Who Are We?

Welcome to Crab Fragment Labs!

Crab Fragment Labs is the imaginary tropical hideaway of James Ernest, the designer behind some of your favorite tabletop games.

Here you will find old PDFs for sale, new games in development, articles about design, short works of fiction, and free games you can print yourself.

Along with game creation, James Ernest’s talents include graphic design, creative writing, and generally making things up. Visit the Map Room for more details about the regions of our island, including the Games page, the Blog, the Lecture Hall, and the Library.

If you’re curious where you can encounter James Ernest in real life, he drops hints about his complicated life plans at our Schedule page.

And if you’d like to support this enterprise, you can buy our games from DriveThruCards, buy PDFs of your favorite free games in the Shop, or join our Patreon for sneak peeks at all the good things.

Please Support Us Through Patreon

If you’re a fan of our print-and-play content, or if you just want to keep up with the multifarious offerings of James Ernest, please consider supporting Crab Fragment on Patreon. Our backers receive regular news updates, occasional cool stuff, and early warnings of upcoming content and events. Click here for details.

To keep up with our shenanigans completely for free, please subscribe to our newsletter.

Feedback Forms

Crab Fragment now offers three delicious flavors of feedback form, each on its own page.

For general feedback, click here.

To send detailed playtest feedback, click here.

With any luck, a real human will respond to your input within a reasonable amount of time.

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Crab Fragment Cay

Crab Fragment Cay is a small volcanic island nestled among Les Îsles Rouges in the Sonland Sea.

The island was explored in 1519 by Roya Ruiz García Alarcón, “O Barbeiro Vermelho,” who dubbed it “Portunoidea.” He remained on the island for less than two hours.

Alarcón later remarked in his journal that if he were to live another five hundred years, he might return to the island and establish a small tabletop game design studio.

Taking our cue from what we can only assume was a facetious remark by Alarcón, we have built a quiet refuge on Crab Fragment Cay, and we watch each day for signs of James Ernest and whatever he is doing.

Some of the days can be quite dull.

Other Companies You Might Be Looking For:

Crab Fragment Labs is James Ernest’s personal creative outlet, launched in January 2020. If you’re looking for James Ernest Games, that brand is actually an imprint of Cheapass Games, which is not technically us, but is a subsidiary of Greater Than Games. We are currently trying to bring back most of the Cheapass catalog as well as the trademarks, though for now it’s a muddy situation at best. Because when you live on this planet for a long time, you weave a tangled web.

Our Mostly Imaginary Team

James Ernest, Chief Creative Officer

Carol Monahan, Sales is not Marketing

Jason LaMane, Lead Designer

Kieru Northland, Designer

Bea Carlow, Graphic Designer

Folo Giertz, Test Lead

Erman Weindarkler, Media Liaison

Bienvenido Fantbasty, House Elf

About James Ernest

Do you need to grab a bio for your convention program? Are you hoping to update James Ernest’s shamefully brief Wikipedia page? Or are you just curious what a strange life has led to this? Read on, friend.

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James Ernest

James Ernest (born October, 1968) is a an American author and game inventor, best known as the founder of Cheapass Games.

James began his career as a professional juggler. He worked for ten years performing at theme parks, comedy clubs, and events around the world. His first book, Contact Juggling, was self-published in 1989.

In 1993, Ernest joined Wizards of the Coast, working as an editor, graphic designer, and technical writer.

Ernest launched Cheapass Games in 1996. In its 22-year run, Cheapass Games released more than 100 original games, winning several game industry awards for game design and graphic design.

In 2006, Ernest joined Carbonated Games (Microsoft) as Game Design Manager on several projects including the Fable II Pub Games and Full House Poker.

James now manages Crab Fragment Labs, releasing a variety of original content including tabletop games, design articles, and short fiction.

He lives in Seattle with his wife Carol and their daughter Nora.

More About James Ernest

Presented below is an extended CV for James Ernest, as though he were for some reason applying for a job. Read through it as you would any resume, with a degree of skepticism befitting our modern age.

About James Ernest

James Ernest is an American author, game inventor, and juggler best known as the founder of Cheapass Games. He is the recipient of numerous game design and graphic design awards for tabletop games, and a member of the Origins Awards Hall of Fame. 

Juggling 

James Ernest worked as a professional juggler in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. Part of the “Time Zone” team of three young jugglers at Six Flags over Mid-America, he later became a solo act performing at Union Station in St. Louis MO, and events throughout the Midwest. In 1989 he moved to Seattle and adopted the stage name James Ernest, because there were already three famous people in Seattle who shared his real name. For several years Ernest worked state fairs and comedy clubs, sometimes with partner Greg Bennick as the “Light Speed Jugglers.”

