Mafia: general discussions.

If polls are always published in newspapers, with the nickname of the player being polled indicated, then the penalty for being targeted by the Mafia has a chance to give the already polled players a 100% alibi. Of course, it may always be the case that the Mafia was going to kill the person conducting the poll anyway, or, for some other reason, failed to carry out the kill, but even so, the role of the killed player may become clear from the GM's description.

You could give a 50% chance of death. You could also leave the option to kill the pollster up to the player being polled; if they are a Rogue, they will kill and not answer (without indicating the nickname of the player being polled, of course). If they don't want to, they won't kill, they will complete the poll, and try to clear their name during the day. It's not really important how exactly this is implemented; I just want to have some kind of countermeasure against the annoying journalist. We barely managed to move away from newspapers with a full display of player stats, and this one is practically revealing specific roles with a snap of their fingers.

When we received the results of your poll from Tox, we spent a very long time deciding who to poll and with what specific questions, and in the end, when we sent it, the GM warned us that if the polled player did not have time to answer, the journalist's ability would be wasted.

That's what she deserves... But I wouldn't call this a fair in-game countermeasure. I myself, when I received a poll that night, only refreshed the game once before a long period of inactivity, and luckily the GM quickly sent me the poll in a private message, and I saw it. Otherwise, I might have simply missed it and only appeared for the next newspaper.