D&D General What is player agency to you?

[clearstream]

Agency, in the context of game play, is not normally used to refer to the capacity to act for reasons.

I wanted to note my position that player agency is rightly analysed with regard to preexisting debate in philosophy about agency. In asserting that, I am categorising player agency as a subset of human agency. Human agency is normally construed in terms of intentionality: the notion of intentional action is more fundamental to agency than the notion of action. For one thing, to act entirely unintentionally is not generally considered to express agency (with the nuance that unintentional actions may result from an expression of agency.) I note too, that all takes on agency in this thread have connected it with reasons... to giving effect to some intention. To play a game is to adopt as compelling reasons both the outcomes and the processes of play.

 

[pemerton]

Would players in something like Stratego (where pieces of more value win combats against pieces of lesser values with one or two exceptions) have less agency if some randomness was injected (say each player rolled a Fate (+/=/-) die in combat and the value of their respective pieces might be made one larger, kept the same, or made one smaller based on the roll)?

Off the top of my head it sounds like the answer is probably yes, but it also depends on how much the randomness can be corrected for and exploited in play.

But to me it seems fairly obvious that backgammon gives players less agency than chess. That's part of what makes it a lighter game - you don't need to think as much to play!

 

[pemerton]

I wanted to note my position that player agency is rightly analysed with regard to preexisting debate in philosophy about agency. In asserting that, I am categorising player agency as a subset of human agency. Human agency is normally construed in terms of intentionality: the notion of intentional action is more fundamental to agency than the notion of action.

The use of "agency" in the context of game play has little to do with philosophy, and in particular has little to do with the philosophy of intentional action.

It is borrowed from the use of the notion in sociology, as was discussed at some length upthread, inter alia by me and @Campbell.

Just as one can talk about high and low agency social roles, or areas of life in which a person does or doesn't enjoy a high degree of agency, so one can talk about the degree of agency a player enjoys in a game.

I mean, you may not want to have that conversation, but it's the one that I'm contributing to. For the reasons I posted upthread, it sheds little light on the analysis of game play to notice that it is mostly undertaken voluntarily and for reasons.

I might observe golf and come up with ways to more effectively get the golf ball into the hole, based upon agency to get balls into holes seen in other games or even outside of games. And then based upon that advocate "higher-agency" golf. However

...using a golf club in order to play golf is not a less efficient, and therefore an alternative, means for seeking the end in question. It is a logically indispensable means.​

How does this example shed any light on RPGing? What, in RPGing, do you take to be the equivalent to using a club under certain restrictions to move a ball into a small hole?

It's fog and sophistry, and nothing more.

 

[clearstream]

The use of "agency" in the context of game play has little to do with philosophy, and in particular has little to do with the philosophy of intentional action.

It is borrowed from the use of the notion in sociology, as was discussed at some length upthread, inter alia by me and @Campbell.

If time permits, can you point to a post that's part of that discussion?

Agency, in the context of game play, is not normally used to refer to the capacity to act for reasons.

Is it right then that what you are focused upon are actions players take without reasons for taking them? For instance, participating in the creation of a shared narrative is not a "reason" for you, but something else? If so, what is that something?


P.S. I had to laugh at the closing rhetoric in your previous! I don't mean it insultingly.

 

[clearstream]

I found an interesting discussion of player agency in Salen and Zimmerman's Game Design Reader, in a paper by Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern. Their interest is in the tension between player interactive freedoms and the demands of drama, forming what they characterise as "the problem of agency." (It is a "problem", because what happens if player actions disrupt any hope of meaningful drama, and for that matter how does player thread the needle toward dramatically meaningful play?)

Their general concept opens with the following quote (of another author - J. Murray)

Agency is the feeling of empowerment that comes from being able to take actions in the world whose effects relate to the player's intention.

Something I found striking about this definition is how well it connects with the findings of this 2021 study. Anyway, Mateas and Stern go on to reiterate that

..the effect must relate to the player intention.

They develop their theory via a concept of material and formal causes. Material causes are resources present in a game such as mechanics. Formal causes are goals or ideals toward which things are directed. Players introduce a source of formal causes, distinct to games. They come to conclude that

A player will experience agency when there is a balance between the material and formal constraints... An imbalance results in a decrease in agency.