In 1990, Ernest published Contact Juggling, an instructional book on the dynamic style of one-ball juggling popularized by Michael Moschen in the 1986 film Labyrinth. The book remains controversial because Moschen was protective of his methods, and many in the juggling community asserted that Ernest’s book unfairly capitalized on a technique invented and owned by Moschen. Others believe that Moschen was literally rolling a ball around on his hands and that his secrets were not exactly rocket science.

Hobby Games

James Ernest entered the hobby game industry in 1993 as a technical writer and graphic designer for Wizards of the Coast. He was the editor of Voices in My Head, a digest of the Usenet mtg-l mailing list, and he also re-wrote the Magic rules for several editions, including the Magic Pocket Players Guide.

In 1996 Ernest founded Cheapass Games as an outlet for his own small, humorous game designs. He launched with the flagship title Kill Doctor Lucky, which won the Origins Award for Best Abstract Board game the following year.

Ernest designed and produced  more than 100 games for Cheapass Games between 1996 and 2019, including Kill Doctor Lucky, Give Me the Brain, Button Men, Diceland, Light Speed (with Tom Jolly), and Pairs (with Paul Peterson) 

James Ernest’s listing on Boardgamegeek

Between 2003 and 2018, Cheapass Games ran a dozen crowdfunding campaigns on Kickstarter. Their largest campaign raised $1.35 Million, for Tak: a Beautiful Game (designed with author Patrick Rothfuss).

Ernest has published many games with larger publishers, often with co-designer Mike Selinker. These games include Lords of Vegas (Mayfair, 2010), Pirates of the Spanish Main (Wizkids, 2004), Cow Poker (Steve Jackson Games, 2006), Gloria Mundi (Rio Grande Games, 2006), Dungeonville (Z-Man Games, 2004), Unspeakable Words (Playroom, 2007), and Capital City (Calliope Games, 2017).

Ernest licensed the rights in the Cheapass Games brand to Greater Than Games in April 2019. In January 2020, Ernest launched Crab Fragment Labs (crabfragment.com), a creative outlet focused on short fiction, design articles, and free print-and-play games.

Computer Games Industry

James Ernest worked for six years as a designer in the computer games industry, first at Carbonated Games, a division of Microsoft, where he was Game Design Manager from 2006-2008. He is credited under his legal name on several Microsoft games including Hexic II, Hop It!, UNO Rush, Full House Poker, and the Fable II Pub Games.

James was Senior Staff Designer at The Amazing Society from 2008-2011, primarily as a systems designer for Marvel Super Hero Squad Online.

Casino Games Industry

James Ernest has created one game for the casino games industry, Ricochet Poker, distributed by Galaxy Gaming. The game debuted at the Stratosphere in January 2020.

Learn to play two versions of Ricochet Poker here: The home version and the casino version.

Film and Video:

James Ernest produced the 2003 short film The Man Between, starring Anthony Gallela. Gallela stars as secret agent Robert Smith, an international spy, captured in some of his least flattering moments.

James also produces numerous advertising and entertainment videos on his YouTube channel.

Art and Comics:

James Ernest is an accomplished artist and graphic designer. He illustrated and typeset Contact Juggling, and is responsible for the graphic design of all his self-published games. Two of James Ernest’s ten Origins Awards are for graphic design.

Ernest is responsible for one piece of art in Magic: The Gathering: the card Reality Twist, from the Ice Age expansion.

From 2010-2012, James Ernest published a web comic called Brian and John, with artist Brian Murphy, based loosely on their experiences working in the computer game industry. You can still find a collection of those strips at Lulu.

List of Publications

Tabletop Games, Lead Designer: (Cheapass Games)

1996: 

1997:

1998:

1999:

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2011

2013

2014

2015

2016 

2017

2018 

Tabletop Games, Lead Designer (Other Publishers)

Tabletop Games, Co-Design with Mike Selinker / Lone Shark Games:

Tabletop Games, Contributor:

Digital Games, Design / Development Credit

  • Flowerz: (Microsoft / Carbonated Games, 2007)

  • Hexic II: Design Manager (Microsoft / Carbonated Games, 2007)

  • Hop It!: Design Manager (Microsoft / Carbonated Games, 2007)

  • Fable II Pub Games: Lead Designer (Microsoft / Carbonated Games, 2008)

