Racism, Walmart, religious extremism and... necromancy(!?) all come to a head in RPGMaker classic, Master of the Wind!

[Jeanne d'Bright]

Sometime in 2005, the beloved 'The Way' series was wrapping up.
Sometime in 2005, 'Laxius Power 3: The Final Terror' burst into the RPGMaker community's collective awareness and nicked a whole load of awards from The Way (Or so certain people believed. Looking at you Emperor Jeramyu). It was quickly shunned as an embarrassment despite its tremendous victory, in the hopes everyone would forget it and its creator existed someday.

I already told The Way's story, and I don't feel ready to do the Laxius Power story just yet...

But while this was happening, another series that would earn its place as a beloved, Misao Game of The Year Award winning series (it won twice even, like The Way) was beginning. November 2005, 'Arc I' of this new series came out.

It was called Master of the Wind.

It deserved those awards, completely.


https://youtu.be/Y3i74uxxvjM
(Master of the Wind does its best to use every variation of the main Bubba Ho-Tep theme but fails. Still, six of them isn't too bad!)


How to describe this game in a way that sounds appealing? A friend of mine that has also played the series suggested 'The Witcher' except you play as two guys cosplaying as superheroes. Also they fight capitalism, and lots of cheesy rock music is used for the score.
Fantasy superheroes confront criminals, and then capitalists and human supremacists is probably just about right. Also there's a necromancy guild filled with completely trustworthy and ethical necromancers!

Our two primary heroes are Cade and 'Bones'.
Cade's a Wind Mage and uses that magic as a stand-in for superpowers under the guise of Shroud.
'Bones' is a skeleton. The undead kind, not some strange race or fantasy robots. His alter ego is Stoic whose superpower is wearing a cape and bandana while being a skeleton.

This is a long series, longer than The Way for sure. Like The Way it's a story focused game, but unlike The Way it doesn't fuck its gameplay up pretty badly by virtue of being pretty standard stuff. The plot is a lot more straight forward than The Way and it's even completely finished and not just 'sort of finished?'

The game has some genuinely heartbreaking moments in it, but also plenty of humor. One warning though, the story does take a bit to really get going.



ARC I: It Begins With Andau.
ARC I: Part 2: World Building OR The Game Wears Its Heart On Its Sleeve.
ARC I: Part 3: War Heroes.
ARC I: Part 4: Andau.
ARC I: Part 5: Touten and Tiger.
ARC I Finale: Should we call you both Stoic and Shroud or Shroud and Stoic?
Clean Slate Part 1: Seth and the Council.



ARC II: Sellout.
ARC II: Part 2: Never Argue Politics and Ideology With Your Girlfriends Friend.
ARC II: Part 3: Beach Combers.
ARC II: Part 4: Dican.
ARC II: Part 5: Meet the Villains.
Clean Slate Part 2: The History Lesson Within A History Lesson.
ARC II: Part 6: Setup for the Party.
ARC II: Part 7: Finley Gets Serious.
ARC II: Part 8: Daydream's Debut and Rana's Question.
Clean Slate Part 3: Lysander's Abuse of Women.
ARC II: Part 9: Setup For The Raid.
ARC II: Part 10: Behind The Music.
ARC II: Part 11: Face the Music. (I mean come on, what else could I title this?)
ARC II Finale: Never Underestimate Birds Or Skeletons.
Clean Slate Part 4: The Big Fortress on Dwarven Land, the Elven Lands and the General of Light.



ARC III: Finley Donner Must Die.
ARC III: Part 2: The Birth of Shroud.
ARC III: Part 3: Pearlton.
ARC III: Part 4: My Lodite To Burn. (This 'joke/pun' doesn't even work or make sense on any level.)
ARC III: Part 5: Time for School.
ARC III: Part 6: More of a rant, really.
ARC III: Part 7: The Baron's Big Debut!
ARC III: Part 8: Takes Two Asses.
Clean Slate Part 5: The Last Nightmare.
ARC III: Part 9: The Spell With The Ominous Name.
ARC III: Part 10: Preparing For A Freezing Vacation!
ARC III: Part 11: Terrible News!
ARC III: Part 12: Cade and Auburn.
ARC III Finale: A Song of Ice And Fire And Death.
Clean Slate Part 6: Rebel Scum.



