Favorite RPG Systems for Play-by-Post Adventures?

What are your favorite RPG systems for play-by-post? I'm always curious to discover new systems, and it seems like I stumble upon a new one every week. Have you found that some work better than others?

Well, you're already aware of Tales from the Loop (and I assume Things from the Flood) so that's some of my favorites taken care of.

I think Savage Worlds is a system that works pretty well in pbp as well.

I agree that Savage Worlds is pretty good for PBP. Into the Odd and the Tinys too. AGE isn't bad either but the rule books are badly organized which is offputting.

5E and TinyD6 RPG systems worked well. I imagine EZD6 would work well too. The more simple the RPG system the better off you will probably be.

I ran SWADE on VTT over a year and it was fun. I tried it for PBP for a one shot to try out the system in PBP format. IMO Yikes! It was an absolute painful slog of a RPG system to run in PBP with the initiative system, bennies for rerolling almost everything made combat feel like it took forever.

I had the opposite experience with SWADE. The combats were fairly short & furious, with little back & forth, but the posting rate was pretty high since the game was only ran on Fridays, Saturdays & Sundays with some other experienced players. Large combatant groups or slow posting players might give a different experience...

I think certain systems lend themselves towards streamlined / PbP-friendly play, but even fairly crunchy systems can work really well if the whole group is checking in and posting regularly -- and if you're able to 'bundle' certain things, or have the GM make certain rolls for people, to reduce the transactions, the back-and-forth required between GM and players to move the action forward.

Strict initiative systems -- like SWADE has -- can be especially painful. But if the GM is the one who pulls cards for all the PCs and establishes the overall order, that's must faster than everyone literally pulling their own card just to establish the order -- every round. Some GMs will also just let PCs post all at once, then they'll work to lace it all together. That can work really well in lighter games, but many games with strict init systems have integrated that into the combat / action, and something is lost if you don't play it RAW. In those game, characters act in a strict order for a reason and it can be janky when free-form turn order overruns or t-bones class abilities, help actions that are supposed to be tightly timed, etc.

Anyway. For PbP, I tend to avoid systems with complex metacurrency economies and negotiation before and after rolls these days, and gravitate towards OSR systems (TBH, Borg games, ItO, WBFMAG, Knave, Warlock!, Mothership), YZE games, lightweight PbtA games, and minimalist stuff like Tiny D6, EZD6, Lasers and Feelings, and Tricube Tales. Having said that, with the right group you can make any system work -- Fate, SWADE, Twilight 2000, 2d20, etc.

Well SWADE as already said by many is a great game system, solid and versatile, I also like breathless lately, very few rules and adapts well to every need, and then introduces nice mechanics.

Tiny * games, 2400/24XX games, Maze Rats. Anything that has FEWER ROLLS works better. 2400 is probably the easiest for me to run play-by-post.

I 100% agree with this sentiment. I'll handwave things a lot or pretend like they don't require rolls so I don't have to bog things down with too many rolls.

In that respect, I find any system can work well as long as you're willing to homebrew rules to remove the reliance on dice. For example, passive skill checks, or taking 10, suddenly become much more interesting for PbP games because the characters can still competently get stuff done, but not force a player to roll for it.

My go-to RPG systems for PbP are 2400/24XX games and QuestWorlds (previously known as HeroQuest, a Robin Laws d20 system that features 'scene based resolution', so one set of rolls resolves an entire conflict). The Lasers and Feelings family of 1-page games also would work well I would think.

Old-school D&D retroclones and Traveller are also pretty good systems for PbP though combat takes longer. With such games, it's helpful to have some flexibility in how you handle initiative or to do group initiative (one side goes, then the other side goes, but individual turn order in a group doesn't matter).

Some of my longest games (i.e. years long play) have been done using fairly crunchy systems.

FFG's Star Wars RPG series (Edge of the Empire, etc), and it's sister system Genesys, D&D5E.

I think the important thing is, if you're going to use a system that has multiple rolls to resolve a single action, OR a rules-lite system that requires a conversation to resolve an action - which make no mistake is just as difficult if not more (like a PbtA or BitD or Burning Wheel), you really need to have players that are experienced with that system so that they can anticipate the rolls and our questions that need to be asked/answered, and most importantly complete them or ask/answer them on their own in advance without having to be prompted.

It's back and forths, over small details or things that can and should have been addressed in an anticipated manner, that kills momentu, from a gameplay perspective.

And the same thing can kill momentum from a narrative perspective as well, even using systems with minimal rolls and conversation. If, as GM or player, you're having to prompt your players or GM to get every minimal bit of information out narrative from them that is needed to be informed about what's going on and to move things forward? It's gonna drag on and ppl will lose interest.

So... I would say, it's less about system, and more about good players and GMing.

Though I have encountered some systems that just never seem to work for long... Shadowrun, Burning Wheel. Though again even in those instances there are player/IRL issues that could be pointed to that contributed to each games failure as well.