Lover

Lover Alias: Siblings Alignment: Town Role type: Linked Negative Utility Choice: none Status: Known

Lover Alias: none Alignment: Mafia Role type: Linked Negative Utility Choice: none Status: Known

Lovers are players who are linked to each other. If one Lover dies, the Lover(s) linked to it dies simultaneously.

Lovers have been known to be of any alignment. It is not at all implausible to have Lovers in Town-scum pairs.

Lovers are frequently used for balance purposes in Open Setups, and are featured in Polygamist.

Standard version

If one Lover dies, the other Lovers linked to that Lover immediately and unavoidably die of heartbreak.

Variations

Lovers can have a number of unannounced additions to the above definition, such as the ability to talk to each other or confirmation of each others' alignment.

Sibling

Sibling is sometimes used to refer to Lovers who are guaranteed to be of the same alignment. Lovers are to Siblings what Neighbors are to Masons.

Tragic Lovers

Tragic Lovers are a rather annoying variant. One can be town aligned. The other can be scum aligned. Each lover can have two win conditions. It can win with its own alignment as its lover loses. Or they can win together, acting as their own faction wiping out all other scum and town players. One must be careful how they wipe out the other players. Wiping out all the town first means the mafia will win with the town lover losing. Wiping out all the scum first is suggested, but should the town lover just want the win immediately, they can rat the scum lover out. Proper play is for neither lover to screw the other over. They should pursue winning together. To encourage proper play, moderators often tell the pair they must win together and remove their abilities to win separately. When the tragic lovers win together, all other players lose.

"O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?"

"Sorry I was busy killing the rest of your family. What's up?"

Use & Balance

Lovers are primarily used to either force players to work together or to hasten a powerful role's death. For instance, a scumgroup in a small game may contain Lovers in order to prevent them from bussing each other, or a Cop may be a Lover to another player in order to increase the chance of them dying early enough that they cannot break the game.

A rough guess is that a Lover is worth two-thirds as much as an ordinary player.

However, the town-aligned member of a town/scum lover pair is effectively immune to being nightkilled by the relevant scum faction in the early game, and the scum may be unwilling to eliminate that townie for the same reason. This makes the modifier very powerful in the hands of a skilled player.

Sample Role PMs

The standardized Role PM for "Lover" describes the passive ability as follows:

• As an unmodified passive ability: You are Lovers with name. If any of you are to exit the game, the other will exit the game too. (edit)

• As a passive ability with a modifier: You are Lovers with name the nth time OR on day n. the nth time you would exit the game OR If any of you are to exit the game on day n, the other will exit the game too. (edit)

Example (unmodified)

Welcome to game! You are a Town Lover.

You are Lovers with name. If any of you are to exit the game, the other will exit the game too.

You have no active abilities.

You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

Confirm by replying to this PM with a summary of your role.

Example (modified)

Welcome to game! You are a Town Odd Night Lover.

You are Lovers with name during odd-numbered Nights. If any of you are to exit the game during odd-numbered Nights, the other will exit the game too.

You have no active abilities.

You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

Confirm by replying to this PM with a summary of your role.

Town Lover

Mafia Lover