thread: 2006-05-18 : Two examples: unmediated drama
On 2006-05-18, Roger wrote:
> Do you see that you're disagreeing with Brand (and with Mo's explicit endorsement) about the moment of crisis?
Aha... after reading that over again, I think I see what's going on here. I absolutely agree with what Brand says in:
> How do we know if something is a moment of crisis or not? That is tricky...
First, a quick review of the rest of Brand's post:
> If you get the other people's investment before bringing the moment of crisis by soliciting input, buy-in, and authority sharing then it is pull.
> If you get the other people's responses after you have already brought the moment of crisis by using your authority to force something, then it is push.
(emphasis mine.)
So here was my sincere reading of your example:
I say, "I grab you, heft you bodily, and pitch you over. I'm like, 'scumsucker.' Bricks flash by as you fall; maybe you try to catch a window sill but you can't. But look, my guy wants you to die, not me. Let's come up with some other outcome than you die."
Yep, there's the moment of crisis. It's not only been brought, here—it's already been resolved. I'm not entirely sure if a unilaterally-resolved moment of crisis should even be considered a proper "moment of crisis" per se, but I'll let more expert heads puzzle that one out.
Anyway, everyone (I think) agrees that that's Push, so let's not belabour it too much longer. The second example is the contentious one.
I say, "I grab you, heft you bodily, and pitch you over. I'm like, 'scumsucker.' I think that should totally happen and your character should fall to his death, like totally dead. What do you think?"
You say, "not so much. How about, you go to grab me, but I slip out of your grip and run?"
Alright, I read that, and I think: hey look, there's the moment of crisis. Vincent has Pushed me into it. Now we're negotiating how to resolve the moment of crisis.
And I'm not trying to be obtuse in that. I'm sure that in a couple weeks, I'll still be telling people the game anecdote of when Vincent tried to push me off a building. I think this sort of "anecdote test" is as good a way as recognizing moments of crisis as any.
At the same time, I can now clearly see a differing opinion: Vincent isn't Pushing a moment of crisis here—he's just suggesting we could have one.
If I say "No way, Vincent—I squirm out and run off into the distance" then we're not resolving the crisis—we're merely deferring it.
Under that interpretation, yeah, it's obviously a Pull. Two weeks from now, we won't be reminiscing about this scene—it'll all be about what happened when the crisis could no longer be deferred, and actually got resolved.
As Brand says, recognizing moments of crises is a tricky business.
