China’s version of the Satanic Panic has the government regulating LARPs

polygon.com:

Live-action role-playing is hot in China’s urban centers right now, according to reports from English-language state media website Sixth Tone. But following a surge in popularity in recent years, regulators are beginning to take notice of the genre’s mature content. A story published Wednesday indicates that municipal and provincial authorities have now begun regulating content and demanding that some retailers remove certain materials from sale. The situation seems far more serious than even the darkest days of the Satanic Panic in the 1980s, which saw conservatives and even some media organizations in the U.S. making unfounded claims about the safety of playing Dungeons & Dragons.

At issue are “script murder” games, where players don costumes and act out the roles in elaborate murder mystery games that take many hours to complete. Games can take place at home, using commercially available scripts; inside retail storefronts; or at more thematic, private venues.

“China’s script murder games stem from the murder mystery of LARP games,” Sixth Tone’s Luo Meihan told Polygon via email. “We call it ‘script murder’ because it’s the direct translation in English from the original Chinese word jubensha (in pinyin), or 剧本 (script) 杀(murder). The gaming genre’s original form in China is basically similar to LARP.

“But as the industry expands, the gaming genre has developed to involve various types of scripts engaging players in an emotional or joyful experience, in addition to the process of solving a murder mystery,” Luo continued. “People can also sit around and have their respective scripts in hand to get into a story and follow the storyline as one of the protagonists, often with the lead of [a] Dungeon Master.”

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