Ameritrash--Theme or Mechanics?

Here's today's thought...is Ameritrash defined more by theme, or mechanics?


On the one hand, it's pretty obvious that it's theme that gets you in the door. Science Fiction and Fantasy are the two main themes that you'll find in most Ameritrash games. It's also why there is debate over what fits and what doesn't--"But...but it has Terminators riding Dinosaurs!"


Think about it--games with Zombies, or Cyborgs, or Dragons, or potty-mouthed Clerics...where is your first impulse to classify these? "Pff! That can't be Euro. It's got friggin' Pirates!" That's an actual train of thought when attempting to classify Pirate's Cove.


This often bounces right into the mechanics portion, and based on how European gaming influences have bled into American-style games--"cleaning them up" if you will--this adds to the confusion. Is Shogun Ameritrash? It has cubes and a highly abstracted combat resolution system, but it is about war, combat, and conflict, about duking it out on a Risk-style map.


What about individual elements of Ameritrash games? Dice? The first thing people hit you with is, "well, Settlers has dice." Yes, yes it does. Randomness in general? I've determined that Lost Cities is about as random as it gets, so much so that even if I played 200 games of it I still wouldn't feel comfortable putting money on any individual game. Plastic figures? Game manufacturers have figured out that plastic figs have a genuine appeal to a segment of gamers so it's not uncommon to see plastic figures in games that are not essentially Ameritrash. This adds to the confusion in games such as Bootleggers or Age of Empires III, which at a glance have all the plastic eye candy you could ever hope for but feature game mechanics that are not immediately at home in your typical Ameritrash game.


Mr. Skeletor doesn't like the term, but I can't help but think that the lines will further be blurred as each camp borrows heavily from the other. Euros seem to want to get out of their "pasted on theme" box and are trying very hard to give us games with crossover appeal, such as Arkadia or Pillars of the Earth. We're seeing American-style games incorporating more in the way of threaded turns, simultaneous actions, role selections, and auctions. We're seeing ambitious American-style designs coming from game makers the world over, including things like Duel in the Dark and Tannhauser.


Theme is going to continue to be important. I mean, imagine Risk, just like it is, but change the theme to ameobas battling it out in a petri dish or something. Imagine that Cave Troll is actually about a cave-in (oh wait, it almost was).


Just ask yourself--"would it seem out of place if this game included sharks with laser beams mounted on their heads?"

When Dice Attack!

To a gamer of any stripe, the humble dice remains an object of near mythical levels of awe and reverence, a potent symbol of what it means to be a gamer. Proof of this is absurdly easy to come by - however the Eurogame crowd might style themselves as shunning random mechanics even for them the dice remains a staple in shared names and images - witness "the cast are dice", "the dice tower" and the ever-popular images of big piles of dice on BGG.

Those of us who are happy to enjoy our Ameritrash and Wargame classics need not worry about being proud of this particular piece of symbolism because our games are rife with dice and we know well how much drama, excitement and variety they can bring to a game. But we've been there before and we know there's a suprising variety of mechanics you can employ to make good use of dice to add to a game.

However, it would be foolish to proclaim that "dice are good" without qualification because there's a whole host of dice-based games that aren't worth the plastic it takes to make the little universal hexidirectional randomising cubes including in the box. Snakes and Ladders for an obvious example, and much as it pains me to say this, an uncomfortably large swathe of instantly forgettable AT games from the eighties. In the brave new world of the Euro there are also designers who've gone back to the beloved dice without shame with mixed success.

The first and most obvious thing you need to know about dice is that throwing lots of them evens out the luck over the course of a game. Spreading out fate in this way is a good thing because it means you get all the joy of chucking dice across the board but you can still retain a satisfying level of strategic play in your game. Most game designers seem to have got this point now - there are few, if any hobby games released in the past ten years that hinge on using small amounts of dice. What doesn't seem to have quite got through yet is that in order to get away with using this old-fashioned but still popular approach to dice, you need to make sure that the game points in which you employ dice don't vary hugely in importance, otherwise you're back down to a long, drawn out luck-fest again.

Consider the recently re-released AT treasure Talisman. A fine game in its day but nowadays I have to join the ranks of the naysayers on this one if for no other reason than the whole theme has been done much better by large number of other games. Talisman makes heavy use of dice - to the detriment of good decision making, but that's another story - for movement, combat and resolving non-combat encounters too. However, the actual impact of a good or bad dice roll in the game can vary enormously - if you're fighting a very powerful creature, or hanging around trying to hit the space which leads from the outer to the middle ring then the outcome of the dice roll is much, much more important than if you're up against something weak or just making an early movement roll to start finding things on the board. That's a bad use of dice - effectively the outcome of the game can be decided by a relatively small number of dice rolls.

I'm going to contrast this with my old favourite, the soon to be re-released Titan. In Titan, combat almost always involves rolling so many dice that combat outcomes which hinge on a small number of dice results are fantastically rare. It can happen - if you've got a round or two of dice rolls to finish off a Titan piece for example - but these occasions a few enough that they simply make memorable gaming experiences rather than a dull game, and making memorable gaming moments is one of the maky cool things that dice can do in a game. The movement mechanic is rather less prone to the standard distribution curve however because only a single dice is thrown each turn and this can make a big difference - you might get a good recruit, a poor recruit or not recruit at all, or you might be able to attack a weak enemy stack or avoid a strong enemy stack. However, the movement and terrain rules in Titan have a much bigger impact on where you can or might want to move than the dice roll - so, again, you're left with a situation in which you've got the excitement potential of a good roll making a big difference but where good decision making is a surer way to win the day.

A more recently fashionable way to utilise dice in game, and a particular favourite of mine, is to employ some sort of mechanic whereby fewer dice are rolled but the distribution curve is built in to the mechanics of the game so things tend to even out over the long run. Apart from anything else this is good because it reduces the chances of some ham-fisted idiot like me rolling dice across the board and knocking all the pieces over. And yes, I know about dice towers but following the little buggers across the room and then having big arguments about whether a given dice is "cocked" or not, or whether it counts if it's been retrieved from under the sofa is part of the charm.

The obvious game in the distribution curve category is, of course, Settlers of Catan. The dice in Settlers work well for a number of reasons - the dice get thrown a lot, the outcome affects all the players and there's an inherent balancing mechanism for a slew of bad luck known as "trading", although you'd never know this from the number of social rejects who chime in and complain that negotiation is Settlers is all a matter of dry mathematical odds and the dice impact is far too random to make it a game worth playing. However, the nice thing about Settlers is that it embraces a large number of play elements - negotiation, analysis, positional play and luck - and balances them well so that no one aspect is allowed to dominate. So if you do get screwed by the dice it's really doesn't rankle too much.

Another recent title to jump on this particular bandwagon is Yspahan. Yspahan has a slightly crazy way of utilising that distribution curve which is very clever and in no way as obvious or intuative as that employed by Settlers. It's kind of hard to explain if you've not played in the game but in effect it makes more common rolls less useful, and less common rolls more desirable. It also throws in a tantilising little mechanic whereby the player rolling can up his chances of getting what he needs by buying more dice that no-one else can use. So far, so good. Now Yspahan isn't a bad game but it's no favourite of mine either because beyond the dice (and cards) the bulk of the game is cold, hard analysis. And this leads to a problem encountered by far too many Eurogames that have attempted to cash in on the average gamers love for dice - building random mechanics into a largely analytical game makes the two aspects of play clash badly. If you've been working hard playing a game with requires you to crunch the numbers to get an edge, being cursed by the Random Number God is utterly infurating. If the game you're playing has a balance of elements (like Settlers and many AT games) or is unashamedly based on randomness or gambling then you're much more inclined to take it in your stride and just relax and enjoy the ride.

Another factor which deserves mention is the small number of Eurogames which offer the player a choice as to how much they want dice to influence the game. A good example is Traders of Genoa. While this is primarily a negotiation game - and thus has one of those built-in balancing factors for bad luck - it also makes cards which allow a player to forgo the dice roll and pick a space instead easily available. So if you're fond of riding with lady luck you can try that, or if you prefer to impose your will on the game then you can do that too. Each has their place and each is a valid path to victory in Traders - because if you're picking up special powers cards then you're not picking up goods, messages or contracts.

Finally I have to make mention of the humble Combat Resolution Table so beloved of the Wargamer. the CRT is a fantastic idea because building in odds to the equation is an easy, satisying way to ensure that you get all the fun benefits of random dice rolls without allowing luck to dominate or the need to throw buckets of dice. What I find startling about the CRT is that with the exception of a few old fantasy and sci-fi wargames it's a mechanic which has been shamefully ignored by AT designers. I even know of one Euro which has a (admittedly absurdly simple) CRT - the dinosaur evolution game Evo. So get your thumbs out, AT designers, and let's see if you can borrow and improve on some old favourite wargame mechanics in the same way you've brilliantly improved and integrated some Euro favourites into modern AT games. Diversity is our strength!

It is with some regret that I have to announce this is going to be my last column for a while. I'm about to start a new job and until I've settled in to the extent where I can be comfortable surreptitiously typing out blog posts in Word and then pasting them and posting them at home there will be no more posts. I do mean to return, sooner rather than later and hopefully I can use the break to come up with some interesting ideas for discussion and debate. So, see you when I see you!

This week, Matt has been:
Reading: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Watching: The Cider House Rules
Drinking: Gilles Bouton 2004 St Aubin "En Creot"
Playing: Citadels, Ra and (on the PC) Championship Manager 4

Them Bones

We played Marvel Heroes during the July 4th holiday last week, and it got me to thinking primarily about dice-based combat systems. Marvel Heroes is primarily a "throw the dice, see who gets more hits" type affair blended with a selection of abilities for each hero, and while it serves its job well it's obvious that the combat is only a smaller portion of the game as a whole.

