Georgette Tan

Tag: games

  • The December 2023 Review

    The December 2023 Review

    December was for rest and doing things that weren’t writing or editing. This was leaking into January (it’s technically the 4th now) so I’m just going to shoot this off and be done with it.

    Tarot

    I finally opened my tarot reading services to the general public. I didn’t intend to, but a friend of a friend inquired and I decided to go for it. When I announced it, I ended up with a total of 6 clients over the course of two weeks. It was a little nerve-wrecking with the first couple of clients, but it got easier as I went along. I honestly had a lot of fun, and it was satisfying that nearly all the readings resonated with something they had on their minds. I just opened bookings for early January. Hit the link above for details.

    My running joke this month was that I’m a professional tarot reader, given that I’m between jobs.

    Gaming

    Happy 2024! A group of AP players setting off fireworks from the top of the lighthouse in Bahari Bay.

    Palian life got flipped turned upside down this month and it was the server segregation’s fault. They launched the Asia Pacific servers, alongside the European and North America servers. I think many didn’t expect the chaos it would cause before the company went on a long vacation.

    It became starkly obvious that cross-server play allowed us to actually collaborate with other players. The AP servers were very dead at first. Nobody responded in chat when we called out flow trees and groves. A lot of us felt as though we were the only ones on the server. We were cut off from our EU and NA friends unless we had VPN.

    We learned later that it’s hard for Switch players (also launched around the same time) to use the chat interface. That is if they spoke English at all. As a result, they banded together outside the game, unaware that there is an existing culture of collaboration in place. Some groups moved like mobs – rushing in and chopping all the flow trees without asking themselves why everyone else was waiting around. I’ve seen this gradually get better – now people do wait and signal the location with flares if they can’t use the chat box. But there’s been a lot of outrage on the official Discord server, including from yours truly.

    But the perk is that I am now active on the Palia Discord, made many friends and went on several foraging parties with them. Since I discovered that my VPN is still active, I also went on foraging/mining parties with random players who were stranded alone on their server. This happened twice; we were legit the only two people on that server and it was GREAT. I hosted one player who needed star-quality sushi over in my home, where we made the dish and several others. The hilarious moment was realising I was browsing my fish collection for something to cook like it’s a Chinese seafood restaurant.

    Coming Next

    • Will I return to the job market next year?
    • Decluttering continues. There are flea markets coming up!
    • I am slowly going through the Year Compass for the first time. More on this next report.

    Links Roundup

  • The November 2023 Review

    The November 2023 Review

    There’s not a lot to report for this month as I had been consumed by Nanowrimo.

    Book template courtesy of Canva.
    NaNoWriMo 2023: Dreaming of Water (Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, Erotic, Romance)

    Nanowrimo

    When August saved Lydia from a reoccurring nightmare, he was only curious. The Dreamwalker was pushing the boundary of his newfound powers after learning that he could control some part of the dreaming – his and others.

    But the source of Lydia’s nightmare would not tolerate outside interference. Even as they grew to look forward to their dreamtime dalliances, August’s meddling had only complicated Lydia’s predicament and made him question his morality.

    When dreamtime fantasies and the real world collide, August realises that the stakes are very real, and the outcome is going to be fatal for one of them.

    …or at least that was the plan. When you’re pantsing it, things rarely work out the way you thought, but that’s part of the fun.

    Do I enjoy writing a novel as a full time job? Yes and no. I did indeed had the flexibility to do nothing but write a book for one month solid, but it’s because I’m between work projects. Add in the expected sprinkling of “what the heck am I doing” and “this isn’t making any sense” and the standard amount of self-loathing.

    Dreaming of Water is based on the two short stories I wrote during Stories on Fire, which in turn was based on a collaborative Storium game/story (DOL) with a friend. This story predates DOL, featuring a Dreamwalker that had a significant cameo in one chapter. I didn’t know where I was going with it. I just wanted to explore his story. It’s hard to figure out what genre this falls under – The Dreamlands can be anything you want it to be, and I happen lean more into medieval fantasy.

    I completed Nanowrimo with 50,031 words, but the story is not done. I’m not sure if I will continue or if I’m going to start breaking it down and resequencing the entire narrative. I’ve already written down the ending in bullet points but the journey there has become muddied. There are things that I wanted to happen after other things, but because I was out of ideas, it ended up where it ended up.

    I guess I’ll give it a couple of months. Apparently January is Stories on Fire month again, and I may give it another shot.

    Gaming

    Nothing new to report other than my house is coming along. I spent most of November doing the bare minimum, which is to farm on my plot and sell produce, with the occasional run outside to mine, forage and hunt. Decorating has been subject to inspiration. For example, I had no idea how to populate this trophy room until I was inspired to turn it into a study. This view shows off the desk the best, but the background is still a work in progress.

