Rolling for Knowledge With LEGEND

Games teach us how to play them. Complex rules, layered systems, ethical choices and strategic mastery are learned not through lectures or manuals, but through experimentation, failure, feedback and collaboration. This seminar explores how those same principles are now being deliberately used to support learning far beyond the gaming table.

Hosted by the LEGEND (Legal Educational Games: Evaluation, Network, Dissemination) network, this seminar showcases how educators are borrowing the tools of tabletop gaming, role-play and immersive design to teach complex real-world subjects including law, ethics, finance and professional decision-making in ways that are engaging, meaningful, and memorable.

Rather than treating games as a novelty or add-on, the session focuses on how game mechanics themselves drive learning. Topics include motivation and player agency, learning through failure, narrative and immersion and the role of choice and consequence. Drawing on examples from escape rooms, role-playing simulations and tabletop-inspired classroom games, speakers will demonstrate how play can transform how people understand systems, rules and responsibility.

The session is designed to be interactive and accessible, with live demonstrations, short playable examples and audience discussion. Whether you are a game designer, RPG game master, educator, or curious player, this strand invites you to reflect on a simple question: if games are so effective at teaching players how to master complex systems, what can the rest of the world learn from them?

This programme positions LEGEND at the intersection of education and play, celebrating games not just as entertainment, but as powerful learning engines and inviting the UK Games Expo community to help shape the future of playful learning.

Speakers: 

Dr Steven Montagu-Cairns, Associate Professor in Law, University of Leeds

Prof Craig Newbery Jones, Professor in Law, Birmingham City University

Dr Liam Sunner, Lecturer in Law, Queens University Belfast

Dr Joshua Warburton, Lecturer in Law, University of Leeds

Entry to this event is included with your UKGE entry ticket. Please have yours with you when you attend, or you will be refused entry. 

There are no reserved seating for this event, please arrive early and enjoy the wonderful British tradition of queuing to avoid disappointment.