As such, they characterise agency as inhabiting a "sweet spot" in design space. Sufficiently afforded and constrained on both layers.

a player in an interactive drama becomes a kind of author, and thus, as an efficient causee, contributes both materially to the plot and formally to elements at the level of character on down. But these contributions are constrained by the material and formal causes (viewed as affordances) provided by the author of the interactive drama.

It's a complex paper and no doubt I will have to read it a few times. At first blush, I'm intrigued that it might connect something rather sociological (player feelings of empowerment) with the philosophical (taking actions related to intentions.)

 

[Golroc]

Now that we're returning to discussing definitions, I still prefer a slightly different definition than the one used by most posters. I don't agree that there is one single definition within sociology. I've seen multiple different definitions within management theory - which is a discipline of sociology. But let's not quibble about that. Instead let me explain why I prefer a different definition:

Agency is the objective and subjective capacity to exercise self-determination through action and effort. In the context of an RPG, agency is the objective and subjective capacity to perform actions and make decision that have a meaningful impact on the outcome of the game. Note that the perception of what constitutes outcome and meaning differ between individuals.

I think it is important to not reduce agency to simply concern itself with the decision space of the player in the context of the game. One has to consider the effect of the decision. In order for agency to exist, the player must not only have a meaningful and open-ended freedom of choice in what actions to perform and which decisions to make. to act. The actions and decisions must also be able to have the desired impact.

Freedom without agency is a very common pattern within sociology, and it repeats within RPGs. For example, if all roads lead to Rome, and I don't want to go to Rome, then it doesn't matter how many roads there are. But on the other hand, if what matters to me is the journey, then the choice of road is highly relevant.

Agency is multi-dimensional. There are many aspects of agency. In this thread we've mostly discussed narrativist systems and how they contribute to agency. And they certainly do for a lot of players. The extent to which they provide agency is of course directly linked to how important the player considers the sharing of narrative authority and the decision space for impacting the shared fiction. Some players do not have a desired to impact the shared fiction beyond controlling a character. Earlier in this thread a poster asked me what I meant by "Story Mechanics" - and to me that refers to mechanics that allow the player to impact the shared fiction by means other than direct control of a character. In classic D&D systems I would consider character creation a Story Mechanic by this definition, and the same goes for character progression mechanics like levelling up. So Story Mechanics are not a matter of whether they are "gamey" or not.

But if we return to how agency can relate to other concepts than shared narrative authority and Story Mechanics, another example is GM discretion. Some players consider GM discretion that goes beyond a certain threshold a violation of their agency. This could be a player who wants a simulationist approach to the game - where the GM has authority to define the pre-game state of the fiction (some would use the terms world or scenario, but I hope it's clear what I'm referring to), but where the GM is purely an arbiter and mediator once the game session starts. Other players have a concept of agency where they are open to the GM changing the (unrevealed) state of the fiction, within certain limits.

Finally, a fair number of players that I've met over the years are mostly concerned with "fun/entertainment" and/or character progression. The former is sometimes derisively consider a casual and amateurish priority - where players don't care about the integrity of the shared fiction, don't care about their ability to impact it, etc. and are thus little more than passive consumers of low-brow entertainment. It is not entirely untrue for a subset of these players - for some people RPGs are just a light-hearted pastime. They can still have plenty of agency - if they're able to meaningfully act and interact to make the game more entertaining. For example, such a player might feel deprived of agency when playing with a group that is too serious or too concerned with following the rules of the game. To an observer they may seem devoid of agency when playing with like-minded individuals, but that's not the case - because there is a decision space and a meaningful ability to impact the outcome of the game.

For the character progression crowd - they're much more focused on whether progression delivers tangible increases in mechanics-based character power and/or narrative character identity, than on the shared fiction or the interactions at the table. Again, this kind of play is sometimes regarded as primitive and boring by those who value other aspects of RPGs. But it is a valid kind of agency. A power-gamer may feel deprived of agency if character progression does not allow for synergistic use of mechanics - or at the very least goes beyond a simple scaling of character power. Such a player does not care about whether they can affect the narrative - but they do care about whether they can pump out bigger numbers or feel the thrill of executing some cool combo of mechanics to dominate combat.


