as always for introducing us to something wonderful and interesting ^_^
