James Ernest: The Aesthetics of Chance (Lecture)

James Ernest (Cheapass Games / Crab Fragment Labs) explains the ways and reasons that randomness adds value to games in this talk from Gen Con 2025.

James Ernest is an accomplished tabletop game designer with more than 200 published games including Kill Doctor Lucky, Button Men, Pirates of the Spanish Main, Tak, and the Fable II Pub Games.

In this lecture he focuses on storytelling through the medium of games. Designers create challenges and motivations just like any storyteller, but instead of telling linear stories, game designers give players the tools to tell their own stories. Random events can be part of the story, but there are good and bad ways to use them in your design.

Sections:
0:00:17 Introduction / Topics
0:01:46 Dramatic Arcs
0:05:53 The Meaning of "Fun"
0:08:58 Probability Theory
0:13:36 Types of Randomness
0:21:20 Examples: Adding Dice to Chess
0:27:23 Stories Within Games
0:37:41 Questions

Crab Fragment on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/crabfragment
Crab Fragment Labs: https://www.crabfragmentlabs.com/
Lecture Hall: https://crabfragmentlabs.com/lecture-hall

This video was recorded at the Gen Con Game Design Academy, 2025.