This is broken in many ways.  In addition, I think it’s too likely for a coup to succeed.  Plus, this gives the general public too little control over who is Librarian.  Plus, I’m the current Librarian and have a selfish interest in seeing it fail, even though I can stop others from couping me by repeatedly couping myself.

I think Clucky intended “may not attempt”, but it’s not too broken.  Repeatedly couping yourself would risk loss.

Loss does not prevent me either from doing my duties as a Librarian or from couping myself in the future.

Speaking of which, anyone already Lost can attempt a coup at no risk!

Oh, that I hadn’t seen.

It’s strange how lost students can be the librarian, so that we have an empty shell of a body, a ghost, or an exile taking care of our books… You never know where they’ve been.

I guess you are right. I for some reason thought being lost was a good deal worse than it actually is. I guess this is really unfixable as well. Unless someone else has an idea of how to make the concept work.

Require potential coupers to be elected.

then what is the point in staging a coup? The point of a coup is that you do not need to be elected. You just seize power.

I think a good fix would be to extend the law of loss: lost students can’t be librarian or stage a coup.  While we’re at it, we should also update it by stopping lost people from trying to discover planets and from owning tomes (all copies they possess when they become lost are returned to the library).  Oh, and we should remove the bizarre word “go” from the rule.  Generally, when people propose a new power for students, they should consider including an extension to the loss rule in the proposal.

I also think that 80% is too high of a success rate.  50% would be more reasonable (think of it as a soul duel, with my soul against your books)