ARC IV: A Helpful Messenger.
ARC IV: Part 2: Ruins of Rellenia.
Clean Slate Part 7: The Gathering.
ARC IV: Part 3: The Necromancer.
ARC IV: Part 4: House by the Sea.
ARC IV: Part 5: And Now For Something Completely Different.
ARC IV: Part 6: Force of Un-nature.
ARC IV Finale: The Die Are Cast.



ARC V: Re-Introduction.
ARC V Part 2: Everyone's Got Their Own Plans.
ARC V Part 3: The First Flashback.
ARC V Part 4: Over and Under.
ARC V Part 5: Affirmative Knighthood.
ARC V Part 6: Volrath Blacksteele, The Dark Knight.
ARC V Part 7: Volrath's Castle
ARC V: Part 8: Freaking Skeletons, Man.
ARC V: Part 9: The Forrest Gump of Solest.
ARC V: Part 10: The Sixth Age.
ARC V Finale: The Upset.



ARC VI: Villains Ascendant.
ARC VI Part 2: Into Trouble.
ARC VI Part 3: And Into The Tower.
ARC VI Part 4: And into the Sun and the Wind both.
ARC VI Finale: Heroes Ascendant.



ARC VII: The Great Awakening.
SUPPLEMENTARY UPDATE: The Guardia Hall of History.
ARC VII Part 2: The Great Aftermath.
ARC VII Part 3: A Start.
Clean Slate Finale: A New Solest Struggles To Be Born.
ARC VII Part 4: The Midnight Guild.
ARC VII Part 5: Auburn.
ARC VII Finale: Battle for Rellenia.
Master of The Wind: Bonus Scenes.

[Jeanne d'Bright]

ARC VII Part 2: The Great Aftermath.

In which the LP finally makes its return (for the third time.)

[clearcardinal]

The scene between Finley and Bones really was sweet. This game is so engaging.

[Jeanne d'Bright]

Just noticed that I accidentally used Solik's old faceset rather than his newer one for some lines. Oops. Fixed now.

[Jeanne d'Bright]

So, I'm back -again-. Yes, I was gone again because not last Friday, but the one before that, the LP curse struck down my pc for the second time in the space of the month. Hard to actually replace a couple parts this time, but its worked out fine. Anyway, I hope to get a new update up in the next few days.

[Jeanne d'Bright]

ARC VII Part 3: A Start.

In which we beat up some students.

[Gloomy Rube]

How did I miss this LP until now? I love RPG maker games and I loved your "The Way" LP and somehow completely missed that you were doing this one. Now I have so much to catch up on!

[Jeanne d'Bright]

Well, (hopefully) you're in for a treat. Master of the Wind is much more consistently good (and a more standard jrpg) than The Way, to the point I'd even recommend someone play it if they have the time and the inclination. I couldn't really say that about The Way despite my love of it.

But, uh don't get used to quality writing... This LP isn't too far off from being done now and the next one will probably be me getting started on tackling the currently 8 game long Laxius saga (after ten years of nothing, he finally announced the next trilogy that will finally, I hope, after 20 years finally wrap up the series overarching plot line of 'a demonic invasion will happen in two or three years from now'.)

If you remember from The Way LP I talked about I love the Laxius saga for the same reasons I loved playing Pokemon Reborn. Stupid, insane garbage that manages to be offensive at times, is unfunny when it's trying to be funny, hilariously insane when it isn't and Laxius has some hilarious engrish on top of all that to boot. And yet they're... I wouldn't say influential, but a major part of early western RPGMaker history, as much as people don't like to talk about it.

My personal feelings on it are quite contradictory too.


Oh, and something I was initially saving as a surprise for like, very late in that upcoming thread but will just reveal now to try build a little hype for that thread is that the Laxius dev is actually a very prolific RPGMaker dev -and- publishes other developers under the brand Aldorlea games on Steam.

I'll post a list of the games he's developed personally. Some of them seem to get advertised on Steam store page quite often. For me, anyway, particularly the Millennium series which I think is one of his better and better rated works.

I started developing games in April 2001 and took a two-years break in 2006-2007 after the release of Lax Team, to the Rescue.