    Coming Next

    • With Nanowrimo out of the way, I have more time to forus on tarot reading. If you want to get one, you can order it here. If you are an IRL contact, you can opt for an in-person reading. Just get in touch with me to make arrangements.
    • December will hopefully see me editing some of the short stories I wrote in September and looking into submitting them somewhere, even it’s it’s just AO3.
    • I also plan on making another crack at moving the stuff and things out of my room and get them donated or set aside for the next preloved market.

    Links Roundup

    A no-commentary list of articles and media I found interesting enough to share on my Discord server.

    Fediverse Reactions
  • The October 2023 Review

    The October 2023 Review

    Report is late because my time is entirely consumed by Nanowrimo.

    Site News & Updates

    A number of my pages or blog entries now have a new addition on top of the page:

    Clicking it will open up a hidden section describing the changes to that page. The reason for this is because I’ll be updating any relevant posts with new information from now on. It seems redundant to create a whole new page for something that might be more fitting for a social media post (and if you’re reading this, you know I don’t really do social media anymore). It’s something called a digital garden, where something is planted and then tended to as necessary. Updated pages will be listed on my main page.

    Work

    This month sees us wrapping up ‘Inside SSPCA‘, a magazine released during Asia for Animals 2023. You can read more of my thoughts at the links, and download the digital version here.

    The other thing at AfA was my first ever gig as a conference rapporteur. The job scope for a rapporteur is to sit in on papers being presented and capture the main points. To an extent, it was similar to a reporter’s job except you record more things, not just the parts that will make it into your article. The points are then compiled into daily reports.

    For AfA 2023, we have a stagger total of 80 papers across three streams. There were three rapporteurs and three reports across three days of the conference. For most part, I was typing down notes and squinting at the projector far in front of the Grand Hall at BCCK. These don’t get immediately resolved into points that I would send in, which meant we spend a good hour at the end of the conference day getting our notes into some semblence of order.

    These notes are meant to go to the organiser, and subsequently to any stakeholders up the pipeline. In our case, we were asked to compile points from Day One and Two for a minister to catch up on before he arrived to close the conference.

    It was a gruelling introduction to rapporteur work because it was a huge conference. I was invited back to rapporteur for another conference with only one stream and two days, and the workload looked manageable by one person. However, I knew I would be exhausted from coming out of one market and needing enough rest for the next.

    Markets & Bazaars

    Some of the new owners of my preloved books.

    I participated in two markets this month. The first was the second edition of Trunkie Junkie, which took place at Cafe Cafe early in the month. Once again, I teamed up with my pal Ronnie. The crowd was awesome. We sold a lot more than we did in the first Trunkie Junkie, and saw a lot of friends and other book lovers. Happy to have let go a good number of excellent titles.

    The Pay Day Bazaar at La Promenade Mall was a marathon (6 days) where Trunkie Junkie was a sprint (6 hours). I was eyeing it but didn’t want to go out alone – I only had so many books. Once I learned that a friend has secured a table, I asked if I could have a corner.

    The bazaar was a relatively tiny one (3-4 tables), but there were several other events happening at the mall on the first weekend. We did pretty well, and I sold nearly half of what I had in my stock, which leaves me with the interesting problem of not having many books left to bring to the next market. These titles didn’t move through three markets, and I don’t expect them to do too well in any upcoming ones. I’ll probably do a last ditch, either at another upcoming market as a supplementary product, or put them online.

    The bazaar was comfortable. The mall’s social media people took photos and updated every day. Eve and Irene were cold all the time, and my running joke was, “I’m not cold, I’m fat”. Overall, it was 6 days across two weekends of catching up with all the news because I didn’t spend a lot of time with either of them since I left The Borneo Post.

    But it was a full time job, and I needed 2-3 business days to recover after each weekend.

    Our table at the mall. Photos courtesy of La Promenade.

    Gaming

    This month on Palia, I’m focused on building my home. This involves grinding for gold through hunting and farming, and collecting enough resources to build pieces of furniture. Above is what you see when you enter my house. It’s still a work-in-progress and I’ve tweaked it since. And everyone here is a zookeeper – the starred (high quality) fishes and bugs can be used for display, and if we’re not desperate for gold, it goes on display. I’ve seen far larger collections than mine forming a labyrinth over the player’s plot, least you think this is a lot of tanks.

    At the same time, I’m bidding a “goodbye for now” to Storium. The momentum ended when I had to step away in July, which I felt little guilt for doing because it was hitting summer when the whole site just seems to go into hibernation.