Since a lot of the games I enjoy involve throwing dice and inflicting casualties based on the results, I began thinking about what I look for in a *good* dice-based combat system. Here are some things that are important to me:



1. Casualties should be able to be inflicted on both sides during a roll.

Really, this is my biggest problem with Risk. Each die rolled is a "zero sum" affair, highest takes it. I realize that you could (and often do) have situations where you split the higher dice and each take a casualty, but that's not exactly what I'm talking about.

I mean, we've all seen it...two defenders in Risk throwing INCREDIBLY, defying the odds. You throw twos, they throw threes. And NOTHING is more frustrating than a defender who rolls a pair of sixes a couple of times.

I like combat systems with "to hit" rolls for each side. Meaning that my casualties are essentially independent from yours, if that makes sense. Combat is a messy thing; there should be bodies all around when the action goes down.

Axis & Allies of course features this mechanic, where each side rolls looking for target numbers, and inflicts casualties on the other side accordingly. Twilight Imperium and War of the Ring also see battles where each side rolls fantastically and just demolishes each other in a bloodbath.


2. Differentiation of Units/Rolls

Let's face it--who wasn't disappointed to learn that the different looking units in Risk were actually no different from each other, except for counts? This especially holds true with the licensed versions of Risk, where you *want* those Nazgul figures to have some extra-lethal combat abilities.

Different units should battle differently. This is especially important because this typically means the game also features some sort of economy--it should be more expensive to build better fighters, and the game needs a way to reflect this cost.

Even if all units of a certain race fight the same way, you can make them different by the costing of the units. Then, when all players mesh in play, it creates diverse combat situations. Quest for the Dragonlords has this as part of its base game but didn't really exploit it well until its Crystal of Power expansion.

I realize that War of the Ring has different-looking unit types that essentially battle the same, but WotR actually creates differences in other ways. First is the location, which can cause each side to battle differently. Then there are leaders and companions, who provide re-rolls. The expansion provides Siege Engines, allowing you to affect the rolls at important Strongholds. Lastly, there is...


3. Card-based Combat and Die Manipulation

I really dislike games where all you can do is throw the bones and hope for the best. You literally have no control over your outcomes whatsoever. This is the biggest reason I can never go back to vanilla Risk; it's just a series of dashing my three guys against your two and keeping my fingers crossed.

The themed Risks really excel here because you can stockpile cards to use them for critical assaults. This allows you to try to skew the odds when it really counts, and deciding when to use those precious cards can be a game unto itself. Star Wars Risk: Clone Wars Edition even features a few cards that can help you snatch victory from the jaws of defeat; one card portrays Obi-Wan and Yoda's attempt at striking at Palpatine one last time and does so by allowing you to attack with two units to anywhere on the board.

This is where War of the Ring shines; the card-based interchange during combat ensures that combats play out differently. Nexus Ops is again a winner by having cards that can boost certain unit types, give you bonuses to your rolls when battling in certain areas, and more.


4. "Tiered" Combat

This goes hand-in-hand with having different units for an army; you can increase the worth of more expensive units by letting them fire first.

This can take the form of having each unit type fire in turn and removing casualties after each tier, or having a ranged and a close combat tier where the ranged attackers get to inflict their casualties first, all the way to having a very small subset of unit types fire in a sort of "pre-combat" mechanism.

Nexus Ops uses the "each unit type fires in turn", with casualties after each step. This is great because it often provides the painful choice of sacrificing cheaper units that haven't fired yet, or inflicting casualties on more expensive units who have already had their chance to fire. Samurai Swords/Shogun has a ranged/close combat breakdown where archers get to unload on the charging ground units before they can close the distance. Twilight Imperium has both PDS and anti-figher barrages that can change the nature of a battle before it's even begun, outside of the "normal" combat phases.


5. Specialized Dice

Let's face it, nothing does a better job of portraying the ferociousness of stronger units than allowing them to roll bigger dice. Understand when I say "specialized" that also includes stuff that most of us are used to but the public at large isn't--things like d4s, d8s, d12s, and so on.

This doesn't mean that's all I'm referring to; games like Memoir '44 and Battlelore essentially create their own odds by having dice with different faces that mean different things in certain circumstances. Even Lionheart uses this to a decent effect by having dice with three Axe faces, two arrow faces, and a Panic face; now with only one die you can give close combat fighters 50/50 hit rations, archers get a 1/3 hit ratio, and you can use the special Panic face for different effects. The most common is having your units Panic; this happens if you roll all Panics on your dice. This is a nice touch because you are more likely to have your morale break as your units are reduced; one lone guy with a sword is much more likely to Panic than he was when he had three of his buddies backing him up.

Having different dice to use in different situations really allows you to open up the possibilities for combat, making it richer. I'll go back to Quest for the Dragonlords, which I think is really effective at using different dice to make combat more interesting. Each unit in the game has two values: an attack value, and a defense value. The defense value tells you which die to roll when fighting against that unit, and the attack value is what number the unit has to roll to hit. So a "normal" fighter might have a Defense of 6; that means you roll a d6 when attacking it, but you use your Attack value to determine success. That means if I attack a guy with a Defense of 6 and I have an Attack of 3, I roll a d6 and try to get 3 or less.

Why this is great is that it allows monsters to have really ferocious scores; the dragon has a defense of TWELVE, meaning you have to roll a d12 when attacking it and for most fighters come up with a 3 or less. All the while the dragon is just MOWING down your dudes with his crazy attack value that almost guarantees a hit every turn.

Battleball may be the simplest yet most creative use of different dice that I've seen. The game features the full compliment of the most common "specialty" dice, from d6s to d20s. Each player is color-coded to show what dice they move when they roll. This allows guys like the wide receivers to roll the d20s and literally just tear down the field. But, in a nice twist, when tackles happen, it is the lower value that wins the combat, and rolling a "1" means you've just LEVELED the other guy, who's out for the game. This means your big burly tackles may only roll a d6 for movement and are extra slow, but their odds of tackling a speedy receiver are huge, and their chances of really flattening the other guy and breaking his cyborg bones is much, much higher.




So there you have it; things that really make dice-based combat work for me. What are some of your favorite dice-based combat mechanics, and games that feature them?

Roll Playing

For someone who's enough of an avowed Ameritrash fan to start a blog on the subject, I have an odd and ongoing aversion to boardgames that attempt to simulate aspects of role-playing games. There seems to be an ongoing relationship between AT games and role-playing games, with role playing being a common path for AT gamers to get into the boardgaming hobby (myself included). Really this is not surprising given that both types of gaming have a tendency to emphasise theme and narrative. As a result dungeoncrawl and role-playing style boardgames constitute a fairly large sub-genre of the Ameritrash canon. So why do I shut myself off from these games?

Well I ought to start by admitting that in part my reluctance to invest in these sorts of games stems from the fact that I know I'd have a hard time persuading the groups I game with to play them. The people I game with can generally be categorised as hardcore miniatures gamers, hardcore strategy gamers and casual gamers, none of whom have any great interest in role-playing and by extension in board games that attempt to simulate the experience. But my dislike for these games does extend beyond mere inability to find an opponent - after all a number of them make good solo gaming fare - to my mind the genre is plagued by a number of problems which mostly stem from the very aim they're trying to achieve. Allow me to elaborate.

The first question I always ask when confronted with a game of this nature is - why? Role-playing is a gaming scene onto itself with its own design conventions and where players seek after different things than they get from boardgaming. What's the point in trying to combine the two styles of game into one? Too often it seems to me that the resulting games only succeed in capturing the worst aspects of both hobbies - endless repetitive "monty-haul" style games with labyrinthine rules that have neither the freedom of choice and expression offered by role-playing nor the tactical depth offered by a good board game. What you do get in terms of a system and components for simulating combat in a more understandable and satisfying fashion than the typical verbal melee of a role-playing combat can often be achieved simply by using some board gaming props to help you along in your role-playing session rather than trying to separate it off into a different game.

The nature of role-playing is that a group of players co-operate together against the challenges thrown at them by the games master. Although I have run and played in games where player versus player plotting was a significant element (and a lot of fun it was too, I might add) it's difficult to imagine how a role-playing game could be set up which allowed all the people playing and the games master to be competing against one another. An attempt to replicate this situation in a board game leads to two problems. The first is a personal one - I don't generally like co-operative games so that's another turn off for me. The other problem is that the Games Master role in a board version of an RPG is significantly less interesting. Gone is the need to assess and pass judgement on the effects of the players actions, the fun of trying to role-play non-player characters in a memorable fashion, and the challenge of fudging the dice rolls in the interest of driving the narrative. All that's left is that smug feeling of knowing things before the players find them out which, while pleasant, is hardly enough to make you want to put time and effort into the game.

Another issue that seems to arise in these games is that they often seem to degenerate into glorified puzzles - a complaint that I often level at the bulk of Eurogames on the market. Given that the hallmark of role-playing games themselves is the creative freedom they offer the participants this seems like a particularly bizarre problem to throw up but it does seem to be a recurring problem. Witness the number of these games that suffer from the "corridor problem" - the tactic of having the heroes line up behind a door in order to pick off monsters one by one. In general it seems that too many of these games have optimal play solutions and don't have the open, creative access to strategy that I, for one, look for in a satisfying game. I don't doubt this is something to do with the fact that these games often play well solo - almost every solo game is going to suffer from this problem because you don't have another human brain playing against you to do unexpected and creative things that you need to consider and react to. The old fashioned solution to this problem in these sorts of games was to offer the players a vast and mind-boggling array of possible encounters but even this tended to get bogged down in the inevitable limitations placed on game play by having a boardgame-like rules framework which needed to cover every possibility instead of leaving some decisions to the GM.