2001
Laxius Power ~ Random Story October 2001 (re-released May 2002)

2003
Laxius Power II ~ Destinies April 2003

2004
Laxius Power III ~ The Final Terror December (X-mas) 2004

2005
Blades of Heaven April (?) 2005
Lax Team, to the Rescue! December 2005

2008
Laxius Force - Heroes Never Die August 18, 2008

2009
3 Stars of Destiny February 23, 2009
Laxius Party May 2009
Laxius Force II - The Queen of Adretana August 19, 2009
Millennium: A New Hope September 21, 2009
Asguaard November 13, 2009
Millennium 2: Take Me Higher December 20, 2009

2010
Dreamscape March 19, 2010
Ella's Hope (Lead: Eridani) April 29, 2010
Laxius Force III - The Last Stand August 29, 2010
Millennium 3: Cry Wolf October 31, 2010

2011
Sylia (Lead: Ensorcelled) May 8, 2011
Millennium 4: Beyond Sunset August 6, 2011

2012
The Book of Legends February 18, 2012
Moonchild August 26, 2012
Opaline - 2 Fates 1 Love (Lead: Warfare) November 20, 2012

2013
Millennium 5: The Battle of the Millennium July 21, 2013
Onyx (Lead: Valkyria) October 31, 2013

2014
Undefeated January 4, 2014
Girlfriend Rescue August 30, 2014
The Tale of a Common Man October 17, 2014

2015
Elendia Ceus February 20, 2015
A Timely Intervention August 20, 2015
The King's Heroes November 14, 2015

2016
YOU... and who else? May 14, 2016
Witch Hunt October 16, 2016

2017
Little Hearts August 3, 2017

2018
Shadows & Lies April 6, 2018
Fortress of Hell October 31, 2018

2019
Inferno August 15, 2019
A Plunge into Darkness October 28, 2019

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

That amounts to 36 games released so far, including:
8 games of the Laxius saga (including the spin-off Fortress of Hell)
5 games of the Millennium saga
4 co-productions with other developers

The Laxius saga started in 2001 and is one of the longest-running independent sagas. The third trilogy is planned to be released in the future.
Random, Sarah, Luciana, Coryool, Wendala and the others will all have 10 years in October 2011.
The Millennium saga started in 2009 and saw its conclusion in 2013, a bit less than 4 years after it started.

If anyone's ever played the Millennium games, they're the most baffling thing in his entire catalog to me. They're like.... very normal games. And he was developing the Laxius Force trilogy at the same time? Which is completely insane to me. Laxius Force is insanely fucked up and stupid, more so than Laxius Power even and probably not on Steam for that very reason. (The only Laxius games on Steam are 3 Stars of Destiny, which is a boring prequel, and Fortress of Hell which is a weird spin off.)

Millenium and Laxius Force being developed by him concurrently makes me wonder if there's not some kind of 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' thing going on with him.

[Aithon]

Oh dang, I used to play The Way but I think I gave up before the end, and at that point the plot's already gotten really weird. I'm going to have to catch up on that! And this one apparently being a better series is a pretty strong recommendation.

[Jeanne d'Bright]

Oh dang, I used to play The Way but I think I gave up before the end, and at that point the plot's already gotten really weird. I'm going to have to catch up on that! And this one apparently being a better series is a pretty strong recommendation.

Ah, thanks for reminding me that I should change the link in the OP to be the LParchive page now.

[Jeanne d'Bright]

Clean Slate Finale: A New Solest Struggles To Be Born.

In which we finally revisit prehistoric times.

[Jeanne d'Bright]

ARC VII Part 4: The Midnight Guild.

In which resolving a side plot took way longer than I expected so this update is super long and also we finally deal with the necromancers.

[Jeanne d'Bright]

ARC VII Part 5: Auburn.

In which we spend most of this update on one very lengthy sequence about Auburn's backstory, but also we start to prepare for the final battles.

[Jeanne d'Bright]

Volrath has already sent me a comment about the first video in the latest update.

A couple notes about the scene with Finley’s sister. The only reason she has purple hair is that for the life of me I could not find a suitable green haired sprite with a face to match. I couldn’t ask Shad (the artist) to do it when he was up to his neck in battlers so I came up with this bullshit about her dying her hair. Also for whatever reason the wrong music played during the shocking line about money not being the most important thing. It was originally a scarier sounding jingle to illustrate her sheer terror.

[clearcardinal]

^ That's really cool info!

Evander Till deciding to deliberately oprhan Auburn by "looking after her from afar" rather than reuniting with his only remaining family member so they could offer each other support and comfort after an awful tragedy is Laguna Loire levels of shitty parenting, lol

[Jeanne d'Bright]

ARC VII Finale: Battle for Rellenia.

In which the game (but not the LP) comes to the end of the line.

[Jeanne d'Bright]

Master of The Wind: Bonus Scenes.

In which we get some long delayed bonus scenes.