Mystery Play

Lead Author: Liz Cable

Additional authors:

Timetable: ,

Description:

This is your chance to play a scripted murder mystery styled as a Chinese Jubensha and judge for yourself whether the format, or elements of the format, has value in your teaching and learning. This extraordinarily popular Chinese social phenomenon encompasses collaborative sense-making, social deduction, storytelling, and group play. What makes it different from a UK traditional parlour-LARP (Live Action Role Play) or freeform scenario is the low barriers to entry, the minimal preparation for an individual run, and the detailed questionnaire at the end that assesses knowledge gained within the scenario. The format seems ripe for classroom adoption. Let’s find out if it works.

This session will immerse you in a “Scripted Murder”. This particular game is a work in progress for the Women’s Institute to celebrate the works of Agatha Christie in the 50th year since her death. It has been co-created with previous participants. All the characters are female – members of Christie’s oft-used “Village Women’s Guild” – but can be played by any gender. No acting or role-playing experience is required as the key plot elements are on scripts read out by the participants. You just need a willingness to ask a lot of questions and give it a go.

For reliable use in the classroom, such a game needs to be scalable for different (and perhaps unpredictable) numbers of participants. We’ll demonstrate a simple framework for adapting character and plot to the number of players available. We’ll also show how such games can be used to stimulate creative thinking and writing, problem-solving, and collaborative working, and incorporate suggestions from participants both for plot-line and character development, and for classroom adoption.

References, web links and other resources:

Harviainen, J.T., Bienia, R., Bowman, S.L., Brind, S., Hitchens, M., Kot, Y.I., MacCallum-Stewart, E., Simkins, D.W., Stenros, J., Sturrock, I. and Xiong, S., 2024. Live-action role-playing games. In The Routledge Handbook of Role-Playing Game Studies (pp. 92-114). Routledge.

Higbee, M. D. (2009, October 23). How Reacting to the Past Games “Made Me Want to Come to Class and Learn”: An Assessment of the Reacting Pedagogy at EMU, 2007-2008. DigitalCommons@EMU. https://commons.emich.edu/sotl/vol2/iss1/4/

Liang, S., Chen, M., Toups Dugas, P. O., Smith, G., & Bohrer, R. (2025). The Collaborative Sensemaking Play of Jubensha Games: A Deconstruction, Taxonomy, and Analysis. Games: Research and Practice, 3(1). https://doi.org/10.1145/3721121