In reality, people don't fall into single categories, and groups of players will often have idiosyncrasies that impact agency. A player may feel devoid of agency if they don't get to fill the role of GM with some regularity - and opposite situation also exists (ie the "trapped" GM is a common trope, as is the player who desperately wants to GM but never gets the opportunity). Choice of system, setting and houserules can also be a point of relevance for agency. Players who dominate socially at the table also affect the agency of other players. Even with an accomodating GM, players have tremendous ability to undermine the agency of each other.

Now, I know that many here don't like to include subjective feelings as part of agency - I disagree, but fine, if you want to use a different moniker for the subjective parts, that shouldn't stand in the way of discourse (which is why I've simply relented for most of this thread, and accepted the purely objective definition). But even given the purely objective definition of agency - it still stands that freedom of choice is not enough - the choices have to be able to impact the right things for the given player. And other participants (GM or players) being able nullify or undermine this can also remove agency.

Player agency doesn't exist in a void. Conflicts about player agency can revolve not just around having sufficient freedom of action - but also be related to different preferences and styles. And this where the social contract is so important. By agreeing in advance on the system, conventions, priorities and limits of the game - and internalizing any compromises made - participants know if they're giving up on agency. The negotiation of a compromise is in itself a possible outlet of agency. This kind of meta-agency can make it easier to enjoy the game, if one is in the situation of having to compromise.


But as for the GM asking the RPG community at large - "What is player agency (to you)?" - I hope the take away is that agency means different things to different people, and if a player is complaining about lack of agency, you need to focus on what matters to this particular player (and whether you are even compatible participants), not on what agency means to other people or what a possible theoretical definition of agency may be.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Agency is the objective and subjective capacity to exercise self-determination through action and effort. In the context of an RPG, agency is the objective and subjective capacity to perform actions and make decision that have a meaningful impact on the outcome of the game. Note that the perception of what constitutes outcome and meaning differ between individuals.

As long as we grant that it has both things--that the presence of subjective elements does not refute the presence of objective elements--I have no reason to quibble here.

I think it is important to not reduce agency to simply concern itself with the decision space of the player in the context of the game. One has to consider the effect of the decision. In order for agency to exist, the player must not only have a meaningful and open-ended freedom of choice in what actions to perform and which decisions to make. to act. The actions and decisions must also be able to have the desired impact.

Yes. I have tried, or at least intended, to emphasize this exact point. The feeling that you are having the desired impact is important. But so is actually having the desired impact. If you are unable to have the desired impact because you don't actually have any impact at all, just the feeling of having that impact, then agency isn't really present, just the illusion of it (hence, "illusionism.") Should that illusion break, most players respond negatively, some by becoming disheartened, some by becoming angry. That's why so many places that advocate illusionism do so only with vehement reminders not to allow players to find out, because it is likely to upset them.

Freedom without agency is a very common pattern within sociology, and it repeats within RPGs. For example, if all roads lead to Rome, and I don't want to go to Rome, then it doesn't matter how many roads there are. But on the other hand, if what matters to me is the journey, then the choice of road is highly relevant.

Alright. Where are we going with this, counselor?

But if we return to how agency can relate to other concepts than shared narrative authority and Story Mechanics, another example is GM discretion. Some players consider GM discretion that goes beyond a certain threshold a violation of their agency. This could be a player who wants a simulationist approach to the game - where the GM has authority to define the pre-game state of the fiction (some would use the terms world or scenario, but I hope it's clear what I'm referring to), but where the GM is purely an arbiter and mediator once the game session starts. Other players have a concept of agency where they are open to the GM changing the (unrevealed) state of the fiction, within certain limits.

Here, I must quibble: You have (perhaps unintentionally) implied that objections to "GM discretion" arise from simulation but not really anything else. My objections are almost wholly rooted in what are usually called "gamist" concerns, not simulationist ones. That is, I've often said that it is essential to me that D&D is Roleplaying, AND it is a Game. It needs to have Roleplaying or it isn't really worth my time; I can get bare Game almost anywhere. But I can also get bare Roleplaying almost anywhere (and, in fact, I did so for several years before I ever touched D&D.) As part of the Game aspect of D&D, I very strongly believe that players need to be able to make reasonably informed decisions, from which they truly do merit serious consequences, that they then get the chance to learn from those earned consequences (good AND bad), and then feed that new learning back into making new decisions. "GM discretion"--secret intrusion into the gameplay loop--disrupts this process. Informed decisions become impossible, even in principle, because there is no "information"--only what is conditionally true right now, which the players are denied any possibility of learning whether that wasn't true before or won't be true later. Their actions are secretly divorced from the consequences, because in every case, the chain becomes "Player acts -> GM decides -> consequences result," not "Player acts -> consequences result -> GM responds." This then means no learning can occur, because what they would be "learning" is the things the GM permits to happen, but they are not allowed to know that it really is the GM permitting it.

