Newstand Press
2015
Complexity: 2
Wizard Cops is a very short game about cops that police wizards, and may also be wizards. It is basically an example of a game, and I’m just going to quote its intention. “ It's only a paragraph long, but it is used as an example how a very small number of rules can create very specific conflicts with controlled resolutions.”
So that’s what we’re working with here, and let’s see if this game can break the curse of games titled Wizard _ _ _ _.
Character Creation: 2/5
Characters are incredibly loosely defined, each starting with 10 Gold, 3 Reputation, and 1 Life—the usual number. Characters also get three player-defined skills and the option of spending 3 gold to buy an item, which is absolutely not worth it.
Overall if very meh. Like it does the job, but throwing in a few user-defined stats always feels like a lazy patch to throw on a non-custom character system.
Mechanics: 2/5
Whenever characters come into conflict they wager a number of “something”—gold reputation or life—and add 1d4. Whoever’s wager is higher wins, and the loser loses whatever they wagered. If one of their skills is relevant, their wager is doubled, and they can use an item once to add an extra d4, and given that an item costs 3 gold they are, as I said, absolutely not worth it. Unfortunately the rules are somewhat unclear as to if “somethings” need be wagered against the same “something,” Also, it states that Life is worth more than Reputation, which is worth more than Gold, but never how/if that is actually relevant to the game mechanics.
It’s a very simple mechanic—albeit one I’m not personally fond of—but my biggest issue is the things which I assume were added to the original single paragraph, the skills, items and such, which really seem to do little but complicate the original simple rules.
Writing and Presentation: 1/5
So this game was written during a panel and is a single paragraph, with some additional rules added on a second page. Of course it is very much just a here’s the thing we did during the panel for those who want to see it. But regardless of the intent or circumstances of its creation, it is still overly minimally written and unimpressively presented.
Final Remarks
Is Wizard Cops a good game? No. Is it supposed to be? Also no, it’s an example of an extremely short but functional game. And is it that thing? Yes. Which does put it a bit ahead of Wizard Time… which I’m still not entirely sure what was supposed to be.
Base Points: 6
Character Creation: 2/5, Mechanics: 2/5, Presentation: 2/5
Adjustments: −1
Setting: N/A, Writing: −1, Content: N/A
Overall Score: 33% (5/15 Points)
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