The solution, in turn, to this problem was to make games of ever increasing complexity. The apex of that design path is Magic Realm which is the most complicated board game that I've ever tried to play. It's an interesting game but the basic problem with it, in my view, is that the satisfaction of play in no way makes the effort of learning all those rules worthwhile - and the same is true of every single role-playing boardgame I've come across that tried to solve the issues I've outlined by increasing the number of rules. We come full circle with the arguments now - if you've produced a game with a rulebook the size of a role-playing manual then again, why not just play the role-playing game instead of accepting a hybrid?

On reflection it seems to me that I often use my space in this column to criticise things instead of lauding them. Essentially that's pretty lazy - it's much easier to write an interesting piece and get people talking by throwing down insults than praise. So I figured I'd take the second half of this piece to look at a few role-playing boardgames that I think have succeeded and why.

My absolute favourite in this area has to be DungeonQuest although in fairness this game succeed by breaking almost every convention of role-playing games and is basically a boardgame dressed up in a dungeon-crawl theme. There's no GM and al the players are competing directly one another. The game solves the problem of not having a GM to dish out the map as the players explore by having the relatively simple expedient of having the player draw a tile when they enter a new room and take cards to simulate encounters. You might immediately spot that this has the potential to create unfair situations - players drawing dead ends or corridor directions that are useless and so forth. You'd be right - in fact DungeonQuest makes absolutely no attempt to be fair and oddly enough this gives it a big part of its appeal. It's short enough that no-one cares and brutal enough that usually all the players get shafted by the game in some form or fashion before the dungeon trip is done. Simply brilliant and a great antidote to too much carefully considered strategy games.

Another one I still find myself pulling off the shelf occasionally is a left-field oddity from Tom Wham called Mertwig's Maze. This was published by TSR in an AD&D RPG module sleeve as a "Forgotten Realms Gamefolio" in spite of the fact it had sod all to do with AD&D or Forgotten Realsm and would obviously have benefited from being packaged in a game box. This again has no GM and has all the players competing against each other but the particular mark of genius in this design is to have each player running a party of adventurers instead of a single character. Recruiting new characters into your party in indeed an important part of the game play. The result is a game that does manage to feel like both an RPG (there's your party of characters - go out and seek for cool treasure to equip them) and a strategy board game (you're competing against everyone else and there's the potential to exploit the rules for creative strategy). Tom's sense of humour also helps add to the longevity of this one, although maybe it's just me that still gets a chuckle out of the "Bollock the Bear" card every time it comes out. "Ork" goes the Onyx Oryx.

A game which does look to be worth playing - but which I have never, and probably will never, play - is Descent from Fantasy Flight. It solves the problem of the impotent and annoying GM through the simple but ingenious means of making the Games Master compete against the players - he can win by having his minions slaughter them all. The game does still look to have repetitive strategy problems but at least all the people involved are trying to compete against each other on a relatively equal footing. The reason I'm never going to play this is just because it looks too much like a long time playing a standard dungeon crawl to interest my gaming circles into trying it.

My final pick in this category is a favourite of a number of other F:AT writers - Return of the Heroes. This succeeds by tearing up all the conventions that usually govern this genre and reassembling the basic theme in the image of a Eurogame. This actually works amazingly well - I've already mentioned that there is in fact a link between Euros and RPG-style games in the mechanical approach to strategy that often results. In Return of the Heroes you've got the challenge of solving the Euro-puzzle style game play with all the added narrative and theme of an AT game. It's the narrative aspects that really make this - the stories that you build as you play can result in surprisingly engaging solo game sessions.

Ameritrashin' Heritage: The Risk/Talisman Connection

Not too long ago I heard the opinion espoused that all AT games essentially boiled down to one of two games (or a combination thereof): Risk and Talisman. This was intended as a derogatory statement, as though to say, "Your little AT games are mired in the same ol' same ol' and lacking the innovation seen in the most recent Eurogames."

I naturally wanted to initially refute that argument. Talisman is a game that is nearly 25 years old; Risk is double that in age and is one of THE whipping boys for "Bad" game examples. Think about the Risk comments you may have read over the years...they generally aren't pretty.

(My take on Risk, by the way, is that it is an important game that has been obsoleted entirely by its offspring. But that's probably neither here nor there).


But then that leads you to think about your favorite games to use as an example. Axis and Allies? Uh...yeah, you can see the Risk heritage in there. Runebound? Much more elaborate, but Talisman is clearly its inspiration. Blood Feud in New York? Risk. Descent? That was inspired by Heroquest but there are those who argue that Heroquest itself is a progeny of Talisman.

It's as though once Gygax's ideas were lifted and put in a compartmentalized game form, any evolution that took place after that point is irrelevant. You're a board game with a fantasy theme. Wham--you are Talisman Jr., thanks for playing, good night.

(This of course carries the stigma of being compared to Talisman in the minds of nostalgic gamers, and seemingly no amount of improvement in gameplay during that time could *possibly* equal the great Talisman. So know your place, Runebound).

And don't get me started on Quest for the Dragonlords...




Two Roads Diverged

It's the age old battle, of course...which do you value more? Theme, or gameplay? Never mind the fact that many games provide both, on the ideological battlefield all games boil down to a see-saw battle of theme vs. gameplay.

There's no denying that German games have seen great strides in the innovation of game mechanics. I clearly remember playing Settlers for the first time and just having this alien feeling as though I was taking part in something I couldn't quite grasp and was altogether new.

At that point, innovation becomes the thing...never mind the fact that the Eurogames market has also fallen into a seeming pattern of stagnation ("It's Puerto Rico meets Caylus meets Settlers!") and worse, simplification (the SdJ winners since the turn of the century have grown more and more distressingly simple-minded). It's just that since American-style games have had a long lineage, they fell into stagnation "earlier", and thus such opinions were formed.




Guilty...Provisionally

That's not to say that these accusations are without merit. Who of us hasn't sat down to an Ameritrash game and been told, "It's Heroquest meets sci-fi" and instantly been able to expect what's coming? Who hasn't seen a billion games with a map of the world or area and plastic troops on it arrayed by area, in which some dice will be thrown and these piles diminished or increased?

Sure, AT publishers can be guilty of pumping up production to make up for a seeming lack of innovation. Heroscape is a brilliant game, but not intensely innovative in terms of gameplay--it uses the hit dice system of Heroquest, the hex movement rules of countless miniatures games before it, and cribs a bit from the world of CCGs with wild and fantastic themes and powers. Heroscape grabbed attention precisely because it presented this package in a beautiful and relatively affordable package.

Is that a bad thing? Personally, I don't think so. It's a nice combination of simple rules and attractive production that works for me...and of course, during games of this you get your Ameritrash moments such as an army of mechs facing down an Orc riding a dinosaur and William Wallace (let's face it, that's who that guy is) and his clan going to town on some Samurai.




Whither Innovation?

That leads me to two thoughts on the subject of innovation. First, if we assume that theme-minded gamers are more concerned with themes that appeal to them, the need for innovation is diminished. If I want a sci-fi themed game, it's the theme itself that I'm after--the rules merely need to be adequate (and sometimes, familiarity is a bonus). I look at the map and see my plastic armies--if you fill me in on the combat, we're ready to go inside of ten minutes. To that degree the rules don't inhibit your ability to be immersed in theme.

Secondly, if we take the assumption that our games are generally inspired by Risk and Talisman--that we are constrained to play games with armies clashing and fantasy or sci-fi themes--what this does is allow the Ameritrash style of game to come full circle.

Think about it; currently a lot of Euros are caught in the spiral of Action Points/Auctions/Tile Placement and by extension trying to slap themes on these that will appeal to gamers or seem different in a sense. "Yes, this has auctions, but this time you're bidding for the rights to build sewers!" The limitless themes of the Euro in which many different themes can be grafted onto the same basic mechanics may keep Eurogames in a stagnant state as themes are chased and innovation diminishes. I've seen few Euros released over the past few years that weren't described as "Euro X meets Euro Y with a splash of Euro Z".



The Theme's the Thing?

What has happened, though, is that Ameritrash games have already been through that valley of stagnation. Due to the nature of Ameritrash fans, the list of "acceptable" genres and themes are pretty well defined. And thanks to the Euro explosion that did bring with it tons upon tons of innovative game concepts and ideas, we're seeing AT games cleaned up and borrowing from these innovations to make them better games. Even better than this, we're seeing more AT games from publishers overseas, such as the upcoming Tannhauser (bringing it's Hellboy-inspired theme with it, but with a different take on a miniatures skirmish).

Not to mention the influx of hybrids, rapidly becoming the grail of game design. Appealing themes that fit the mechanics with medium complexity, decent rule sets, and enticing to both crowds?

Maybe AT games, having benefited greatly from the innovations that Euros initially brought with them, can now give back in return their Risk- and Talisman-induced marriage of theme and mechanics. Maybe AT can finally be comfortable in its own skin, accepting of an understood limitation in theme, and we can watch as game designers continue to crawl under the hood and fine-tune the Ameritrash machine.

Now pass me those dice--my little plastic warrior is about to smash that plastic dragon.

Eliminating the Elimination Myth

The ground trembles. The Kraken wakes. Titan is to be reprinted.