Hence, my issue here is almost purely "gamist," and yet it is very much an issue with "GM discretion." At least as I am interpreting the phrase. Perhaps you have meant something different, in which case, I apologize for the non-sequitur.

To an observer they may seem devoid of agency when playing with like-minded individuals, but that's not the case - because there is a decision space and a meaningful ability to impact the outcome of the game.

I personally would not consider those forms of agency relative to gameplay. Those are forms of agency relative to the social group, IMO. Certainly still a subject worthy of its own analysis, but not really relevant to discussion of player agency. If you'll permit me an analogy: consider the difference between "restaurant agency" and "menu agency." A group of people discussing which restaurant to go to are not, in that discussion, deciding which dish they want to eat. They are deciding which group or type of cuisine they can subsequently pick from. It is quite possible to have huge latitude when it comes to restaurant agency (picking from dozens or hundreds of genuinely distinct restaurants) but subsequently have zero agency when it comes to the dish you eat when you get there (e.g., they only serve one thing.)

It is important to consider this "restaurant-type" agency when talking about, for example, Session Zero, picking a system, setting a tone, etc. These things can have huge impact on the experience of play. But they are not of interest to me, in this discussion. What interests me is "menu-type" agency, the difference between (say) McDonald's, a buffet, a fancy-dining restaurant, a multi-course-meal type thing, etc. That is, I'm interested in how to foster, support, and encourage "menu-type" agency once you have a menu in front of you. I'm not (currently) interested in a discussion about which restaurants diners would want to dine at.

For the character progression crowd

Again, not really sure what is being said here, other than (perhaps) that the existence of different kinds or flavors of agency means that a game which fails to deliver on kind X, but does deliver on kinds Y and Z, offers less agency than one which delivers on Y and Z equally to the first game but also delivers on X.

In reality, people don't fall into single categories, and groups of players will often have idiosyncrasies that impact agency.

I don't think anyone here disagrees, and in fact, I would argue several have explicitly addressed this, with things like "lines and veils," the X-card, Session Zero, and other tools for both addressing the individual needs and peculiarities of specific players, and dealing with the problems caused by socially dominant players, wallflowers, etc.

Now, I know that many here don't like to include subjective feelings as part of agency

I have negative interest in excluding subjective feelings. I think they are extremely important. What irks me is when the presence of subjective factors in agency is then used to argue that therefore, the objective factors are non-existent, irrelevant, or negligible. Which is a thing that actually happened in this thread; I was told, point blank, that the feeling of agency is all that matters, and that there either simply wasn't a fact of the matter at all, or that that fact of the matter was genuinely irrelevant so long as the feeling was present.

This kind of meta-agency can make it easier to enjoy the game, if one is in the situation of having to compromise.

Sure. I would also consider that the very reason you refer to it as "meta-agency" is why it's not really of interest to me in this discussion context. It is a form of agency; it's just not a form of agency related to currently being a player playing a game.

But as for the GM asking the RPG community at large - "What is player agency (to you)?" - I hope the take away is that agency means different things to different people, and if a player is complaining about lack of agency, you need to focus on what matters to this particular player (and whether you are even compatible participants), not on what agency means to other people or what a possible theoretical definition of agency may be.

Alright.

