On Game Design - Game Design Theory - page 54

Ameritrash . he term Ameritrash started out as a pejorative term,
but eventually was embraced by the community and has now
mostly stuck. The name came about because the games being de-
scribed were mainly of American origin with a lot of components.
Ameritrash games tend to ship with a whole lot of plastic. They
also tend to be thoroughly thematic—even driven by theme in
many cases. Almost every Ameritrash game comes with at least a
few dice, and many come with a dozen different dice to use in dif-
ferent situations. Ameritrash games seem to have evolved out of
the tabletop and pen-and-paper gaming fields, oftentimes being
more tightly packaged D&D ( Dungeons & Dragons ) or tabletop
lite experiences, but they've also come into their own in recent
years. It's worth noting that Ameritrash games seem to have the
most in common with modern video games: heavily thematic ex-
periences with a big focus on production values.
-

Check out: Arkham Horror , Battlestar Galactica , and Chaos
in the Old World .

Card Games
While there is some overlap between this category and that of designer
board games, there's also a family of games that are played with regular
playing cards. In fact, this category of games is so huge that going into it
is well beyond the scope of this topic. Subgenres of card games include
trick-taking games, bidding games, and gambling games, to name a few.
It's a genre of games with an extremely rich and vibrant history. I highly
recommend Scott McNeely's Ultimate Book of Card Games: The Com-
prehensive Guide to More than 350 Games as a wonderful starting place
for those who want to get more acquainted with the world of card games.
Check out: Tichu , euchre, poker, and Reiner Knizia's Money .

Pen and Paper Games
There is a huge world of pen and paper games, quite possibly because
they are easy to make (at least in terms of the material needs of produc-
tion). I recently visited The Compleat Strategist, a game store in New
York City, and was completely stunned by its collection of topics, manu-
als, maps, and other materials relating to pen and paper games.
Pen and paper games often attempt to do something that I don't
think is the job of games: to simulate a world or interpersonal experi-
ence. With that in mind, game designers can still learn something from
P&P games since they are interactive systems that usually do have goals