Michael Rinella
Bio
Author of three non-fiction books, numerous magazine articles, and the designer of over twenty published conflict simulation games.
Stories (3)
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The Prison
The alchemist stood in a silent, empty corridor. To her left and right the hallway vanished in terminal darkness. Directly in front stood a single door. There was something terrible on the other side. Though the thought of facing it filled her with dread, there was nowhere else to go. She tried to open the door but the handle would not move. Suddenly, inexplicably, she found herself on the other side. The walls of the room were black, sparkling with stars. Off in the far corner lay a box of gleaming, polished onyx, the entire surface elaborately carved, made up of human bodies in various agonized poses, mouths opened in mute horror. Somehow she recognized them, knew them: alchemists now forever bound to the surface of this box. She tried to stop herself but her body would not listen, acting of its own accord as if under some compulsion. Approaching the box her trembling hands reached out to open it. Her face reflected an emerald glow as she saw what was within. She screamed but there was no sound. Then she too was part of the box, frozen, twisted, and distorted.
By Michael Rinella5 years ago in Fiction
Circle of Ruins
The fugitive stood near the edge of the glacier, looking into the distance. Until now, she had managed to stay a step ahead of her pursuers but crossing this part of the Alps on foot had been a mistake. Some distance away a large chunk of glacial ice broke off with a sharp report, sounding almost like the boom of a canon shot. The sun glowed deep red on the western horizon, long rays of orange and gold stabbing through a layer of stratocumulus clouds. Overhead the blue of the sky was deepening into purple and behind her the purple darkening into black. No one had expected the nuclear exchange between East and West to result in decades of spectacular sunsets. Nor had anyone foreseen the cascade of genetic mutations creating powers such as hers in just a few generations. Reaching into her jacket, she pulled something out and glanced at it briefly in her palm before returning it.
By Michael Rinella5 years ago in Fiction
Game Design
I began playing board games in college during the early 1980s though at that time I was very much caught up in the Dungeons and Dragons fantasy role-playing game craze. I began designing conflict simulation games ("consim games") in the late 1980s. My preferences run in the 1861 to 1945 time period. I submitted a number of designs during the 1990s, none of which were ever published. I regularly exchanged letters (yes, letters, not emails) with one publisher and they gave me helpful pointers. Publishers liked my historical research but my designs were both too crude and too derivative to be publishable. If you think of designing as being like learning to play an instrument, I was still hitting too many wrong notes. But slowly I got better at it and in November 1999 I received my first offer to publish. The game wasn't magnificent but it was pretty good. My second was accepted for publication in 2002 and it was much like the first, another designer's system transferred to a different topic - cover tunes to extend the music analogy. After that things just began to "click". My third published game was my first truly “original” game. I put “original” in quote marks because few if any designs are one-hundred percent original. Over the next decade sold an increasing number of designs, was nominated for many awards, won a few.
By Michael Rinella5 years ago in Gamers
