Among the many new electronic games announced at this year's E3 show in Los Angeles are two based on RPGs from White Wolf and an X-Box version of WotC's category-defining Magic: The Gathering CCG.  Atari plans to emphasize the combat elements of Magic in its Magic: The Gathering: Battlegrounds X-Box game, which takes full advantage of the platform's vaunted 3-D graphics to deliver eye-popping combat action combined with plenty of strategic planning that should be familiar to experienced Magic players.

 

Both Activision and Interplay are developing games based on White Wolf RPGs.  Activision's Vampire: The Masquerade -- Bloodlines combines the typical first person action of a videogame with role-playing elements.  Created by the Troika Games unit, which founded by RPG veterans, Vampire: The Masquerade -- Bloodlines allows players, who start out as fledgling members of one of seven different vampire clans, to increase their powers as they continue to play the game.

 

Interplay's electronic version of White Wolf's second largest franchise, Exalted, is farther away from production than Activision's Vampire game, but it sounds no less interesting.  Interplay has had considerable experience in developing RPGs for electronic games including another White Wolf RPG, Hunter: The Reckoning, which Interplay has adapted for Xbox and GameCube.