I don't really think I'm doing well at keeping my wincon in view at the moment. I'm angry at myself for falling for web's bullshit again, and irritated with the other players for... a few things, but mostly for effectively simultaneously treating me as freakishly good at mafia who couldn't possibly be fooled and is capable of any kind of deception, yet also staggeringly incompetent at mafia as the argument of the moment demands. I admit I certainly try to cultivate the former impression, but it's the inconsistency and goalpost-moving that bothers me. It seems like anything I can say in my own defense will be pointless because any objection can be dismissed as WIFOM, so I'm better off just giving my reads as best as I can, so that town will have them to go on the next Day. But I really, really hate it when
I'm the one who has to be lynched so that everyone else can move on.
Anyway. You asked me to explain the game.
I think the following: Me, Imp, EuchreJack, Fallacy, CrystalizedMire, and Elephant Parade all seem to have confirmed night actions. TricMagic's action isn't confirmed, but whoever has the magnifying glass now (Imp, I think?) can at least confirm that it exists and whether it's a free action. I don't remember ToonyMan's claim or NJW2000's claim, and I lack bandwidth to go back and check, but I'm not extremely worried about this because I wouldn't rate either of them as a top suspect. I figure Imp is probably right that there's double acting, and as I understand it, Elephant Parade has
confirmed double-acting with an action that can't be confirmed (I was counting the chat action as the confirmed one, since ToonyMan confirms being in a chat), but I'd be hard-pressed to suspect that he wouldn't just deny double-acting altogether if he were scum. I can imagine something like "adding people to chats is a free action and he knew EuchreJack had claimed that ability, so it would be suspicious if EuchreJack could do it for free but EP had to use a full action for it, so he came up with a double-acting claim", but I'm not seriously invested in that possibility at the moment, just raising it for the sake of completeness.
I DO think that, if Elephant Parade can double-act while adding people to chats, EuchreJack probably can too, so this really makes more of the suspicion go the other way, but I might justifiably be accused of prejudging that since I already suspect EuchreJack most.
I could also imagine CrystalizedMire's or Imp's item-stealing powers being combined with a double action, in theory, but I don't really see how this would make sense with the current gamestate, so I'm not especially worried about that either.
I say all this because I want to have my thoughts out there for the future, but I don't strongly believe that the game is mechanically solveable, so it's probably not amazingly useful. I do think that notquitethere would probably limit the amount of power a single player can put out in one go, but I don't really think any of the confirmed actions are completely implausible for a double-actor. Maybe not even mine, honestly, although mine feels a little more powerful compared to other claims since it can change abilities radically, but nobody wants to hear me try to clear myself, anyway.
I think the most likely setup based on what we already know is 2 mafia and 2 third parties,
maybe 3 thirds if two are neutral. 3 mafia and just 1 neutral third party is barely within the lines of what I'd believe, though.
I think the most likely partner for web is the player who was playing least townie all d1, and who web repeatedly covered for, assuring the people who suspected him (while buddying them the whole time) that he was at worst just a third party, without any actual arguments for this. Yes, I can imagine other interpretations and I can hardly blame people for finding me scummy here, but it seems like it... probably is just that simple.
Anyway, I also just noticed/remembered that Imp said the thing about me possibly "scrubbing evidence" a few posts ago. While I know this is WIFOM, I want to state that I can't do that. Even if I removed a sphere from players who have it going forward, replacing it with new spheres, I am fairly certain that wouldn't change the results of spherecopping on actions that already happened and weren't affected, and it
probably, based on how the ability is written, won't even affect what spheres that player shows up as having chosen, just the spheres the actual abilities have.
Lastly,
I'm utterly baffled by how you took "Quarque was going after web" and switched it around to "Max thought web was scumreading Qua". Those are logical converses. Please reread.
Very nice answer, thank you.
If you were being sarcastic, sorry, I didn't mean for that to come out caustic.