When you think of Wizards of the Coast, you usually don’t think of video games (outside of the licensed Dungeons & Dragons games). Still, they had a couple of cool things to show off at PAX. Dungeons & Dragons storytellers are getting two awesome character management tools from D&D Insider, and a new Xbox Live Arcade Magic: The Gathering game was shown for the first time.

We got to sit down with both at the show, read on for more!

Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers

Long-time Magic players are familiar with the Planeswalkers, mages so powerful that they can manipulate whole worlds with a mere thought. The new XBLA game will allow you to take on the role of one of these wizards as you duel for supremacy. As you might expect, these duels are fought through the Magic card game.

Duels is not an exact translation of the card game. Think of it instead as more of an arcade version. Wizards wants Duels to be accessible to new players, a great way to get into the game without the intimidation of a real-life tournament. To ease new players into the game, the developers are focused on bringing the core excitement of the card game into the Live Arcade version without some of the extra micromanagement. When you start out, you only have one “signature” deck. Winning duels will unlock other Planeswalkers and other decks to use. Don’t expect much customization beyond that. You won’t be able to make your own decks or make major changes to the existing decks. Planeswalkers is all about sitting down and jumping right into a game of Magic, not about spending your entire evening tweaking a play strategy.

There are two single-player modes, a tournament where you play the card game against a CPU player and a puzzle mode. In the puzzle mode, you need to research your decks and find efficient ways to win. For example, you might be asked to defeat a foe within a certain number of turns while only using a certain card type. The multiplayer mode allows human players to take each other on or team up to duel other players.

I haven’t played Magic in years, but I was still able to jump right in without much trouble. A diagram in one corner of the screen tells you what buttons you can press and what they do. If you need to read the text on a card, you can press the right trigger to zoom in. A timing gauge appears when any player takes an action, allowing the other players a chance to respond. A timeline at the top of the screen alerts you to what phase of your turn that you are currently in. For a game that is still pretty far off, the interface is really slick. Previous Magic games have been disappointing in the AI department, but I was pleasantly surprised during the duel that I played. Considering that it got be down to one life point before I defeated it, it did pretty well.

I’ll need to play more before I can make any sort of final judgment, but Duels of the Planeswalkers seems like a great way for new players to get into the world of Magic. However, with the lack of customization, I’m not sure how long it will keep experienced players interested. Duels of the Planeswalkers will hit the 360 some time in 2009, but we have no word yet on exact date or price.

Dungeons & Dragons Insider

D&D Insider is a new subscription service for Dungeon Masters, those who run their own D&D chronicles. For a few bucks a month, Wizards will provide a suite of tools to make running your game a bit easier. The two Insider utilities on hand at PAX were the Character Generator and Character Visualizer.

The function of both should be fairly obvious from the name, but they are actually pretty neat little tools. The Character Generator allows you to build a character from the ground up and generate their character sheet. Players can use it to completely manage their stats and fill in every minor detail. Alternatively, you could just give it a level and some basic into, then hit a button to randomly populate the sheet. As someone who has had to create a bunch of random adversaries for a game, I can really appreciate the value of a program that can create NPCs for you. The Character Visualizer is an extension of the creator that lets you build a 3D model of a character. You give it a character sheet and select their equipped items, and it determines that character’s appearance. Customization fanatics will really get into tweaking their character’s appearance, but this tool is a bit lighter on actual utility.

Both tools will launch on the service in a few months, with a D&D “game table” coming out later on. These two tools will be the first utilities to require a paid subscription, with the exact rate still undecided. No date has been announced, but both tools looked like they were nearly ready to be launched.