Seen on Facebook and Reddit:
Their business model - they actually have one - seems to be like escape rooms.
Update: From another article, its basicly an escape-room style murder-mystery experience. And the craze was kicked off by a TV show where people played it:
From this article, they seem to provide costume as well.
Yes, but it sounds like they roleplay their characters, which is not how most participants in western countries approach either escape rooms or murder mysteries. In my opinion them playing their characters makes it larp, albeit with strong escape room/murder mystery elements.
There is also frequent mention of “tabletop roleplaying”, and I have an idea they are not talking about tabletop RPGs. I think this is another variety of larp, played as a conversation between characters in a room. I get they impression they call it tabletop because the players are not physically investigating clues placed around a room, which is a key characteristic of their other larps.
It’s fascinating how opaque this is to us, despite being so ubiquitous in China. I’d love to hear from some people who have played these about what they’re actually like compared to larps in other countries.
There was a talk about this format at Knutepunkt this year:
Also, the Party is beginning to get concerned about people having fun, and there may be a crackdown.
The Chinese government is now requiring larp scripts to be “registered”:
(Also has stuff about ongoing copyright issues)