Abstract
This article offers a ""coordination solution"" to the dilemma which takes social structures as game/play frameworks and explains their discontinuous transitions in extraordinary times. The reality status of these frameworks, i.e. members' knowledge and beliefs about the ways the ""games of life"" are played, derives from actors' heuristic choice behaviour governed by both opportunity and coordination costs.
Frameworks are respected as solid ""things"" because changing them through coordinated action is inconceivable or-if conceivable-adaptation to existing frameworks is significantly less costly than modifying them. However, continuous and even discontinuous changes in frameworks-transitions-may occur under extraordinary circumstances.
In such case, dramatic narratives, which temporarily come to dominate people's understanding of the situation, help to lower the coordination cost of framework change.