Why I'm Killing System-Agnostic Material (and Maybe More)

I've been cranking out system-agnostic material for a solid decade, and I'm still here, somehow. You’d think by now, I’d have grown numb to all the noise about how “system-agnostic material doesn’t sell.” Spoiler: It does. I’ve got at least one Platinum and multiple Gold bestsellers on DriveThruRPG, thank you very much. But does that shut anyone up? Of course not.

The only real problem throughout the yeats, though, has the crowd of holier-than-thou religious zealots who cannot handle the word “agnostic.” Newsflash: It’s a term about game systems, not a direct attack on you or your faith. But no, they took it personally, so I bent over backward and changed it to “system neutral” just to get them off my back. Now? I’m done. I’m not catering to the willfully ignorant anymore.

But wait, there’s more! Lately, a new class of comments have been rolling in, and they're next-level stupid. “This must be AI because it doesn’t have specific rules.” “Clearly, AI wrote this because it’s too generic.” Oh, really? System-agnostic material doesn’t have rules, you say? It’s so broadly written it could apply to any setting, you say? It’s especially rich considering these trolls are talking about stuff I wrote a decade ago, before AI was anything more than science fiction. The idea that some random keyboard warrior (Do we still call them that? Screw it, I do.) can’t tell the difference between human effort and machine-generated fluff is one thing. That they don’t grasp the concept that water is supposed to be wet by design infuriating beyond words.

Honestly, I’m at the point where I’m about to throw in the towel. Rage-quit, pull all my work, and tell the entire lot of them to figure it out themselves. I’ll take all that energy and channel it into the things I’m actually passionate about, instead of wasting more time defending myself from baseless accusations and dealing with fragile egos. System-agnostic is dead, and if this keeps up, I might kill off a few other things while I’m at it.

I hope you’re doing better than I am today.