This is it. The final list. (Apart from when we realised we missed one.) This is the Board Game Truce 2014 list. Over the next few months we’ll battle it out over 60 games to see who can win the most and choose the very first board game purchase of 2014.

We’ve listed everything here, even those games we’re not overly proud of owning – but rules are rules and play them all we must. So here goes, we’re going to go easy at the start – it looks like we’re starting with a few games of Fluxx.

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At about this time last year Amy and I realised we had quite a few board games between us. Our love for a good board game had created an insatiable appetite for more and we needed some way to make sure we carried on playing the games we’d bought before the most recent purchases. We therefore created the “January Truce”. From the 1st of January 2013 we agreed we would not buy another board game that year until we had played all the board games we owned. We also agreed to keep score and the winner could choose the first game we bought.

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Fighting Fantasy bookThe Twilio powered Adventure Game has been a great success so far but I think I need to add a few elements from the original Fighting Fantasy books to move the game away from a simple path-following story to a more interactive story.

First-up is the introduction of enemies. Warriors, ghouls, werewolves, trolls and fiendish imps. Each one you meet on your travels will need defeating, which means we need to introduce health and a dice roll mechanism, which will probably end up being a simple random number generator to begin with. I’ve yet to work out the precise mechanics but I’m thinking you might earn back half the original health of the enemy you’ve beaten. We’ll need to add in some food and potions along the story too, to build up the health.

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To play just call the number or text the word ‘Play’ to – +44 (0) 118 324 7006 †

51339jW18WL.Image._As a child I loved playing/reading the “Choose Your Own Adventure” books. (See Amazon) The very fact that I was able to decide how my story went was probably one of the first role playing games I ever played. I remember going through all of them in my local library, then waiting patiently for the new editions to arrive.

As a challenge, my girlfriend and I set about recreating the same sort of thing using PHP. She chose to go down the browser route and I decided to try out the Twilio platform which would allow the user to play via their phone, initially using the touch-tone signals and eventually moving onto SMS based play. I’d previously played with Twilio at a very low level, creating a messaging platform for the radio show, The Games Cast.
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320_albumAnyone who’s followed me on-line for a while will know that I am a co-host and co-founder of a podcast/radio-show focusing on video games, memorably called The Games Cast. Recently we celebrated our 50th episode which, considering it’s our third attempt at a podcast series with longevity, is quite an achievement.

When I say “Our” what I actually mean is myself and my two close friends, Paul Sunter and Duncan Simpson. Together we were responsible for the thirteen “rare” episodes of the Vagusnet podcast. Things went awry and a few years later we came back with season one of The Games Cast.

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