    Truth is I’m tired of trying to get things going, and I’m tired of waiting around for other people. This is an acceptable past time when I don’t have anything better to do, but I’m back to working on my own creative writing and I cannot multitask the same set of muscles on different projects. Plus, the likelihood of completing my own projects is 100% on me and not divided between a few players who has other priorities.

     

    Coming Next

    • NaNoWriMo 2023: I didn’t think that I would want to dive headlong into another month of writing so soon after Stories on Fire, but here I am. I’m updating this 18th Nov and have plenty to say but it’ll have to wait until December. Meanwhile, feel free to add me as a buddy.

    Links Roundup

    A no-commentary list of articles and media I found interesting enough to share on my Discord server.

  • The September 2023 Review

    The September 2023 Review

    This month was as busy as I expected and I’m out of breath just thinking about it. Here are some highlights.

    Work

    As anticipated, September was busy because all the work came bottlenecking into this month. It’s partly my fault because I could have followed up sooner, but instead I waited like I wasn’t the one in charge here. That’s a pretty strange feeling – that I was in charge of getting things together and had people in my team. It’s certainly given me a new perspective and a sense of appreciation for a solid, well-rounded crew – my assistant editor who picked up all the loose ends, and the layout editor who got absorbed into my team when I realised that made more sense.

    I think it’s pretty cool that this is an all-women team, and it went with minimal drama. Solid team. Job done. Can’t wait to see the magazine in print.

    Irene C’s Wedding

    My friend’s wedding dinner proved to be a fantastic reunion situation for me and my media friends, most of whom I haven’t seen since leaving the industry. There was plenty to catch up on and connections to reforge. I was in the local media for nearly 14 years so that’s a lot of people to say hello to and repeat the story of where I am now. Thanks to Irene for this opportunity, and congrats to you and Shakiru on the wedding!

    TTRPG

    Seni Kita by HAUS was quite a lot of fun. My talk went well, although I’m not sure how many people were even listening. The Saturday group was already in session with Tiny Dungeons by then. I wasn’t playing, so I floated around, catching up with old friends and making new ones. I had a fantastic time, but I really over-extroverted myself.

    For the second weekend, I went there to check out the other booths and hang out with friends. Ended up giving a couple of oracle and tarot readings. Maybe that’s a booth to consider in the future? Anyway, I was inspired to start work on some of my chapbooks in the backburner, and explore the art/preloved market scene a bit more. That’s my plan for the remainder of the year.

    Anyway, if you are in Kuching and want in on the TTRPG action, email me or hit me up via Mastodon. You can also add our Game Master Eric on Instagram.

    Gaming

    I’m still playing Palia. It’s a nice, no-stress way to unwind so I’m not bored yet because there’s plenty that I have not unlocked. I’m also working on setting up my house, but my decorating skill is as bad as it is in real life.

    The image above is a corner of the innkeeper Ashura’s private room. If you’ve played, you’d know that Ashura’s wife had died (I forgot if he ever told me why). I found this little shrine situation here and I think it’s pretty sweet. The details though! That portrait of her is gorgeous. There’s also a gravestone for her in the Rememberence Garden, and Ashura visits every day.

    I’ve also been seeing a lot of Baldur’s Gate 3 content on Instagram. I wasn’t feeling very compelled to play until the multiple livestream recordings of people reacting to Astarion’s romance arc. *fans self* I’m still not gonna spend over RM200 on a game I’m not likely to finish.

    Stories on Fire

    I’m not sure which was more insane – me joining a challenge to write one short story every day of the month during one of the busiest months of my year, or me actually concluding it at 26 out of 30 stories. (I would have done 30/30 if I didn’t sabotage myself on work and Seni Kita weekend.)

    At some point soon, I’ll elaborate about the experience on the Stories on Fire page, where you can currently find my catalogue of titles and descriptions. I’m glad I joined. Some of these stories will get polished and sent somewhere.

    Twitch

    Along with SoF, I’ll have to mention some progress on Twitch. This month, I cracked past 50 followers and all the way to 70, thanks to me being online more than usual, and getting raided by a few Twitch friends. Not bad for someone who hasn’t had her mic on all month because my old USB port won’t stay connected and I had to prioritise my mouse and keyboard. It’s fixed now. I’ll figure out how I want to do this moving forward.

    I do plan on redoing my scenes. They got increasingly more cluttered as I added things to it. I want to simplify, or at least, organise it better, and I’m waiting for the right mindset to add a to-do list to the stream. I think I’m settling into the writing/coworking side of the community, although I do plan on working on some crafting in the coming weeks.