And what seems to be the majority response to the idea that one of the very best games of the eighties is to see the light of day again? Complaints about it player elimination.

Discussion of player elimination is an ongoing bugbear for me because it seems to be missing a very fundamental point. We'll return to what that point is in a little while but we'll begin by reviewing the complaints that are usually raised against player elimination in games.

The basis of the argument against is that elimination is bad in longer games because it means some players have to leave the game early, spoiling the game session for them. I have mixed feelings about this particular argument not least because there are deeper facets that don't usually get discussed. Consider one of the grossest offenders in the player elimination league - Risk. During discussion of elimination I heard one guy quote an example of a 7-hour risk game they once played in which two players were put out early because both decided to scrap for Australia on the first turn. The exact same thing has happened to me once, although my game didn't drag on quite so long because we were playing with the mission rules.

The key word in the above paragraph is once.

Think about it. This is *Risk* we're talking about here, no Go or Chess or some similar ancient game with vast depths of subtle strategy. Any gamer worth their salt who has played Risk will have spotted that the attacker has a considerable advantage given equal numbers of troops. If it looks like this sort of situation is shaping up during your initial deployment then for Gods sake, if you're not going to be going before your opponent, don't get sucked into it! If you do happen do get into this position, then it's an error you are unlikely to repeat. I have an excuse for my behaviour: I was horribly drunk at the time.

The point is that many player elimination games have this sort of built-in policing - early aggression will often damage you as much as your victim, leaving your ripe for the picking by other players. Titan has it - because early stacks tend to be the same sort of size and power, an early attack will often leave you too weak to compete with other players in spite of the points reward. Getting eliminated early in this sort of game is far more often a consequence of bad play (or inebriation) than randomness. Isn't that one of the things Eurogamers often complain about in AT games? That they don't sufficiently punish bad play? Well, I beg to differ.

I'll admit that any elimination games that don't come with some sort of mechanism for limiting the number of early exits are definitely a bad thing. But here's the rub - I can't actually think of any that don't.

So we're left with long-running games which have elimination during the later stages. I personally see this as much less of a problem. If I get kicked out of a 4 hour game after 3 hours then I've still had a good game night - I can watch the game, play on the computer, maybe play a Euro-filler against some other knocked-out players, go home early or - god forbid - actually hang around and indulge myself in some good old fashioned socialising. But lets run with this for a moment and suggest that a game player might not want to do any of those things, does that suddenly make player elimination undesirable?

Well no. It adds spice to the game. What sort of feeble taunting are you going to be able to deliver to your opponents when you've all finished simultaneously within 5 victory points of one another? What kind of exhilaration can you feel when your only option for taking revenge on the guy whose moves have been bugging you all game is to force him to ship his coffee instead of selling it (I hate exclusive examples, so for the uninitiated, the latter is a Puerto Rico reference)? How much greater is your stake in, and attachment to, success in the game when you face the knowledge the doing badly is going to result in an early and ignominious exit? In short, what sort of memorable game night are you going to have unless there's a player elimination game on the table?

Back in the days when a lot of the games around did revolve around random dice rolls I can see how there could be a complaint of elimination. If you've just sat out 2 hours of a five hour game purely because you couldn't roll enough sixes while you were at the table then yes, sure, I can see why you'd never want to play that game again. But those days are, for the most part, gone. The games that survive (such as Titan) survive for the most part exactly because they weren't games like that - they were games that rewarded good strategy and clever play. I wonder sometimes if all the venom that gets directed at player elimination arises from genuinely shitty experiences older gamers had with badly designed Ameritrash games from the eighties. But it's not the eighties anymore, and of all the lessons that AT designs have learned from the Euro-revolution, the increase the number of important game choices has to be the one that's been most widely accepted.

But lets get back to my opening promise of ratting out a fundamental misconception about player elimination. Take a typical Eurogame - to avoid accusations of bias we'll use an AT favourite, Settlers of Catan. In Settlers no-one can be eliminated - everyone is locked in to playing until the end of the game. What's more you're all racing to ten victory points and everyone starts with two so it's a short course anda close finish is virtually guaranteed. All good stuff, right?

Wrong.

It's all a myth. I can recall playing a game of Settlers in which I was in the lead most of the way through. I was the first player to hit eight points and shortly thereafter it dawned on me that I was completely boxed in - I couldn't build any more roads or settlements and all my settlements had already been upgraded to cities. The only way in which I could get my last two points was to burn resources drawing cards and hoping to get a VP card, but my setup didn't specialise in the necessary resources to make that anything more than an outside chance. I sat through the last half hour of that game knowing I'd lost but having to play on regardless. At the game end it looked close - the winner had ten, of course and I came second with nine (I did get one card) - but the game wasn't remotely competitive after the halfway point and everyone knew it.

This situation is far worse than actually being eliminated from the game. Because the system demand I continue playing I had no choice to get up and do something else, I had to carry on making my futile moves. Worse, I had the potential to spoil things for everyone else by doing the kingmaker thing - biasing the game by picking and choosing who I traded with on what terms and who I put the robber on. That sort of bias (which is common in AT games) isn't too much of a problem in an open game where everyone gets the chance to do it and react accordingly, but in a "closed" Euro it can completely destroy any chance of a meaningful game. I didn't do this - but I could have.

Euro designers are very far from stupid of course, and there are a number of mechanisms employed to combat this problem in other designs. The most common one - and my absolute #1 vote for the laziest, most over-used mechanic in game design ever - is hidden victory points. I feel I should qualify that latter statement by saying that it's not the mechanic itself that's bad but rather the number of times it's been used to cover up problems in what are basically badly designed games. But I digress. By hiding the victory points you stop people being certain that they've fallen badly behind and as a result keep them interested in playing for themselves rather than playing kingmaker.

So what does this achieve? A game in which you can actually be eliminated but you just don't know it. Call me old-fashioned but I thought the idea of covering up and effectively lying to people was generally considered a bad thing.

On consideration, if we're talking about manners, I should probably concede that stealing someone's country, pillaging their resources and slaughtering the populace probably ranks somewhat higher on the impoliteness scale than white lies so maybe AT games can't take the high ground here. But you take my point.

Games are competitive. Elimination is built into the nature of competition. How can you have a game that rewards better players over weaker ones unless at some point in the game those better plays build into a cumulative advantage which eventually becomes overwhelming? All the concepts that have been used to combat this - hidden VPs, low VP targets, exponential build-up to a victory condition, granting weaker players privileges in the early rounds - are just blinds to the fact that all games must, sooner or later, turn into elimination competitions.

So long live Titan. And, paradoxically, long live elimination.

Asymmetry = Value

In Eurogames, often the focus is on creating a symmetrical game environment. The idea is that you want to start all players on exactly equal footing so that the winner of the game is decided "fairly", so to speak.

Often, the driving factor behind most Eurogames is finding a way to break that initial symmetry, or at the very least take advantage of fluctuations in symmetry and maximize your score at every opportunity. Players in Eurogames often poke and prod at the system to find these fluctuation points--maybe it's finding the rythym in San Juan that lets you Build when others aren't ready, forcing them to miss a Build phase or have to build a suboptimal building, for example.

While I think that such games have their place--and yeah, breaking the symmetry in such games can be a bit of fun--I think it lends itself to the notion that Eurogames are a bit more limited in their replayability. There's certainly the myth, real or no, that Eurogamers will "solve" a particular game and quickly move on to the next, maybe logging six plays or so before reaching that point.

It's not hard to see why; the decision space remains the same for all players. It may make a slight difference whether you are player 1 or 4 at the table, but beyond that each play is fairly identical to the last.

Critics of Ameritrash games will often lambast the asymmetry that is usually built in to these types of games. Of course, the reason for having them is pretty straightforward--when a game is tied directly to its theme, it doesn't usually make sense to have all sides or players have identical resources or even goals. In War of the Ring, it wouldn't make sense for the Shadow and Free People's player to have the same goals or even play even remotely identically; after all, it is trying to represent the events and situations in the novels, where this symmetry certainly doesn't hold true.

What really is appealing to AT fans however is the idea that essentially you get multiple games in one package. In Axis and Allies, playing as the United States or the entire Allied force is a MUCH different experience than playing as the Germans or the Axis force. Starting positions are radically different, strategies are therefore likewise much different, the goals of each player diverge and follow different paths. A Game of Thrones sees five houses with different starting positions, strengths, and combat House cards trying to win the game with what they have available. Fury of Dracula has one player as Dracula versus 1-4 players as Hunters who have goals that are completely different to one another--Dracula is to stay alive and create new vampires, while the Hunters merely want to slay Dracula before he does this.

Another way games create asymmetry is via variable player powers, a favorite game element of mine. Not only do you have different starting resources, but during the game you have an ability or set of abilities that are totally different than the player across the table from you. Twilight Imperium has a host of races who must approach the game in different fashions; some are combat monsters, others have vast wealth in trade goods for negotiation, some can hoard huge amounts of action cards, and still others are more politically focused.

How does this create value? In each of these cases, it is like you are getting multiple games in one package. When you pick up Fury of Dracula, you get two major games, one of which has four minor variations. Playing as Dracula is a much different experience--indeed, a much different game for you--than playing the hunters; each hunter is different, but less so (still enough to create a new experience playing Mina instead of Van Helsing, however).

Star Wars: The Queen's Gambit, a game I spend endless amounts of time pimping, is a great example. Let's say if the game was completely symmetrical--we might tire of the game after only ten sessions. But since playing the Federation is so much different than the Republic, you can effectively double that number...maybe I've tired of squashing Gungans, and now I want to unleash a twin Jedi beatdown on the horned Sith Darth Maul.


