Kafka: 100 Years Dead

3rd June this year will mark a century since Franz Kafka’s death in 1924. So he and his writing have been on mind. Not that they are ever far from it - it’s hard to think of an author who’s had a more formative impact on my life than Kafka. I finally visited Prague in 2016 with the specific purpose of seeing where he lived, where he worked and wrote, seeing the castle that inspired “The Castle”, visiting his grave, all that stuff. It was one of the greatest experiences of my life.

I wrote this during that trip:

The Kafkaesque is so readily confined to the domain of incomprehensible bureaucracy and surreal nightmares that it’s easy to overlook its most beautiful aspect: That it expands the realm of possibility. Kafka’s world is dark but also magical, possessed by wondrous potential.

I think past me did a pretty good job of summarizing just what it is I love about Kafka’s work and having an excuse to revisit it feels like catching up with an old friend.  And of course, the natural thing to do with all this inspiration was to write a one-page RPG called The Riskiest Moment, which you can download here.

Why is it called The Riskiest Moment? I’m glad you asked. The concept of the riskiest moment is one that's never far from my thoughts, that the moment of waking up in the morning is the riskiest moment of all. I’ve always thought I read this in The Trial but had trouble finding it in my copy. According to John T Hamilton writing here, it’s actually a deleted passage from that story (which explains why I couldn't find it). But the essential idea is that it’s pretty miraculous when you wake up in the morning and find the world just as you left it. In Kafka's words:

“For when asleep and dreaming you are, apparently at least, in an essentially different state from that of wakefulness; and therefore […] it requires enormous presence of mind or rather quickness of wit, when opening your eyes to seize hold of everything in the room at exactly the same place where you had let it go on the previous evening. That was why [...] the moment of waking up was the riskiest moment of the day.”

There is something uniquely destabilizing when this moment bears its teeth, when one does wake to find the world irrevocably changed.  Nowadays it can feel like this happens every day.  The first thing many of us do on waking up is check our phone, which is all too keen to show exactly that.  And perhaps this is the first mistake for we have, in that simple act, already given up so much.  Considering how often Kafka’s work conjures a sense of helplessness and futility, the quote above places a surprising - almost supernatural - degree of agency upon the waking person.  It is up to you to seize hold of the day.  If it is a shortcoming of our will that fails to correctly summon the waking world back from the dreaming one, perhaps we also have the power to conjure it back not simply as it was, but better than it was.  With risk there is always opportunity.  Hidden in that riskiest of moments, there is the invitation to awake in the best version of reality.

A Hundred Thousand Hags

Last time I talked about hags in RPGs and how cool it would be to see a hag that wasn't just another wicked witch. This time I'm putting my money where my mouth is and sharing my take on hags! Generally I wanted my hags to be ancient and strange, to know useful things, and to be having a fantastic time themselves. So this is what I came up with and am using in my games, which are set in a sort of mythical version of Scotland. So far the players have only met one, but she left such a strong impression that the quest to find another hag is one of the main threads driving the characters forward.

The Hags

These venerable wise women are a law unto themselves. They are not beholden to clans, monarchs or even one another. Even Kings listen when they speak. 

Each hag has achieved, through decades of questing, planning and ritual, a sublime and unique self-actualisation. Changed beyond the bounds of mortality, it is the bold, the foolhardy and the desperate who seek them in their distant sanctuaries. For the hags know how all that is will be lost, how all that was will be again, and how all that is to come may yet be changed.

Creating a Hag

Roll 2D10 on the tables below and combine the results to generate a name for this hag.  

D10	Element	Aspect
1	Blind	Bone
2	Bloom	Eye
3	Frost	Fire
4	Moss	Horn
5	Prism	Moon
6	Salt	Shroud
7	Shadow	Skin
8	Thistle	Stone
9	Thunder	Water
10	Wither	Wind

Next roll 3D10 on the tables below to answer the following questions about this hag:

• How has she chosen to express her physical form?
• What does she surround herself with?
• What is her manner towards visitors?

D10	Feature	Surroundings	Manner
1	Animated hair	Animals	Cheery
2	Astounding age	Carvings	Cryptic
3	Distributed form	Crystals	Direct
4	Round body	Insects	Excitable
5	Magnificent wings	Mushrooms	Flustered
6	Many eyes	Rags	Grim
7	Many limbs	Roots	Prickly
8	Menacing size	Skeletons	Relaxed
9	Terrible beauty	Whispers	Tender
10	Unashamed decoration	Wisps	Weary

Example

I roll a 5 and a 3 for the hag's name, conjuring forth The Prism Fire Hag.  Haha! She sounds pretty cool already! I'm immediately getting a mental picture of some crystalline glass or rock formations with multi-coloured fires dancing inside.

For her physical feature I get a 3 on the D10: She has a distributed form.  Now we're talking - this hag lives as a gestalt network of crystals that pulse and glow with magic fire from within when she speaks.

For her surroundings it's a 2, she has lots of carvings around her.  This fits well with her distributed, mineral-based form: I was already thinking she probably dwells in a cave. As to what the carvings are, this seems like the ideal way for her to answer the important questions the players surely have for her: The truth is revealed in a new carving! And the carvings that are here already tell the stories of the people who've sought the hag's guidance before, so this is also a good place to reveal some unexpected info that could be useful to the players when they visit. I'd probably leave this undefined until the last possible moment, so whatever is written here is relevant to the characters' current situation.

(I pause briefly to find a d10 because I realise I've actually been rolling a d12 so far...)

Finally a roll of 8 tells me this hag is relaxed when she has guests.  Amazing: She's super-chill.  You feel right at home in her warm, crystal caves.

So here's our hag:

The Prism Fire Hag

• Her essence is contained within an extensive crystal network that glitters in the depths of her subterranean home.
• The crystals glow and pulse with chromatic inner fire to the calming warmth of her voice.
• She bestows her wisdom in the form of carvings that form on the surrounding cave walls.

I'd be pretty excited for my players to meet this hag!

What's Next?

Ideally the description of a significant NPC should include something they want. What can the characters do for the hag in return for her council? I've left this out here as this is usually the sort of thing I'd base on the state of the game and the characters.  Here are some examples of things the hag might want though:

• An agreement sealed
• A debt collected
• An event witnessed
• A message delivered
• An ingredient found
  
• A prophecy fulfilled

Other than that I would like to expand these tables to be D20-based for even more unique hag variations, but I'm pleased with the results from the D10 tables.  And a hundred thousand hags seems like plenty for the time being!