    Pelikan Hub

    Pelikan Hub 2023 was a pleasant affair. A bunch of regulars and a handful of new people who are proving to be great additions. My duty as Hub Master was fairly painless, except then I had to draw an outline of that cat on our banner and realised I’m so rusty at art that it took me much longer than it should. I came to the meet with a box, and left without it. Everything was given away, including the banner and the Hub Master’s gift.

    The group separated into two tables – the main one with all the inks and pens being wielded, and a smaller one where we’d just sat and chatted. I was happy for the latter since I was rather over-extended by that week, but I’m also happy that the bigger group bonded quickly. One of our newcomers packed a gift of stationary for everyone, which was unexpected but sweet.

    Coming Next

    • I am participating in two marketplaces in October – Trunkie Junkie, and the Pay Day Bazaar at La Promenade. I’ll be hawking off my preloved books at both.
    • I also plan to experiment with making chapbooks. I got a couple of things ready to go but have yet to get my shit together.
    • I’m exploring the digital garden concept of maintaining a website. There’s a link below if you’re interested.
      .

    Links Roundup

    A no-commentary list of articles and media I found interesting enough to share on my Discord server.

    Fediverse Reactions
  • The August 2023 Review

    The August 2023 Review

    August was full of waiting around.

    Work

    So this month, I’m working on a small magazine as its editor. It’s likely going to be a one-off, although the clients suggested they might want to publish more regularly in a year. This is all good with me and my assistant editor. It uses a skill set we already have, with additional aspects to learn. Our timeline did fall out the window though. Because we needed to reach out to a lot of busy people, we’re still waiting to hear back from most of them while working on things that are within our control. I expect that September is going to be very busy since we will need to start finalising some of those pages for our layout designer.

    TTRPG

    While I have not played a game this month due to scheduling conflicts, it turns out that we’re going to Seni Kita by HAUS KCH. Eric will be running a couple of games on the weekend of Sept 16-17, and I will be talking about TTRPG as a subculture in Kuching and why women should play. More about that when the time draws near, but we may have 1-2 slots available at the table on both days if you want to check it out.

    Gaming

    Since my last update, I’ve been enthralled with two games, namely Dave the Diver, and Palia.

    Screenshot from Dave the Diver, showing a boat on the waters at night, with a sushi restaurant illuminated in the background.
    Dave the Diver and business partner Cobra in a boat at night.

    Much have been said about Dave the Diver. It’s an underwater exploration game and a restaurant management game. There is a vegetable and fish farming component, and some mini games. The underwater part was educational since the creatures you meet there are mostly real sea creatures. The loading screen helpfully introduces you to the denizens that you will spear or that will try to kill you. The NPCs are quirky and memorable. There are loads of cutscenes and they are all awesome and hilarious. I finished it fairly quickly and kept on playing to collect a few other creatures that eluded me.

    And then came Palia.

    A screenshot from the game Palia, featuring my character in the centre, waving at the "camera". Behind her is part of the village and further back is a stone mountain with a crescent carved out of the peak.
    My Palia avatar waving at the “camera” from somewhere in the village.

    At time of writing, Palia is under open beta, so some things still break, and some skills don’t seem worth developing (looking at you, Furniture Making), it’s a nice, no-stress, game where you can explore the world and build your character at your own speed. Quests unlock as you level up your skills or discover something in the world, and are not time-sensitive. If other players are involved, it’s more about cooperation than competition. I haven’t opened Steam since Palia came out in closed beta.

    r/Writers Discord

    When I joined the r/Writers Discord, I did not expect much. The subreddit was okay, moving at a speed that I was comfortable with. I’m aware there are other writing subreddits, but I didn’t want to overwhelm my homepage. One of the mods started a Discord and I was one of the first to join. Before long, I volunteered to manage the channels and community. Now it’s my favourite Discord server and writing community – with a range of writing and publishing experiences, and people who are friendly and generous with their knowledge.

    I run a few Discord servers, but this is the biggest one that requires more attention. I want the community to have some ownership to the place, so I always like to say the mods are here to provide support and advice if you want to run/lead something on the server, but don’t leave us holding the bag. With our membership quickly approaching 500, I think it’s time to appoint more mods and hand over some of my duties.

    Other Matters

    • I signed up for a challenge to write one short story every day in September. Short stories isn’t my wheelhouse, and I doubt if I’ll be able to churn one out every day, so this would be interesting. Updates here.
    • Looking forward to a friend and ex-colleague’s wedding reception on Sept 2!
    • Pelikan Hub Kuching on Sept 22, which you can read about in my previous blog entry linked. September is going to be busy!

    Links Roundup

    A no-commentary list of articles and media I found interesting enough to share on my Discord server.

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