You can extrapolate this further when you get into games with variable army construction, such as Heroscape. Asymmetry is built in to that game at a fundamental level, as two 500 point armies are not necessarily created equal. It's very easy to spend the same amount of points as another player and still be completely outclassed in terms of efficiency and combos (imagine spending points to draft an Orc champion who gives your orc warriors free activations but then drafting no orcs to back him up...an extreme example, but a good illustration of how points can be "wasted").

If I tire of fighting you with my Super Orcs of Doom, I can move on to try new combinations, drastically extending the life and play value of my game. To me, that's a great deal.



This isn't a purely AT thing, of course. Reiner has been known to dabble in asymmetrical games such as Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation, Lord of the Rings, Blue Moon, and others. Amun Re and Ra both see players start out in fairly symmetrical positions that can quickly and very easily shift to tremendously large gaps in symmetry very quickly.


Balance might be nice, and I realize that it can be tough to balance different powers so that each players have exactly identical chances at winning. That's okay; to me, it makes me want to play the 'weaker' force more to see if I can't pull off the win, making it all the sweeter. Of course, this also means we can just swap sides so I can give you a good thumping....

It Looks Like a Duck, Quacks Like a Duck....Part III

Well, sorry for the week's delay, but I was off in Atlanta on business (really, an elaborate, expensive ruse to boardgame and have the company pay for it).


When we left off, we had listed off several items that may or may not constitute a strong, definitive ideal of "Ameritrash". For the most part, save Production Values, I think we nailed a lot of them. To be fair, I think that "Production Values" is really a modern Ameritrash thing...AT titles these days are filled with tons of nicely-produced bits that we wouldn't have dreamed of getting for these prices several years ago. Some have pointed out (and rightly so) that *all* games these days have seen a general ratcheting up of production quality as boardgames fight to catch they eye on a crowded shelf. Therefore, I've given up tilting at that particular windmill, and concede defeat.


So...how do we apply what we've learned? I thought it best to take three seemingly similar titles, lay out the elements of them that would make them candidates for being "Ameritrash", and find out the differences that keep some or all of them out of this category.

As a disclaimer--I consider all three of the below games to be excellent. Do not mistake any of the discussion that follows to be criticism. This is, as Barnes would put it, "Ameritrash Academia".


The three games for consideration all share a similar theme--the "Dungeon Crawl". All have the typical fantasy characters and races, the dungeon setting, and the trappings you would expect from such titles in the form of spells, combat, dragons, and more. The games I've selected are Drakon 3rd Edition, Dungeon Twister, and Descent.



Drakon 3rd Edition:





Luck: Players have a hand of tiles that are drawn randomly. When players place tiles, they refill their hand with a random draw.

Theme: Six adventurers have been captured by Drakon and offered a sporting chance; the first of them to collect ten gold will be set free; the others will be dragon chow. The adventurers are all archetypes of the fantasy genre--a warrior, a wizard, a dwarf, an amazon, a thief, and a barbarian. They all have a one-off power relating to their "class" that gives them flavor--the wizard can walk through a wall, the thief can snatch gold from another player, e.t.c.





Conflict: This one's a little iffy, but it's there. Though you cannot attack another player directly, many tiles can be placed that allow you to trigger nasty effects for an opponent, including moving Drakon into their room which sends them back to the start and losing gold to boot. Other tiles include destroying other tiles in play, mind controlling your opponent, placing tiles that force your opponent to move a certain direction, steal gold directly from your opponent, and more. Also, some of the character powers directly involve affecting another player, such as the thief/rogue.

Production Values/Plastic Bits: This one cheats a bit because it wasn't until the third edition that plastic figures were added for each of the characters. Also, as stated above this is not as important of a consideration. However, it is difficult to look at the highly detailed miniatures and not give a nod here. Plus, the new tiles are nice and thick, and the overproduction even extends to having an elaborate, ornate token for each player that only serves to show if you've used your ability yet or not.



Player Interaction: With two, you are free to both go in your own direction if you so choose. This makes for a much less interesting game. With multiple players, you cannot help but interact with the other players--you are going to place tiles that mess up the plans of other players. And since there can only be one winner, you are going to be doing everything in your power to screw with them. You don't have the super-direct player interaction that you'd find in the typical AT title, but if you've played your cards right you can destroy their intended path, put nasty obstacles in front of them, or use other tile triggers to steal from them, force them off in other directions, or what have you.


The Verdict: So we seem to hit all the sweet spots, but I would not consider this a true AT title. Why? Look no further than the rules...the rulebook is four pages, and half of that is essentially a glossary describing what the tiles do (each tile has a symbol to show their effect). Since this information is duplicated on six player aids, this part is superfluous anyway, and you're left with two whole pages of rules.

Also, while the game has a dungeon-crawl fantasy theme, it is not far enough removed from the level of abstraction where you could strip the theme completely away and replace it without effort. The game could easily be re-themed to The Running Man, with each player representing a differenct convict with a one-time ability and Drakon representing Jesse Ventura's character or something. Hell, you could remove the theme completely and leave it abstract with generic pawns and score chits.

Lastly, while there is Conflict and Player Interaction, it borders on being too indirect at times. Maybe, just maybe, if you could move into a tile and fight with another player directly, that might do the trick.

My vote: Not AmeriTrash.




Dungeon Twister:




Luck: Dungeon Twister gets dinged here. The placement of the tiles for the dungeon has randomness to it, but the action from that point forward is all deterministic. You know how far you can move, you know how strong each character is in combat, and even the combat itself uses a deterministic card-driven "play a card from a limited pool to boost your strength" type deals.

Theme: Again, another Dungeon Crawl, but this time you have two opposing parties of adventurers (more parties can play with the 3-4 player expansion) who want to kill their opponents, escape out the other side and take a little treasure with them on the way. You have your typical fantasy characters--the rogue, the warrior, trolls, goblins, wizards--alongside the trappings of a fantasy game with fireball spells, spiked traps, and more. Still, this veneer of theme peels away more easily than Drakon, a point we'll discuss more in a bit.





Conflict: In this, Dungeon Twister succeeds in spades. In a two-player battle, it's definitely a zero-sum game--I kill your characters or steal from you your items, I twist the passages to block your movement, I attack you when I get the opportunity...there's no denying here that this has oodles of conflict. Your warrior charges me only to get a fireball in the face for his trouble...

Production Values/Plastic Bits: Not as relevant. The game uses character stand-ups and cardboard tokens and tiles. Still, it is notable that Asmodee wasn't satisfied with the components of the first edition feeling they were too flimsy and thin and sent out FREE replacements to first edition customers. The replacement stuff is indeed much thicker and sturdier than before. Also worth noting is that there were plastic miniatures released seperately, and these look very nice...but weren't released in the US, a bit of a head-scratcher considering our AMERITRASH HERITAGE. Since the expansions continue to be released in the US unabated, perhaps they'll reconsider.


Player Interaction: Bucketloads. You have to escape out through your opponent's starting area. No way to just "sneak around" your opponent--you've got to go right through his home base. You can move in and attack your foes. You can use the "Dungeon Twisting" mechanic to block your opponent in, prevent his chances for escaping, or corral him toward your waiting combat monsters. If one of you casually waltzes through the other side, something is VERY wrong.


The Verdict: This one has a decent enough ruleset to cover what is essentially a very different take on the dungeon-crawl/fantasy skirmish type game. They still aren't heavy by any stretch, but certainly more involved than Drakon's.

The theme criticism hangs over this game much more strongly than Drakon's though. This one is only a few steps removed from absolute abstraction; in fact, many gamers are quite surprised when they first try the game as it feels more like Chess than it does your prototypical AT title of old. You could easily change things up a bit and apply the theme of the upcoming Tannhauser to this, for example.


My vote: Not AmeriTrash.




Descent:




Luck: Heh...where do you want to begin?

First off, Descent has something that the other two games distinctly lack--dice. When you question most players about what constitutes an American-style game, dice is usually front and foremost of the responses you'll receive.

When your warrior goes smashing into the skeleton hordes, you might know your odds of success, but the dice can still betray you. Every swing, every attack are governed by the whims of the dice (alongside whatever loot you can pick up inside the dungeon, of course).

The Overlord players similarly is governed by the same luck--his monsters attack using the same dice. On top of this, he has a hand of cards that are drawn randomly, granting him the ability to spawn certain monsters or affect the players in mean and nasty ways.

Is it governed by luck? Not at all. Strong tactics will certainly carry the day, just like any good game. However, there is the chance that Lady Luck can abandon you at just the wrong time...and as any good AT'er knows, that's when things get really interesting.


Theme: I know that some will argue with this point, but Descent achieves a level of marriage to theme that is not quite as easily stripped away. Characters have very specific stats and powers relating to them and what type of character they are; items grant very specific powers and abilities; the idea of a level is not to wander around and achieve some point-based goal but to reach the "end" of the dungeon level. In that regard, the players really are on a "quest" to achieve a tangible goal. True, the Overloard player is playing for "points" or kills, and the fact that players "re-spawn" after "dying" takes away from the theme a bit.

Blame that on the popularity of the MMORPG, I suppose, where gamers expect to die, respawn back in town, and wander back to their original carcass to pick up whatever loot they had left.

Still, to that end, the theme is very strong, with mechanics that obviously serve the theme and not as easily stripped away or distilled into a more abstract form.