 

[clearstream]

Here, I must quibble: You have (perhaps unintentionally) implied that objections to "GM discretion" arise from simulation but not really anything else. My objections are almost wholly rooted in what are usually called "gamist" concerns, not simulationist ones. That is, I've often said that it is essential to me that D&D is Roleplaying, AND it is a Game. It needs to have Roleplaying or it isn't really worth my time; I can get bare Game almost anywhere. But I can also get bare Roleplaying almost anywhere (and, in fact, I did so for several years before I ever touched D&D.) As part of the Game aspect of D&D, I very strongly believe that players need to be able to make reasonably informed decisions, from which they truly do merit serious consequences, that they then get the chance to learn from those earned consequences (good AND bad), and then feed that new learning back into making new decisions. "GM discretion"--secret intrusion into the gameplay loop--disrupts this process. Informed decisions become impossible, even in principle, because there is no "information"--only what is conditionally true right now, which the players are denied any possibility of learning whether that wasn't true before or won't be true later. Their actions are secretly divorced from the consequences, because in every case, the chain becomes "Player acts -> GM decides -> consequences result," not "Player acts -> consequences result -> GM responds." This then means no learning can occur, because what they would be "learning" is the things the GM permits to happen, but they are not allowed to know that it really is the GM permitting it.

Hence, my issue here is almost purely "gamist," and yet it is very much an issue with "GM discretion." At least as I am interpreting the phrase. Perhaps you have meant something different, in which case, I apologize for the non-sequitur.

That's an interesting point. So on the one hand, I feel that there are reasonable grounds to say that an expert referee would do something that the dice cannot, such as include the effects of things in the fiction that the system as written is insensitive to. And I have on my mind additional merits such as where a referee is communicative, consistent, judicious. Very often in other domains I will prefer a person's decision over a random one.

And on the other hand, when I was diagramming out the various TTRPG methods of resolution, I noticed that one could black box the step after input interpretation, where by some means an outcome is indexed. Inside that black box could be - a randomiser, a referee making decisions, an astrologer reading the stars, a quorum of voters, an AI, etc. By indexing, I mean something like what you see in a PbtA move: a range of results with numbers beside them. Apply the result whose number is output by the black box when prompted. In most TTRPG, the results require further interpretation to pass them back into fiction, with the system consequences generally concrete. Call this experiment "the remote-control dice" where I throw dice as usual, but how they land is controlled to conform with the number the black box contents supplies from a remote location.

Move in fiction > is interpreted into system > prompts black box > a number comes up on the r-c dice > indexes a result.

The purpose of this thought experiment is to investigate what it is about the decisions themselves - a series of numbers from the black box - that will allow us to decide that we dislike its contents?

For example, I think your concerns about GM denying players the possibility of learning must rely on an apprehension that the GM will make their determinations with negative bias or intent to disrupt, seeing as inconsistency alone would surely be no worse than random. We must expect to observe a series of numbers that at moments swings to ornery and others swings to friendly, and is identifiably different over the normal course of play from the series of numbers produced by normal dice.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

That's an interesting point. So on the one hand, I feel that there are reasonable grounds to say that an expert referee would do something that the dice cannot, such as include the effects of things in the fiction that the system as written is insensitive to. And I have on my mind additional merits such as where a referee is communicative, consistent, judicious. Very often in other domains I will prefer a person's decision over a random one.

And on the other hand, when I was diagramming out the various TTRPG methods of resolution, I noticed that one could black box the step after input interpretation where by some means an outcome is indexed. Inside that black box could be a method of randomisation - a referee making decisions, an astrologer reading the stars, a vote, an AI, etc. By indexing, I mean something like what you see in a PbtA move: a range of results with numbers beside them. Apply the result whose number is given by the black box when prompted. In most TTRPG, the results require further interpretation to pass them back into fiction, with the system consequences generally concrete.

Move in fiction > is interpreted into system > prompts black box > a number > indexes a result.

The purpose of this thought experiment is to investigate our intuitions to understand what it is about referee decisions that we favour or disfavour without it being down to just a general malaise with GMs. It's not intended to say that one should prefer GMs, only to get clear on the reasons why one might or might not. For example, I think your concerns about GM denying players the possibility of learning must rely on some apprehension that the GM will make their determinations with bias or intent to disrupt (seeing as simple inconsistency would surely be no worse than random), and I wonder how that interacts with the very common desire that GM supply effective adversities / adversaries? It seems GM can be trusted to do some things (folk may say "constraints", but then, why are we unable to constrain their determining just as well?)

Providing adversaries, as far as I'm concerned, does not even occur during the sequence you have described above. The provision of adversaries occurs either purely within the fiction (with numbers only called up when they are needed*), or only when an indexed result has been applied. More on this in a bit.

