There is much to speak of on the subject of Taizen. After all, I consider him to be the most influential character in my personal roster. He is hardly the first character to bear the name, “Kurokawa Taizen”, but it fits him more aptly than his predecessor. That is not to say that I abandoned the former “Taizen” but in the years since, that earlier character eventually came into his own; in accordance with my own accumulating experiences. But that is a tale for another time.
Taizen was created for the first Dungeons and Dragons campaign (3.5e) that I was invited to by a few friends. Up until this point, I frequented roleplaying forums and played an overwhelming number of roleplaying videogames but somehow never played DnD or any similar tabletop game. Inspired by Touhou Project’s Morichika Rinnosuke, an irrelevant character in the overall scheme of that setting, I decided to start with a character who did not completely fit the traditional roles of fighter, wizard, rogue, or cleric.
However, I did understand that playing an actual merchant was a foolhardy undertaking; he would not survive well in a world of swords and sorcery. I settled on a ninja, it was a class like a rogue but carried its own utilities where stealth and subtlety were needed. It has to be emphasized that I was not intending on playing ninja who was merely a merchant as a cover. I was playing a merchant who was competent in his trade first and combat second, all while not drawing too much attention to himself. The idea delighted my dungeon master to no end and he expressed his regrets that my intentions with the character were not kept a secret between the two of us. With background and equipment in hand, Taizen was ready for whatever laid ahead in the campaign.
Although, there was some things that neither the character nor the player can prepare for. The ranger threatening to burn down the boat with everyone on board is one of those things. He was persuaded not to and so my first DnD campaign did not end in a total party kill at sea in the first session. Taizen was well-received by all involved. He was well-mannered, polite, and not prone to haste which carried him far among the townsfolk and local guards. While others frequented the tavern for drink and revelry, he could be seen bartering among other merchants. Taizen strove not to be a liability when combat was initiated though he took pains to hide more astonishing feats from direct view, often with the body of the monster he was contesting with. The results of his successes were not so easily hidden but they were eventually dismissed as necessary skills he picked up in his solo wanderings throughout the land. A few unfortunate failures and stumbles along the way only reinforced his story that regardless of anything, he was just a merchant.
While this campaign never completely resolved, I like to imagine that it ended in success as it was a first for many involved and the DM was very lenient with that in mind. There was only one causality before we stopped and that was entirely self-inflicted on that character’s part. However, Taizen as a character would have greater implications than I would have imagined at the time. He felt like a character that was truly possessed of an agency that was his own. He was not a self-insert or a “better” me, he was not riddled with so many bells and whistles as to make him “special” and “unique”, and he was not a power fantasy. Kurokawa Taizen was Kurokawa Taizen; independent. I did not so much play him within the context of the game as observe him while he carried on with his business.
It may be odd as a creator but I owe a debt of gratitude to Taizen; one he has no intention upon collecting. It is through him that I would come to know many other characters, all individuals of their own, and it is through the roads he traveled that I was also exposed to a myriad of novel places. From the humble beginnings of my first DnD game to the present where I world-build my own setting, Taizen’s influence is truly pervasive and persistent. It may have not been his exact plan but it seems to be what he always intended.