Conflict: Conflict here takes on a bit of a different form in that one group of players is working against another, and the adventurer players do win or lose as a group. However, this sort of mechanic serves games such as Fury of Dracula quite well, and in no way detracts from the conflict of the game system.

Players have direct goals that are in opposition to one another and this of course results in a zero-sum game where I win, you lose. The Overlord wants to stop the players; the players want to reach the end of their quest. There is no way for these two goals to co-exist--and this strikes at the heart of what people refer to when they say Eurogames are lacking in "conflict". Too often, the conflict in a Eurogame is not zero-sum; our goals are not mutually exclusive.

I realize that I could define the word "conflict" better in terms of this, but I think the AT fans know what type of conflict I'm talking about. In Carcassonne, I can play a tile to finish a city before you were ready....oooooooh.

Here, I can have my dragon chomp your warrior clean in half. HUZZAH~!



Production Values/Plastic Bits: "Over the top" doesn't begin to cover it. A glut of plastic miniatures, thick tiles, tons of cards and tokens, cardboard doors with stands, character cards, this is a veritable orgy of bits. Fantasy Flight Games is unashamed to take up the banner of AT and does so with some real panache here.

If you have a bits fetish, you will need counseling after looking at this. If you need advice for a good therapist, I have a few on my speed dial.





Player Interaction: Hand-in-hand with conflict here. Players on the side of the adventurers must interact and plan how best to use their resources...who should smash what monster? Who needs to stay back and heal? Can you provide enough cover for the sorcerer to do his thing?

The Overlord's entire game is based upon stopping the adventurers, and he will do this by directly interacting with them, by attacking them, playing cards against them, doing whatever it takes to slow them down. Again, the interaction comes from having mutually exclusive goals--no player can be passive lest they give the win to the other player via inaction.


The Verdict: What more can I say? This one has all the tickmarks of an AT production and then some. A meaty rule set. A not-easily stripped away theme. Rules and mechanics that solely exist in service of that theme. Random dice that although you can play the odds, they can still betray you. Nasty player interaction. Combat. Killin'. Dragons. Monsters. Swords. Treasure. Plastic pouring from the box the moment you open the lid.


My vote: AmeriTrash.




The Wrap-Up:

This is another time when I am welcoming your feedback and thoughts on this evaluation.

One thing I thought was worth further discussion was this idea of "zero-sum" conflict. In Drakon and Dungeon Twister, it is arguable that both do NOT have "zero-sum" conflict until the game reaches a certain point. For example, the amount of gold in Drakon is an endless resource; you and I can move about, content to collect our gold independently of each other. A gold piece gained for me is often not a gold piece lost for you (barring the "steal" tiles, of course).

The game reaches a point where it is zero-sum, of course, but it is only at that point where ALL games become zero-sum--at the point of declaration of a winner. That tenth gold piece in Drakon represents that point. Up until then...these are just arbitrary VPs that can be pulled from a infinite supply, and only at the end do our goals come into conflict with each other.

I feel that a lot of Eurogames are like this--in that we can co-exist, gain points without interfering with one another, and a point gained for me is often not a point lost for you. It is this particular type of conflict that I think helps us differentiate between the genres of games, possibly moreso than any of the other defining elements. Theme is important, but as demonstrated above theme alone is not enough, it only gets the game's foot in the door (so to speak).

There are also those who argue that theme is only applied in such a way that it helps us remember the game's mechanics, and to some degree I can agree with that. But it's obvious that in many games--particularly AT titles--that mechanics exist solely to serve the theme.

Thanks for reading, and I look forward as always to your excellent feedback.

Impossible Dreams

CNN ESPN ABC TNT but mostly B.S.
Where oxymoronic language like
"virtually spotless" "fresh frozen"
"light yet filling" and "military intelligence"
have become standard.

- "Television, the Drug of the Nation" by the Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy

Let's name-check some games. Tempus. Mare Nostrum. Antike. Vinci. What do these games have in common? They're all civilisation building games that clock in at on or around a two-hour play time and don't burden the players with excessive rules. They are examples, and not the only examples, of what's become something of a design grail - the "civ-lite" game, a fast playing yet satisfying game that includes the basic blocks of the classic Civilisation - economic management, technology trees, exploration and warfare.

None of these games gets raved about. Indeed of the four (and I think I've picked the four most popular games in this category) only Antike matches (actually slightly exceeds) the original Civilization in terms of rank on boardgamegeek. Not that boardgamegeek rank is a particularly good determinant of quality, as I've discussed before but it's interesting to note that Antike is exactly the sort of game BGGers tend to go for while Civilization isn't. Yet they both rate reasonably well, which to me speaks volumes about how good Civilization actually is. Another classic empire-building game that no-one would accuse of being civ-lite, Twilight Imperium, ranks a good 40 places above them.

The reason that none of the civ-lite games has made a massive impact on the collective conciousness of the boardgaming community is that while they might be good games in their own right, they are seen by most as failing when it comes to being a civilization game. They're just not right it seems, they're missing some indefinable component that makes a great empire-building game. So the designers go back to their drawing board and gamers wait with baited breath for the next attempt at this semi-mythical game style.

I reckon that what's missing from these games is far from indefinable, indeed I'd go so far as to say it's blatantly obvious. They're missing two things - a sense of epic scale and the feeling of micromanaging aspects of your growing empire. In order to get these two things you need firstly to be playing a long game and secondly be playing a game with enough rules to make micromanagement an aspect of the game play. In effect what I'm saying is that the goal of the civ-lite game is oxymoronic, impossible - you can't have a game that feels like Civilization unless it's approach Civilization in terms of length and complexity. To go back to my opening quote the games are attempting to be "light yet filling". Hence Twilight Imperium works, Tempus doesn't.

While I was at pains in my last post to emphasise that I thought the basic approach to designing eurogames - that they should extract maximal play from minimal rules - was highly laudable it seem to me that in the rush onto the euro bandwagon we've forgotten things. We've forgotten, primarily, the awesome sense of satisfaction that can be achieved from winning a long battle, full of cunning twists and turns. Now that I have a family I don't find much time to play games and I'm really, really glad that when I get the chance to game I can pull a couple of euros off the shelf and get a satisfying game experience in whatever short space of time is available to me. But I still find myself yearning to have the chance to sit down and get completely absorbed in a six, seven or eight hour marathon of a classic like Titan or Diplomacy. Eurogames have never scratched that itch and they never will.

What I'm driving at here is a rejection of all those people who say that the fast yet absorbing games that come out of the euro movement have made older, longer and more complex games obsolete. There's something in more drawn out, difficult games that attracts gamers, call it a sense of scale, a momentous feeling that euros can't and won't ever capture. Indeed I think this is the reason that in recent years we've seen something of a backlash with the release of games like Twilight Imperium and Descent that can be played for hour after hour after hour - and the eventual resurrection of the ameritrash movement. We must make a distinction here between long games which are filled with meaningful decisions and requirements for strategy and long games which eventually tend to boil down to luck. The recognition that the latter style had come to dominate gaming in the late eighties and their subsequent removal and eventual replacement with long games which include euro-style mechanics to keep play interesting is something else that we can and should thank the euro movement for.

I'm not sure that many of the gamers who complain about games on the basis of length and complexity aren't really trying to do anything other than convince themselves that these games are bad just because they no longer have time to play them. Personally I've had to admit to myself that I'll probably never, ever get to experience Twilight Imperium - but it doesn't mean I don't want to, and it makes me sad to think that that's the case. C'est la vie.

Mechanical Mechanics

I've been reading Franklin's recent posts about aquatic wildfowl with some interest, not just because they address the increasingly less nebulous question of what markers we can use to peg a game as "ameritrash" but also because the process of doing so, for obvious reasons, also encompasses the margins of what markers can be used to classfiy games as wargames or eurogames. The oft-quoted central signifier of a eurogame has often been quoted as "elegance", but what does this actually mean?

My take on this is that designers who sit down to design eurogames do so with the primary goal of extracting as much depth of gameplay (defined as number and difficulty of decisions) from the minimum amount of rules. The absolute, absolute poster child of this design paradigm is the oriental classic Go which I am entirely convinced will never, ever be beaten in terms of the depth versus complexity ratio. Some of the other markers of euro-ness look to me like just side effects of this approach - it's bound to result in games which tend run to reasonably short play times, favour the use of non-random mechanics and are usually light on theme. There's nothing essential wrong with this - indeed as time goes on I've begun to appreciate that this goal in game design is actually a fine and noble thing, but sadly it generates another side effect which has a much more negative impact.

Now I'm hardly going to be offering any great insight if I comment that the strategy of all games are based on maths. The degree varies, but usually there is a significant component of mathematical analysis involved in successful play. Frequently in games that have significant random factors these are there in part to mask the amount of maths that lie behind the game, but even in these cases a good player will be constantly weighing up the odds during decision making. The point of this brief digression is that if you were to take pretty much any strategy game and distil it down to its bare essentials what you'd be left with is, in most cases, a logic puzzle. And of course stripping a game down in this fashion is exactly the process required to create a game which is rules-light yet deep creating another side-effect and marker for the eurogame - the strategy in many of them is almost entirely dependent on mathematical analysis. They are in effect stylised accounting exercises.

