I love a big, bombastic action movie, from Big Trouble in Little China all the way through to John Wick, with a million variations on tone and theme. The thing that links these movies is a focus on the geography of the set piece and how our heroes interact with them. I've had some awesome experiences using FATE to simulate this, as the system encourages creativity and rewards the player for really making use of things present in the scene.

Unfortunately, the extremely dialogue-heavy nature of FATE makes it very slow in play-by-post. I assume there are some superior systems, but I'd love to hear what you'd recommend. I'm also increasingly open to a Free-Form game, so if you have advice in that regard, I'd be interested.
This message was last updated by a moderator, as it was the wrong forum, at 19:33, Fri 15 Dec 2023.

this is just my take.  I run semi-freeform games..there is a frame work, they are rules and the system is mine, as are the worlds.

 RP is heavy in those  games ( or should be). Those  who get the most enjoyment from those games  , are those who build  their Character  and  RP.

 so , there is alot of Dialogue among the players and NPCs,  that's what is supposed to happen.  You can take any movie, as a GM..Build your world  around that, and have interactions  with  PCs  and NPCs, with just a tad of dice  rolls  so  'those players' don't try to take advantage of god mods.

 Games like that are  more like  series , then one Movie, and that's what you should want. Unless you prefer 'one off' type games.

In reply to massivepony (msg # 1):

Wushu - a system designed to simulate action movies.  Rules light, and very flexible.

There are various RPG systems that are defined (by their own authors) as being very cinematic. Two that I am currently using are Savage Worlds and Advanced Fighting Fantasy.

Anything that you want to keep moving along at an exciting pace in PbP needs to be rules-light, or else you need to give a lot of ground for the Rule of Cool (which isn't a bad idea in the first place, because a lot of stuff in action movies is ridiculously implausible, but because it looks cool, we accept that it works...)

I think, regardless of the system, a lot of pacing comes down to the GM deciding which battles need to get gritty, detailed focus, and which ones can be resolved with a couple of dice rolls and some really good, imaginative posting.  To draw on one of the OP's own examples, in most of his fights, John Wick mows down the mooks he's up against with little or no thought...it's a foregone conclusion that he's going to take them all down, which makes the occasional one or two who actually don't immediately get shot in the face and require some extra effort stand out and adds some variety to the pacing...but you, as a viewer, still inherently KNOW that even though this is Sergei The Bodyguard and not just Man With Gun #25, John's gonna end him...it's just a question of how hard and how fast.

But every so often, the fight isn't all about a hail of bullets and bodies dropping...John squares off against someone who's a REAL threat, and it takes every bit of his will and skill to get through it and win.  We don't know, at that point, that he's going to win.  We're pretty sure...but this guy is REALLY GOOD, and seems to have an answer for everything John throws at him, and we start to think that there's just a chance that the writer has decided that John is ending in a blaze of glory and he might not walk out of this fight...

And those are the battles where you make them do all the dice checks and get really gritty about the results. When the PCs are dealing with the serfs, peons, and underlings, it should be pretty apparent, pretty quickly, that they're going to win, and it's up to them to decide how stylish to make it (and up to you, as GM, to recognize and encourage style with bonuses for their XP, especially if you want it to feel like an action movie).  But when they're up against a major bad guy, they've gotta think it through and fight it out (or figure out a really creative way to get around having to fight, but that's another issue altogether and one that not every player is interested in trying), and the extra dice rolls mean that many more chances to lose the upper hand or regain it.

I've seen people do it this with Shadowrun (multiple editions), Star Wars D6, AD&D thru D&D 3E, GURPS...there may be systems to do it, but with a GM who's willing to be flexible enough, ANY system can do it.

My suggestion would be to look into the Powered by the Apocalypse ("PtbA") line of games.

There actually is a decent PtbA game that emulates 80's/90's action movies called "Action Movie World." But there are a lot of PtbA games, and most of them focus on one genre or set of tropes, so you can choose whichever one is emulating the kind of game you want to play.

Their main benefit in PbP is that, when you roll for things, the results are primarily narrative units rather than mechanical ones. So you can have a series of mostly freeform posts where everyone just narrates the cool things they want to do and then, when it's time to roll, you're not rolling to hit (and then damage) one person with one weapon one time, it's more like you're rolling to for the whole fight, or one dramatic turn of the fight.

Example:

In Action Movie World, there's a move called, simply "Violence." And when you commit violence you roll (using a different stat for up close or ranged), and the possible results are:

Best result (strong success): Choose 3 of the following.

• Inflict extra harm
• The target drops something
• The target is knocked down
• You make a mess
• Something explodes
• You hit a whole bunch of people
• You can escape or close in

Second Best Result(weak or mixed success): choose 1 of the following:

• You inflict harm but you take some, too.
• You inflict harm but are driven back.
• You inflict harm but a friend is hurt badly in the fight

And if you "fail" then the GM tells you what happens next.

So games tend not to focus on minutiae. There isn't a lot of 'roll to strike' and 'roll to damage' and 'you lose 3 HP' and 'roll to climb a wall/pick a lock/charm a guard.' Failing rolls just invites additional complication.

There's another move called "Stunts" and it's used to do cool things. Pretty much any cool thing at all that an action movie protagonist would want to do.

In my experience, with a little of pre-game work to help define expectations, boundaries, limits, etc, this can all be done with a minimum of back and forth. You assumes that each character can do whatever it makes sense for that character to do, and only roll when there's real risk or drama on the line.

They're not perfect. And in my experience, their success depends a lot on the group being on the same page about what kind of game it is and what kind of stories you're telling together.

But with the right group, I've found they work with PbP very well.

This is exactly what I was looking for!!

If PbtA is not the answer in the end... Freeform/Universal might be (abbreviated as FU)
The base game is free and very short, you can imagine as a more lightweight Fate. There are some similar elements but less complex and a lot quicker

There is a slightly more complex line in it which uses a specialized engine, called Action Tales!
These AT! games are more specialized for a specific genre, there are 4 of them out now but they are coming quickly
- Neon City Overdrive: cyberpunk/scifi
- Hard City: noir
- Dungeon Crawlers: dungeon crawler fantasy
- Star Scoundrels: space opera
- Tomorrow City: (coming soon) dieselpunk