White Wolf Publishing has announced that its third World of Darkness role-playing game, Mage: The Awakening, which was solicited at 320 pages, will actually come in at a whopping 400 pages -- an expansion that will cause a two-week delay in publication until August 29th.  The expanded Mage: The Awakening volume will still have the same cover price of $34.99 (as solicited), and White Wolf plans to have about 75 copies a day on sale at Gen Con Indy from August 18 to August 21.

Renowned fantasy artist William Michael Kaluta has provided all the interior artwork for the Mage: The Awakening rulebook.  Kaluta, who has worked in comics (Starstruck, The Shadow, The Books of Magic), movies (The Shadow), and television, provided over 100 illustrations for the Mage rulebook.

The primary reason for the expansion of the Mage rulebook was the desire of game developer Bill Bridges and his design team to refine Mage's vast freeform magic system.  The extra material explains the game's mechanics in great detail and will allow players to cast spells and effects within the richly detailed fictional world of Mage.