This is not to denigrate the skill required to play games of this nature - frequently the amount of number crunching and level of analysis required are fiendishly high. It's not easy to keep that many numbers in your head at one time and woe betide those of us, like me, who often struggle with maths in the first place. But I feel it is a valid criticism to say that the end result is a bunch of games which have a tendency to play in strikingly similar fashion and which can often be "solved" or "maximised" by the best players offering paths to victory which, while not exactly scripted, can nevertheless be charted or otherwise defined in mathematical terms. There are exceptions and, unsurprisingly these tend to be the eurogames I enjoy most. Probably the best example is Ra which bypasses heavy maths through the ingenuous means of making the value of things dependent entirely on the value of other things, making assessment of the best play more than just a matter of cold statistics. Others manage it by throwing in negotiation elements (Traders of Genoa), randomness (Settlers) or aggressive positional play (Attika).

This is the primary point of critique that I have against eurogames - if I wanted to solve maths puzzles then I'd go get a book of maths puzzles. If I wanted to solve them competitively then I'd gather a group of like-minded people and compete to be the one to finish the puzzle fastest. To me this is simply not what gaming is about - gaming is about sitting with your friends, enjoying the game as both a social experience as well as a thinking excercise, glorying in the drama of dice and the sweep of the narrative. I don't like maths, I'm not terribly good at maths and since I work in IT to some extent I have to contend with maths most working days. I don't want the damn stuff intruding into my leisure time but I still want my games to be dependent on skill rather than pure luck. This, for me, is the essence of Ameritrash.

When I've tried to describe this in the past I've used the phrase "organic strategy" to try and convey what I was talking about. My original meaning was that I liked games where the approach to strategy was something that had to be arrived at in a more creative fashion than the hard logic that so many eurogames required. I eventually came to realise that the phrase actually had a second and more literal meaning - organic in the sense that it takes an organic being to formulate a good strategy. It follows that if eurogames tend to run very close to their mathematical roots then it should be relatively easy to write artificial intelligence routines for them. A glance around at freeware boardgame software would seem to support this - many euros and abstracts have had software versions built with very powerful AI opponents - witness how hard it is to beat the infamous Puerto Rico Evolver for example. For ameritrash games (and wargames) on the other hand, it should prove a correspondingly difficult task and again a search through game software appears to prove the point. Take Axis & Allies for example: I've often been beaten by human opponents yet the two software version I've played, once of which was created professionally, I can beat with almost trivial ease playing as either side.

When I first came across BoardGameGeek and started to frequent the forums and ask for recommendations for new games to try I always felt under pressure to be seeking out and playing games that were seen as "heavier" and "gamers games". After all at the time I didn't have a family who might want lighter games, I had a solid academic background and plenty of time to game so I had no reason to shy away from these games and I felt it would be embarrassing to try. The initial results of this were disastrous - I started playing games that I really disliked and at which I was constantly beaten and that's no fun at all. So here I am going to make an admission - my limited maths skills mean that in most cases, I'm not a great games player. Even for those fine euros and ameritrash games where maths isn't the primary skill I'm still at a disadvantage because we have to acknowledge that maths lies at the heart of nearly all design in strategy games. So one of the reasons I prefer the AT canon is simply because those games offer me a greater chance to win. If you're in denial about this, like I was, it's time to admit it. You'll pick up a lot more great games and have a lot more fun playing them if you do. And for that tiny, tiny minority amongst the Euro fans who belittle and sneer at those games which don't require perfect logic to beat and the flawed mortals that champion them I'd say - fuck off back to your computers and calculators and let the rest of us get on with living full lives and combining friends, beer, and lightweight strategy games into having a damn good time.

It Looks Like a Duck, Quacks Like a Duck...Part II

In Part I, I wanted to give an introduction and overview before I got to the meat of the article--that being the question, "What *is* Ameritrash?"

The term has become much like a Rorschach test; and the difficulty in narrowing down the essence of Ameritrash is compounded by differing views on exactly what that consists of. I've even heard it suggested that Ameritrash is defined solely by what it is not--that is, a game falls into the genre by virtue of the absence of certain elements rather than by a common pool of traits they all share. Lastly, you have a lot of different backgrounds coming at the definition, and those backgrounds are by players who either have tired of Euros or simply prefer a different type of game.

You've got RPGers, CCGers, plasticfest lovers, wargamers, Games Workshop fans, gamers who grew up on Axis and Allies...we are talking about a diverse grouping of characters, all attempting to file in, to define essentially the "Non-Euro" as it were.

And why not? It is human nature to classify, but more importantly, it is human nature to want to "belong". Many gamers are completely unique in their conformity (there's one to wrap your head around) and with the global community of the internet it is our natural tendency to seek out like-minded individuals. You don't think of the games you like as just being oddball offshoots or ancient dinosaurs...you want to group them, classify them, put them into a family if for no other reason than to legitimize them.

I can only speculate that this is why the "AT Movement" such as it is caught fire--even if the term is distasteful to some. As a gamer who is fond of American-style designs (or British, in the case of GW--but hey, that's a colony thing), you check out the premiere boardgaming site on the internet but maybe find the overall conversation isn't bent toward your favorite style games as much as you like. But suddenly, there's an explosion and a bright light--"Hey! They're talking about games that *I* like! Games I played when I was a kid! Heck, games we just played last Saturday!"



So, then, I want your help. All of the gamers who were drawn to this discussion because of a love for a genre of games, no matter your background, I want us to work together to see if we can define what exactly "Ameritrash" consists of. This is completely a feedback-driven exercise, and maybe we'll be proven wrong--maybe these games are defined more by what they aren't than what they are....maybe our previous definitions have been far too broad...or, perhaps we can hand-pick some elements, come to a consensus, and validate the genre. I honestly don't know.


Here are some common elements I see in games I personally define as "Ameritrash".



1. Luck

Is this the most common element? Probably. Most Ameritrash games have randomizers in the form of dice, cards, or both.

The flagbearer here is obviously a game like Axis and Allies, where casualties are determined by rolling fistfuls of dice. Maybe your tank assault will wipe out the enemy's infantry front, or maybe your forces will be repelled by their unexpected valor.

Luck is appealing to Ameritrash fans because of the inability to "solve" a game, to turn it into a rote exercise. Also, there's the element of drama caused by the uncertainty of the results. Maybe your warrior will land the killing blow. Maybe your space fighter will make a brave stand and take a few ships out with him. Luck can go too far, rendering the decisions you make moot, but Ameritrash fans seem to have a much higher tolerance for this element than a pure Eurogamer would.



2. Theme

All Ameritrash games seem to share a strong marriage of theme and mechanics. Of course, just about all non-abstracts have a "theme", but there's a disconnect in the mechanics of many Euros and what the theme is supposed to be about. Even in strongly themed Euros such as Amun Re it's easy to pick apart the elements of the game and pare it down to it's barest abstract elements.

The level of theme in Ameritrash games is often referred to as "chrome". After spending a while in the gaming community over the past two years, I've come to realize that a lot of gamers use the term to mean, "a game possessing more rules than I care to personally deal with."

Ameritrash games certainly do have more rules than a typical Euro, and that usually seems to be driven by building upon an abstract model until it can no longer be easily stripped down to those barest mechanics. Once you start trying to represent a theme, you have rules that are added solely in service of that theme. Why is there a real Queen and fake Queen in Star Wars: The Queen's Gambit? Because that's how it was in the movie. Why are Sam and Frodo moving towards Mordor in War of the Ring? Because that's how it plays out in the novel.

So we're not talking about theme in the general sense--such as "you're a provost--let's build some stuff and try to impress...somebody!"--but more of a theme that is defined and supplemented by rules. In both War of the Ring and Queen's Gambit, stripping away the theme is very, very difficult because the rules have been built and predicated on the theme being represented.


3. Conflict

Simply put, it's a pretty rare thing to have an Ameritrash game that doesn't have conflict as a central theme. Of course, this begs the question of the definition of "conflict". Some would see taking the Builder in San Juan so your opponent can't have it as being a form of conflict, but the nature of that conflict is so abstract--not to mention it is missing a key element in the form of "zero-sum conflict".

I guess that's a more accurate description of what I'm talking about--"Zero-Sum Conflict". In other words, you have something, whether it is territory, or cards, or buildings, or resources...and I can directly attempt to take or destroy those resources. It is conflict based around the idea that one of us benefits and the other suffers.

This usually takes the form of military or armed conflict, but not always. It is hard to deny the prevalency of that element, though. Even most fantasy games that feature conflict will involve it by sword or sorcery. However, some games manage to feature it in a political sense, a form of conflict and power that is not represented in game by military might...but if you really look at those systems, they are merely ways of introducing an additional element of military-like might into the game. Hey, you passed a vote that hurts me--but how did you do that? Ah...you had political "power", a numerical value that at it's heart could be shifted to a military strength and would still be applicable.

However it is featured, direct conflict is generally an important feature for a game to have to be classified "Ameritrash".


4. Production Values

This is one I usually catch a lot of flak for. I come at the Ameritrash angle as one who is a devout fan of plastic bits. I've never been as fond of cardboard chits as I have those lovingly detailed soldiers, dragons, tanks, barbarians, helicopters, and knights...

But that's from a narrow perspective that I came into the hobby with. I saw games with nice plastic (or sometimes pewter) bits as having that "toy factor" that separated the more serious war games with their lighter, thematic brethren.

Whether you share that view or not, it is clear that at least from a modern perspective, a game produced these days is hard to define as "Ameritrash" unless it has great bits that were forged from the need to heavily represent theme. This is a tricky notion, however; many companies have really stepped up their production quality over the past few years, to the point where you have multiple companies who are putting sturdy, beautiful product out there--and not all of it would be considered "Ameritrash". Take "Fire and Axe", the recent Asmodee reprint--that's a gorgeous production...but is that Ameritrash? Take Mall of Horror, also by Asmodee, with its tons of plastic zombies. Is that Ameritrash? It's even got the theme!

