Greetings all,

Happy to have you in the passenger seat on this road trip to 2025!Corny metaphors aside, 2024 has been a transformational year. Where CW was a site which functioned more-or-less as a glorified blog in prior years, the momentum to actualize it as an independent online-publication has taken off.

I’ve learned a metric ton over this past year, and was able to step into new territory:

As such, I’d like to provide you a bit of a breakdown of what the plans and considerations are for this next year as the momentum is carried forward.

In 2025, the hope is to propel the site further into the Tabletop RPG direction, digging into the following sub-categories:

Giving my initial test with the “Fantasy NPC Generator PDF” as a mailing list rewards, but also a DriveThruRPG free product has opened the door to consider bigger and bolder ideas, and plans are being drawn up for some future product offered by ChaoticanWriter.

In addition, CW has been building connections with established TTRPG creators and publishers to add more knowledge to the toolkit in the hopes of providing more resources and tools to the community surrounding it!

For the longest time, Chaotican Writer has existed in this unconventional venn diagram of content. The “variety show” of CW is a bit of a detractor, but it allows for the platform to cover a lot of ground.

Chaotican Writer started as a "personal writers platform”, what was anticipated to be a helpful way to propel what I thought would be a novel-writing career. When the WIP was shelved, it became an eclectic spot for knowledge. That ended up getting some love from the Google algorithm over time, and actually managed to maintain some decent traffic from even what little content was there at the time.

Now, its a site that wears multiple hats. It has information thats universally helpful for people outside of the venn diagram, bit also within each circle.

The trouble is, as it evolves, where is CW going to be focused on? What is going to be the flagship? The key niche?

With the increased movement towards TTRPGs, the big question is, does this conflict with what people use the platform for, or what content they expect?

The biggest psychological hangup (probably for myself, and less for other people) is that Chaotican Writer is oddly-named as a platform.

Here’s a list of some nuances and hiccups:

I’ve supplemented with the idea that a brand tweak, or complete rebrand is pending, either:

The dip into the lake of Youtube yielded some interesting results. As most of the world has preferred video and visual content to reading, this is a no-brainer. The thing is, video editing is hard and time consuming, which has been the consistent blocker for a busy IT admin by day, and project and hobby juggler by night.

Therefore, some concrete changes are in order:

In order to branch out, CW is eyeing multiple exchange opportunities as a way to better network between content creators, and writers of similar platforms.

The year 2024 was quite absent of stream content.

As affiliations with past stream communities rose and fell, it was apparent that there was a boulder to push uphill for the CW stream to see the same activity and growth as it did before. It did not seem worth it at the time, and most of my attention was answering the question “How does one run a successful independent online publication in 2024?” … a question that is being answered again year by year.

However, in individual revisits, it was apparent that there existed a community that remembers, and misses the TTRPG games, the worldbuilding sessions, the special 12-hour streams.

So, 2025, hell or high water, will see a fuller return of streaming.

The most massive challenge; how to treat 2025 in the most serious and dedicated way possible with changing and shifting IRL winds?

Time will tell how the execution of 2025 fares.

Now, more than ever, seeing the direct results of my efforts from a social angle is extremely important. Seeing that extra subscriber, that extra newsletter viewer, that site viewer, PDF downloader, comment writer, email questioner, Discord chatter, interested creator, IRL advocate, critical feedback sender, … all of it.

Ultimately, what switches me on is knowing that what I do is being seen, and heard, and commented upon. All of this fulfills a creative urge in me, but my personal stakes are not to live in a vacuum; it has to be valuable. It has to affect people, somehow.

Its been a long ride from nothing to… something in general.

The empty space of silence is the biggest obstacle. It makes the journey difficult when the social ecosystem is quiet. Perhaps my personal development journey will continue to change my outlook as time goes on, but for now,… I do this because I love it, BUT ALSO that people appreciate it.

I make Random Name Generators because I SEE that people love them! … Purely by numbers. … I write articles because I KNOW someone has asked a question, or because I know someone else has asked something I’ve asked myself … I keep the site going because, every blue moon, someone comments, or emails, or new of the links appears on someones forum post off somewhere on the internet.

It means… so much! Literally everything. So, for those of you that are listening, are paying attention, are enjoying the content and are curious to see more, all I want to say is “Thank you!”. … You’re the fuel to the engine, and I want to continue to bring you value, and grow in my knowledge of the best ways to do so.

Anyhow, hope this blurb finds you well. Its rare I lay it out on the table, but… sometime you just need to let everyone know where its at!

Take care friends.Love yas!

- Matthew Allan Olson@ Chaotican Writer