Archive for March, 2008

Product Preview: April Fools!

As the first of our product previews, I have chosen to give a quick peek at our upcoming April Fools project The Sages Must Be Crazy: The Infamous Mischievous Renaldo Maliauctor.  This project will contain 12 mischievous spells as well as a slew of items for the practical joker in us all.  Below I am proud to present a sneak preview of this product in the form of one of these new spells as well as a handy little item.    

Spells of the Prankster

Cream Pie
Conjuration
Level: Brd 0 Sor/Wis 0
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 Standard Action
Range: Close (25 ft. + 5ft./2 levels)
Target: 1 Humanoid Creature
Effect: Creates a cream pie that flies at the target’s face
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw:  Reflex Negates
Spell Resistance: Yes  

Description: You fire a cream pie at your opponent’s face.  The Pie strikes the opponent in the face getting in his eyes and dazzling him for 1d4 rounds as he clears the pie from his eyes.  The opponent dodges the pie if he makes a successful reflex save. 

History:  Originally created by Renaldo Maliauctor as a defensive spell to give him enough time to escape the angry recipients of some of his more elaborate pranks.  He favors this spell heavily as it allows him to add insult to injury as he leaves the pranked victim covered in whipped cream.

Crafts of the Prank Master

Sneezing powder
Description:  A fine gray dust often sold contained in a small leather pouch stamped with the image of a nose. Each bag contains enough powder for three uses.

Use/Trick:  Sneezing powder is used by blowing it into the intended victim’s face (max range of 5 ft.).  The victim must then make a successful for save (DC=10-normal 15-Renaldo’s) or sneeze uncontrollably for one round.  This sneezing disrupts concentration making it impossible to cast spells or perform complex skills and it gives the victim a -2 to his attack for that round.

History:  This is another prank item that was not initially invented by Renaldo but later improved by his master craftsmanship.  He enjoyed using sneezing powder so much in his pranks that Renaldo set himself to finding the strongest herbs capable of eliciting the sneezing response.  The result is Renaldo’s Super Strong Sneezing Powder. Price: Normal Sneezing Powder  5 sp.,  Renaldo’s Super Strong Sneezing Powder 1 gp.

If these sample items piqued your interest, well, the news gets even better – the final product and all its goods can be yours for a scant $1.00.

~Chris Baldi “The Healer”~      
     ~March 29, 2008~

30 Mar 2008
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Current Projects: The Healer

This is a post that I hope will become semi-regular on this blog.  I hope that both I and my partners can use this as a place to keep you our audience informed on what we are working on and give you a sneak peak of what will be coming out soon.  I also hope it is a place where we can get your feedback on our current projects. 

With all that out of the way, let me start my first project update.  In addition to my regular job as a biochemist and graduate student, I also have a very full plate of projects for Healing Fireball.  First, I am continuing to work on more titles in our new Just Add Dice line of books.  This line is dedicated to books that present tables for randomly generating a single place, item or encounter. Currently, we have a Tavern Generator available but I am in the final stages of a group of ship cargo books designed to generate cargo in different times and I have a large number of ideas that are in preliminary planning stages. 

I am working on a new line of game aides called the Combat Cards as well.  These index size and half page size cards will present quick and easy reference to game rules that often cause games to slow down or stop as players have to look up the rules.

 I am also working on another guide book similar to our original Squire’s Guide to all Things Knightly or the Cabin Boy’s Pocket Prate Handbook to be sold at the New Jersey Renaissance Kingdom this year.  The book will be a guide to vampire hunting and will feature facts about the history of vampires and the tools used to kill them.  Finally, I have a small personal project I am working on about the use of holy symbols in game.  It is in its tentative stages and I will reveal more as I progress with the project.  

Well that’s it that is my current project load; I hope to post more of these in up coming weeks to update you on what I am working on and as always we would appreciate your feedback so feel free to drop us a line or post a comment.   

~Chris Baldi “The Healer”~     
      ~March 27, 2008~  

27 Mar 2008
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My Vision for the Healing Fireball Web Page.

When we started this page and, in fact, this company, we really did not expect the amount of response that we received.  We figured we would be lucky if we sold enough to support the site.  But the response has been wonderful.  We received our first check today from book sales and we here cannot thank you enough for receiving us as warmly as you have. 

So in light of this warm reception, our goals for the web have expanded from just maintaining a site for our product to also providing a place where the gaming community can come and interact with us and each other.   

This blog is the first step in this process.  We hope to use this as a place to let you behind the curtain and let you in to our thought processes and give you a glimpse at our lives and our games.  At this point, we will also use this as a place to get your feedback and comments. 

We plan in the future to expand this interaction even further to include a forum where you can come and talk directly.  We hope to create a place where the community can come and discuss gaming and the art of Role Playing.  Finally, as always, we would like to hear from you suggestions, ideas and (gulp) complaints – feel free to drop us a line.
~Chris Baldi “The Healer~     
     ~Mach 18, 20008~ 

19 Mar 2008
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My Vision for the Blog

As the blog has been up for a while but none of my cohorts seam to have time to post, and since at the moment I am the most active member of the Healing Fireball staff, it has fallen to me to take the lead on this new project.  So, I figured what better place to start than with a rundown of my overall vision for this part of the site.  To begin with, I would define the style of this blog as “freeform.”  By this, I mean at least I will not be attempting to set a regular weekly posting schedule.  I will post willy-nilly and when time allows.  But what I will do to keep some semblance of order is to post in one of two ways: spontaneous one time posts whose content will be random, and fixed subject posts that will reoccur over and over again.  As an example of this second type of post, I plan to regularly post an “At Our Table” section explaining the games we are playing.  I will encourage my other cohorts to also post in some of these fixed columns.   

The types of posts that will be posted here will run the gamut from funny stories to previews of our upcoming products to important moments in our lives or games.  As we have received a rather warm response from the gaming community we decided we should return the favor.  I also hope to expand the links on this blog to include the other parts of our site as well as some of our favorite places on the web, such as Ren Faire links and links to our favorite gaming companies.

Finally, I am aware that at the current time you cannot leave comments or interact with us.  I hope to alleviate this problem soon as one of my major goals is to interact with and get feed back from the community.  So, as soon as we can work the kinks out of the softwhere we hope to allow you to join our community and leave us a comment.
~Chris Baldi “The Healer~      
    ~Mach 18, 20008~ 

19 Mar 2008
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Welcome

Hail and welcome

This is the next step in the roll out of the Healing Fireball Publications web page experience.  This blog will hopefully function as a way for you, our reading public, to find out more about us and our current projects, and as a place to get a rare glimpse of the Healing Fireball gaming table.  It will also function as a place where we will put teasers for up coming products, answer some of your burning questions and get the community’s feed back.

So until then may all your game worlds be vibrant living places. 

~Chris Baldi “The Healer”~
      ~ March 10, 2008 ~

     

                                              

10 Mar 2008
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