Also, there is the fact that German-style games have had amazing production quality for quite some time now, though such production is not always driven by a need to heavily represent theme. The cardboard tiles in most Euros are thick and sturdy, the wooden bits heavy and numerous, the boards well-mounted and artfully done.

Then you've got the fact that there are plenty of games who have fairly shoddy production values but obviously would fit into the "Ameritrash" definition in almost every other way. Take "Wrasslin'", the subject du jour of Michael Barnes' last blog entry. Flimsy cards, hilariously bad artwork, but no doubt at its core an Ameritrash-style title.

So this is certainly an entry that is in need of better definition. I do know that many hardcore Eurogamers look down upon heavily-themed plastic pieces, so that is a vote for the "not Euro" viewpoint of defining Ameritrash. And it's fairly clear that games can have bad production values but otherwise qualify and then there are games that have insanely gorgeous production values but be strictly Euro, or at best a hybrid.



5. Player Interaction

This may seem like a retread of Conflict, and to a small degree it is. The type of Player Interaction I'm referring to is often driven by the element of conflict, though not necessarily.

Let's go back to a Euro I do enjoy, San Juan. There have been games where I get frustrated because my opponent is pulling away from me and there's little I can do about it. I can take certain roles to try and ping him a little, but that's about the best I can do.

Worse, the game could be played in complete silence, with each player simply making an optimal decision based on what's in hand and what's in front of him at the moment. There's no interaction there, as my buildings will never interact with yours. There's no "dealmaking" because we have no currency with which to trade. I could suggest to you, "hey, take Builder before Bob gets an extra card", but you know...whee.

(And this if for a Euro I really like!)


Maybe what I'm really referring to here is the metagame, that sense of dealmaking, of interaction that is encouraged by what is going on in the game. This is usually because each player is empowered to directly affect the game in a profound manner at any given time. This desire to impact the game is mostly held in check by a desire to win in the long term--I could throw all my forces at Dave over there, but why? I'll end up shredded and easy pickings for the next vulture to swoop in. Wait, Dave is going to win soon? Or you're going to give me Trade Goods to cripple his flank?

Perhaps together we can influence the game to both our benefits...but under what terms should that happen? Can I trust you? Should I help you when the chips are down in hopes that you'll return the favor?

This sort of goes hand in hand with Luck as keeping every game session fresh, but more importantly keeping players invovled in the game. It's important to think that you can have an impact on the game at any given time, or else you aren't motivated to continue. This is a sometimes discussed issue with Euros that do not feature player elimination--yeah, maybe I can't be eliminated, but remind me why I should care to go through the last three turns of a game I'm clearly going to finish in last place?

Eliminate me if I have no power. Otherwise, let me use that power to interface and interact with my fellow players. After all, that's why we're boardgaming instead of getting lost in some random MMORPG, right? We want to laugh, to cheer when things are going great, to groan and gnash our teeth when the chips are down, to enjoy that thing that no AI will ever be able to give us--Player Interaction.





And Now...The Floor is Yours!

These are seemingly the most common elements that Ameritrash games share, but the above seems to cast quite a wide net.

I didn't even get into the whole wargame/Ameritrash divide, which is a tad controversial in itself. Wargames seem to share their own distinct set of qualities, and while many have much in common with Ameritrash titles, there are sharp enough elements to remove them from the category and put them in their own area, where they rightfully belong and can co-exist with each other. I could be wrong, but there are conventions in wargaming that are sometimes alien to Ameritrash fans, and there is the issue of relative rules complexity.

Ameritrash games seem to seek out a medium-weight ruleset--enough to reinforce theme, and enough to place it several levels away from abstraction, but no farther. Even that isn't hard and fast--there are plenty of Ameritrash games with rather thick and complex rulesets, such as Magic Realm.

That's why I'm looking for your feedback. What did I miss? Where did I go wrong? Do you agree with this assessment? Is the net too broad?


In Part III, I have a game or two in mind that I'm going to dissect using these criteria to specifically see where these categorizations fail. Your feedback will help shape that article. I look forward to seeing where this discussion goes.

It Looks Like a Duck, Quacks Like a Duck....Part I

I'll admit it.

I succumb to the natural human tendency to want to categorize things. Types of movies, genres of music, you name it...

The fun part is, of course, when you have something that straddles genres, or even better, transcends them. For example, how do you classify the song "Farewell Myth" by Made in Mexico (and featured in Guitar Hero I?) The song is filled with strange, off-tempo rythms, a meandering lyric line, and quickly changing drum patterns. I suppose that makes the song stand out, and it has many strong reactions from Guitar Hero players (some love it, others hate it with a passion).


Some players are resistant to classifying board games, claiming such pigeonholing is "divisive". They also claim (rightfully) that we all play different types of games, so what's the point classifying them?


I don't want to retread Robert's great and humorous post on metal, but his point is valid...such classification serves mostly to facillitate conversation. Language is all about finding common terms to more easily convey ideas to one another. Words have meaning because people agree to assign that meaning to them. Sometimes that meaning has a negative, hateful history--look at how just a few words can ruin the career and personal reputation of someone like Michael Richards. His words were hateful, and infused with the power of collective history; they were more than just words, they were poisonous daggers loaded with the insipid, wretched context of things that have come before.


Words.


But sometimes, words can be co-opted, can be changed. Let's take "Ameritrash", for example. Though I've read several people proclaim that there was never any bias towards American-style games (and on a large macro sense, they're probably correct), there was a vocal minority who would slam such games every chance they got. When I took a first stab at trying to pool these games together under a common banner, I tried to co-opt a negative post I had read, where someone bashed an American-style game as "Ameriplasty trash". I ran with the "Ameriplasty" part, and months later Robert Martin leaped on a post proclaiming Michael Barnes to be an "Ameritrash apologist".


Words.


These words were meant to demean, to marginalize, to push aside. A ludicrous gesture, considering the fact that to outsiders, we are all involved in a childish hobby. "Boardgames?" someone will ask inquisitively. The tone is there....shouldn't you have grown out of childish hobbies such as these?


So Robert took that terminology, spun it around, and boom--it stuck. "Ameritrash". Whatever your reaction to the term is--it's clear that when something came forth to help pull these games together, it actually did gamers a service. I realize that some folks (even those who profess to really like AT-style games) don't like the term, and it's true that something less negative could've served, but the term sprang from perceived derision of these styles of games, and for whatever reason...it stuck.


But hey--that's a good thing. Regardless of what the term is, what it has done is to facillitate conversation between gamers. Now I can sum up in one term what it used to take a small paragraph to convey. Instead of, "games that have heavy theme, random elements, often have plastic bits, usually sci-fi or fantasy, blah blah blah", I can just say, "Ameritrash".


The term is of course still under refinement. Much was made of the fact that it was difficult to classify some games as Ameritrash (never mind the fact that other genres often suffer the same problems of classification--such as wargames--especially when faced with particular games that have elements from multiple genres). And as the gaming industry moves toward more and more hybrid-style games, it's possible that the term itself will only be relevant in terms of what particular titles borrow from that particular aesthetic.


Personally? I like Euros...at least some of them. I will gladly play Carcassonne, Ra, even Ticket to Ride (DON'T SHOOT ME, BARNES~!)...as people say, we are gamers. Some will play certain types to exclusion, but to me that is fallacy. It would be just as silly to dismiss a game for being "Euro" as it would for those who bashed games for being "Ameriplasty Trash". It's obvious that game designers certainly are taking a larger view of all of this, pulling the best elements from other game genres to improve the overall gaming experience.


The bloated, six-hour Ameritrash game fests from the 80s have given way to the same style games that can be played in 1-3 hours, and those who do stretch toward 6 hours have given us more to do than just push our piles of plastic at each other, toss the dice, and hope for the best. Production quality has increased to the point we're paying the same or LESS for games now...with better bits...than what we would get fifteen years ago, and that's including inflation!


Look at some Euro designers who have turned to the heavier themes of Ameritrash games to try to shake off that "dry" moniker and appeal to a broader--or at least different--audience. Take Runebound, designed by none other than Martin Wallace...it's hard to say that the game is anything but Ameritrash, but it has refinements to the game that attempts to pull it towards a cleaner system than the older Ameritrash fantasy games (such as Avalon Hill's Wizards or Wizard's Quest).

Look at Reiner Knizia, who may put out some straight Euro pap at times, but it's obvious he too has an eye for trying to come at the Ameritrash aesthetic from a Euro perspective. Euprhat and Tigris is obviously the Euro take on a civ/wargame, and it has been followed by other attempts to do the same.

Take a game like Vinci, which is a game that itself likes to try to defy strict classification (it has civ-building, but it's abstract; it has combat, but it's deterministic; it has randomness, but a point-balancing system to that randomness; it's about conquest but uses a Euro VP system).


As games evolve, I think that the "heart" of the market, the lion's share of development, is going to continue to move towards the hybrid theory of design. Euros will incorporate more theme, Ameritrash games will look for cleaner rules and shorter playing times, wargames will move towards more accessibility...and all of us, I think, benefit.


But whatever idea you may have of the term "Ameritrash", it does serve its purpose. It takes a genre of games and allows us to use shorthand at points to make conversation easier. Plus, for gamers and game designers to begin to see these type of games as falling under a genre or umbrella may make them easier to quantify, to evaluate, and most importantly to take them as a group and search out the best elements of them for moving forward while cherishing the history of them all the same.



Next Time: In Part II, I'm going to take a stab at laying out the common elements that many Ameritrash games share, and look at a few examples to see where they pass or fail such categorizations.