An analogy occurred to me a short while ago. It is imperfect and such, but it captured an idea I would like to discuss. Consider a student in a high-level experimental physics course. Part of the purpose of the course is to learn new facts from physics, but part of it is also to teach the student that experimental design is one of the most critical tasks of actual, practicing physicists. But the professor has taken it upon himself to interfere with the student's experiments. Not out of any desire to be malfeasant; his two goals are (a) to avoid the distraction of erroneous results when the student has made a minor but hard-to-find error, and (b) to force the student to confront errors every now and then, even if they simply lucked into doing things the right way but for the wrong reason.

This professor, despite having only the best intentions and taking steps intended to aid student learning, is in fact preventing learning. Because now, every experiment is not what the student thinks it is. Every experiment has the confounding variable of Professor Jones secretly altering the results. Rather than being allowed to make mistakes and then discussing those mistakes, the student acquires "knowledge" based on false premises and "data" that may be completely fabricated.

Note, however, that this problem ceases when the Professor is open about his actions--because then it becomes part of a dialogue, something that affects known or indexed results, or which acts as advice or assistance (aka, not a black box anymore). Alternatively, the Professor can act secretly, but in ways that don't actually affect the learning process, e.g. by including faulty equipment that the student is expected to find, diagnose, and address. (Thinking to check your experimental apparatus to make sure it works the way you want it to is a very, very important skill to develop.) As soon as either component of this is changed, the problem goes away. It is only the joint state of black box AND manipulation that causes an issue.

The provision of adversaries is either the post-indexing "your results were wrong--go back, find out why, and tell me" or the pre-system "this is a curious thing, how should we examine it so that a useful experiment can be conducted?" To somehow insert adversaries within the black box--never allowing the player, or student, to know that this challenge has been presented and yet it is there anyway--would completely defeat the purpose of having an adversary to begin with.

Stepping away from the analogy and looking at the mechanics of actual games:

When I run Dungeon World, I usually do only light prep work. I can often build an encounter in 5-10 minutes because monsters are very simple mechanically (much more complex conceptually, at least for creatures more interesting than bags-o-HP, but that's how DW do.) As a general rule, though, if there is a risk of danger or attack, that risk is already present within the fiction without any need for a secretive intrusion on my part. However, sometimes, a player makes a move and misses (6- on a roll), and one possible Hard move would be for an encounter to break out--perhaps even an unexpected one, e.g. the guards you were working with turn on you. This also can't be black-boxed, because the problem can only arise out of the indexed result. In either case, to put the actual threat into the black box would be to act unilaterally in defiance of both the rules and the fiction.

*Ironically, this is one of the areas where games like 4e and 13A are actually very similar to games like Dungeon World. You don't need a statblock for something that isn't going to make or participate in moves. Just do what makes sense for the fiction of that creature.

 

[Manbearcat]

About to board a plane in a series so I’ll keep this short and won’t be able to respond until tomorrow.

So on the one hand, I feel that there are reasonable grounds to say that an expert referee would do something that the dice cannot, such as include the effects of things in the fiction that the system as written is insensitive to.

I feel like those last seven words illustrate the nexus of your (what seem to me to be Sim-Immersionist) priors and where a lot of disagreement stems from.

Good systems are written with the intention of being sensitive to some things and insensitive to others!

Torchbearer has a codified, intricate, and intense Inventory (including the demands placed upon loadout and how Twists can complicate that) and Resources system along with a Town and Camp phase where gear recovery, repair, and outfitting moves are all deeply interlocked. Torchbearer is intentionally designed to be very sensitive to these things.

Contrast with 5e where none of the above is true nor could be made to be true without stripping the game down to the studs and rewriting it without ubiquitous epic magic, action hero dynamics, and with all the profound intricacies of the above. 5e is intentionally designed to be insensitive to Torchbearer’s Inventory et al game.

Its not Torchbearer or 5e “missing the plot” because one doesn’t have the dynamics of the other. Its the GM that runs (or prospectively runs) either game and wants to either (“expertly”…) bolt TB’s Inventory et al onto 5e to “get the TB experience (lawl)” or wants to bolt 5e’s ubiquitous, epic magic onto TB to “get the 5e experience (lawl).” That sort of (I’ve got some adjectives in mind here but folks can fill in the blanks) idea leads to undermining both games in the (insert adjective) name of “the system as written is insensitive to it so I, the expert referee, will include the effects of things in the fiction to generate sensitivity.”