So I planned on meeting my friend Erin on Thursday night for a group meetup called “Beats and Boardgames” over at a place called Langton Labs down near the Mission district. The last time I had been to San Francisco with my buddy Mike we had hit B & B and it had been a really good time, so I was really looking forward to heading over again. Unfortunately Erin had to bail out at the last minute, so I resigned myself to heading over alone. Not necessarily a bad thing, but not as fun as having an ally waiting for me, you know?

Fate intervened at the last minute though, and talking with my friend in New Zealand led me to discovering that one of his San Francisco friends was planning on going to B & B as well. Perfection. So after eating at Off the Grid with Emma and her friend I stopped in at a supermarket to buy a six-pack to bring as a donation and then headed over. (Ed note: Pro-tip to any travelers. Bring a six-pack everywhere. Seriously… it may burn a little bit of extra money, but I personally believe that nothing’s better than a few beers to put you in a good position with the host and help make a new friend or two. Hell, even if you don’t drink bring ’em along as a gift.) Once I arrived I found the guy I was meeting (Jacob), donated my beers to the bar, and jumped into a game of Apples to Apples.

Apples to Apples is a fun game, don’t get me wrong. But I can only take so much of it before it gets boring, and so Jacob and I excused ourselves from the ever-widening circle and headed for newer board game pastures. Seriously… when we left Apples to Apples there we 13 people playing. Clearly a few too many in the opinion of this engineer. Anyways, we looked around at the games already going and the games available, and started a hearty debate as to what to play – Ninja Burger, Zombie-death-mall-thing, or a simple game of connect-four. We actually ended up doing none of the above, and climbed upstairs to join an already-going group playing November Games.

Last time I had been at Beats and Boardgames we had played a few rounds of November Games (see rules below for details), so scarily enough people remembered me from, literally to the week, a year ago. The reason for this was that everyone used a “glyph” to represent themselves. Last year I had been feeling rather un-creative so I had stolen a symbol from an old comic strip that I loved, and so from that point on (in the eyes of November Games) I had become “Fanged smiley face”. Cool.

We only ended up playing one round before Jacob headed out to meet up with some other friends of his. For his defense each round lasts nearly 45min, give or take, so I definitely couldn’t blame him, seeing as it was creeping up on midnight at that point. I stayed for nearly another entire round before finally throwing in the hat and heading home.

I headed out from Langton around 12:15 or so, just in time to catch the last bus heading back to Emma’s place that night. The ride was clean and simple, I have to give San Francisco props for having a very clean and simple bus system… although I’ll admit that it seems amazingly complex at first glance. Take a little while to get used to it though, and its actually a very nice little set up that they have. Anyways, get home I did, and I had my sleeping bag out almost immediately, and was sawing logs like a champ barely an instant later.

Rules of November Games –

Materials needed:

For every four people you have one “Frisbee” rotating around (round down; 8 people = 2 Frisbees. 11 people = 2 Frisbees)

Each Frisbee is just that… a Frisbee. But with five 6-sided dice inside.

Rules:

• Roll the dice, and award yourself points based on the below values.
• You can re-roll as many dice as you like, up to four, and continue re-rolling as long as you get at least one scoring dice out of all the dice you roll.
• As soon as you don’t get a scoring dice, your turn with that Frisbee is over.
• You may also choose to “Hold” at any point and willingly stop rolling, keeping however many points you have at that time.
• If you get no scoring dice on your first roll, then you have rolled a “Brick”, and don’t get any points. You also must hold onto a Brick (yes, a real brick) and “feel its weight” until someone else rolls a Brick. That means you MUST hold it, no putting it down on a chair or table!
• If all five dice show scoring values, then you MUST re-roll all five (keeping the points they previously had given you)
• “Warps” – Every 1000 pts you earn, you get a “warp”. Whats that mean? That you got a warp!
• Winning – First person to get over 5000 pts wins. This person gets two “winners warps”.
  • HOWEVER, after someone breaks the 5000 pt barrier everyone else gets one chance to beat them. If the original winner gets their score beaten, they are SHAMED! And, the one who beat them gets five extra “winners warps”.
• “Perfect” and “Wimp” – if you miss a “Warp” by 50 pts (ex: land at 2950 pts) you get a “Wimp” point. This means… that you got a wimp point. However, a “Perfect” is when you get 4950 pts, since that is the best you can get without exceeding the 5000 limit.
• MOST IMPORTANT PART!!! All scores are kept, recorded, and archived online. Thus, your glyph is for life, and you’re score will grow as you play more games. Thus, only sanctioned November Games events count as real games, and if their not recorded, then it… never happened… wooooooooooo mysteeeeerrrriiiiooouuuuss….

Scoring Values:

• 1’s = 100 pts
• 5’s = 50 pts
• straight (1-5 or 2-6) = 1500 pts
• three-of-a-kind = 100*face value (ex: 3 2’s = 200 pts, 3 5’s = 500pts)
  • Exception – 1’s… 3 1’s = 1000 pts
  • Addendum – four or five of a kind. In actuality, only three are actually the correct number. The others are… IMPOSTERS!
  • Exception to the addendum – five 1’s = win. Instantly. You just win. That’s it. Congrats!
• Note on the above – a straight or three-of-a-kind must be rolled all in one roll. Nothing else counts