I did consider having special wagons be declared from the start, rather than at E-0. Flavor-wise that does make a lot of sense. Mechanically, I liked the idea of converting to a special wagon at E-0 more, because in my mind it provided more opportunities for lying and fake outs. But I hadn't consider what you said about scum bussing, that is interesting.
Special wagons needing 1/2 more votes could be a problem later in the game since it's a much higher percentage of the population, but 1) I do kind of like the idea thematically that Low Chaos is harder to achieve the longer the game goes on, and 2) a situation like ELo, where majority + 1 is the entire population, is the end of the game anyway so it's unlikely anyone would even care about the special wagons anymore.
imaginality wrote:You might also want a rule that once a special wagon has been declared on a player, you can't have a normal wagon start on them later. That would avoid the scenario where a wagon gets to E, doesn't get enough support for the extra votes, and then everyone unvotes just so they can vote again as a normal wagon. While still allowing normal rvs wagons to later be converted to special ones.
Not sure I like the idea that a slot can just become permanently unkillable via normal majority voting. Even if that restriction wears off, like after a day, seems like too much potential for abuse. Imagine a single townie special voting everyone in the game in rapid succession. Now the night can't have High Chaos without some other special ability happening, which is mainly detrimental to scum and trivially easy to make happen.
Maybe the restriction only comes into play when the wagon gets to some E-# value? It would essentially be a way for town to decide to give a slot the Loved modifier, but it also negatively impacts the Chaos system. Plus there'd have to be some special rule for ELo and MeLo to prevent the player from being unkillable. Maybe special wagons just aren't allowed if the game gets that far. Like I said before, it's end game anyway, so no one will care what Chaos will be at the following phase.
I think this does solve the problem of a special vote being too annoying/boring, but it needs some tweaking. Worth thinking about, at any rate.