  • UNO Rush: Lead Designer (Microsoft / Carbonated Games, 2009)

  • Full House Poker: Designer (Microsoft / XBox, 2011)

  • Marvel Super Hero Squad Online: Game Design Lead (Amazing Society / Gazillion 2011)

Books, Author:

Books, Contributor

  • Magic: The Gathering Pocket Player’s Guide (Wizards of the Coast, 1996)

  • Rules of Play (MIT Press, 2003)

  • Game Design Workshop (CMP Books, 2004)

  • Hobby Games: The 100 Best (Green Ronin Publsihing, 2007)

  • Family Games: The 100 Best (Green Ronin Publishing, 2009)

  • The Kobold Guide to Board Game Design (Kobold Press, 2011)

Short Film

  • The Man Between (2003)

Podcast

  • Here All Week (With Kelly Wright): Recorded weekly April 2020 to August 2022

Fun Facts

James Ernest lives in Seattle with his wife Carol Monahan and his daughter Nora Miller. He also keeps a condo in Las Vegas where, God willing, poker tournaments will someday feel safe again.

Watch him do a juggling trick.

Ernest was a student of magic in his early childhood, learning card tricks and sleight of hand from the age of nine. He learned to juggle at age 13, in a ten-week night course taught by Tom “Tomato Soup” Thale in University City MO. At age 14, he joined the Society for Creative Anachronism, adopting the stage name James Ernest.

Now watch him do a whole juggling act

In 1985, a junior in high school, Ernest programmed his first computer game. It was a first-person maze run, rendered on the absurd little touch screen of an HP 150. He also programmed games on TRS-80s in his school's computer lab, saving the code on cassette tapes. That same year, he outlined a fantasy novel called Tishai, at the heart of which was a chess variant of the same name. Tishai was Ernest’s first formal game design, with months of variation and testing, foreshadowing his eventual career in game design.

In 2017 this high school project was one of the inspirations for Ernest’s most successful and popular game to date, Tak: a Beautiful Game. Tak is a classic-style abstract strategy game, based on Patrick Rothfuss’ descriptions in his best-selling fantasy novel, The Wise Man’s Fear.

Watch People Talk about Tak

Ernest studied mechanical engineering in college, attending the University of Missouri at Rolla (now Missouri S&T). He helped found the UMR juggling club and accomplished nothing else of note. Between classes he went to the computer lab to write absurdist fiction, which would eventually become the basis of games like Kill Doctor Lucky.

This video is about making the video about remaking Kill Doctor Lucky for Kickstarter.

In 1989 Ernest decided that engineering school wasn’t fun, and moved to Seattle to land a job that didn’t require a college degree. That job was called “scrubbing the rubbery crap off the bottoms of the freezers in an ice cream store” and also professional juggling.

In 1993 Ernest and his wife Carol became investors in, and shortly thereafter employees of, Wizards of the Coast. That summer, Wizards produced the collectible card game Magic: the Gathering, and Ernest had his first job in the hobby gaming industry.

Ernest floated around Wizards in various support roles, including editing, technical writing, graphic design, and layout, eventually settling into the position of not working there anymore. During this time he had created about a dozen unfinished games, and in the spring of 1996, he decided to publish them himself under the brand Cheapass Games.

Most of that history is detailed above, and also in the very thick book Cheapass Games in Black and White, available from fine Greater Than Games websites everywhere.

Here is a fun video that pretends to be credits for a cop show,

And here is another fun video about making it.

Cheapass Games went through three phases in its 22-year history. In Phase 1, Ernest released a slew of black and white games, followed by a few higher-cost color games, racking up awards and growing the business to an unmanageable size. In Phase 2, Ernest temporarily retired from publishing, and spent six years in the computer games business. Then in Phase 3, Cheapass ironically became a boutique game studio, releasing deluxe games through the miracle of Kickstarter.

By the Spring if 2019, Cheapass had become more than James and Carol wanted to manage, so they found a ready buyer in Greater Than Games, and sold the enterprise and all its properties in one colossal bundle.

Here’s a fun little video about people who remember Cheapass Games (and a few who don’t).

Today, James Ernest divides his time between his upstairs, where there is light and heat, and his basement, where the dim memories of “game publishing” still hang in the frosty air. He is now Chief Creative Officer at Crab Fragment Labs.

During the Covid shutdown, James perseveres, digging deep into his childhood memories to try his hand at writing fiction again. If you’ve reached the end of this page, you might consider reading something over at the Library.

Last updated 9/15/23