I recently started up a PbP game on the forums here, and was curious about how other PbP GMs handle combat. Do you short change things to get them moving, or let the glorious swat assault play out in full detail?

I go round by round. The IPs happen--it can take awhile, but I list all the initiatives so that players can see when they are coming up and pre-post their actions if they choose.

InvisibleCastle.com has a good roller that I use so players can roll their own dice, rather than the GM rolling it, but still trackable to make sure folks didn't roll multiple times and post the best roll.

Most GMs have an OOC thread where they post all of the "nuts and bolts" stuff, so the IC thread can be the cinematic descriptions.

for the ease of refrence with dice rolls I have them put all of that under a spoiler tag.

if your descriptive skills are not up the the standard of your MS Paint skills, (Like mine) you can upload awesome amazing artwork to a shared Dropbox or facebook or flickr account

it's the one shame about DS is that images aer not allowed to be used, (Damn you spammers and Trolls, this is why we can't have nice stuff!)

and like the others above, an OOC thread or spoiler tags with the dice rolls and less cinematic stuff to keep it from distracting the casual readers

(YES, other folks read the games and take inspiration from them) and on occasion tip you private messages of approval or helpful hints in the right direction.

and YES my gamers, I am totally blaming all the bad stuff that has happened to you on someone else ... Spirits bless you Random Stranger !

One constant problem for me was who got to do the cool iC post.
Players, naturally, are always quite keen to do them, so I would let them whenever I could.
Quite often, however, since they don't have the full picture the GM does, I would have to reserve the right for myself in order to avoid a lot of contradictory info flowing and lose control of the scene.

As players and GMs get used to one another's styles, though, it becomes a lot easier to let everyone pitch in to the IC descriptions as combats unfold.

In my experience, Combat (especially in a rules heavy game like Shadowrun) is one of the largest killers of a PbP game. Any system that requires you to have actions take place in a specified order makes running a combat extremely time consuming in the PbP format. With some players wanting to post every day, and others once a week, it's very easy to get frustrated players with a combat dragging out over literal months. My advice would be to try and find some happy medium; maybe as a GM ask your players "What are you interested in doing in combat this round?", and gathering that information before it happens. Combat is a fluid thing, and presuming that *characters* will react in an optimal manner the way that players at a table do isn't necessarily realistic. Sometimes, a mook should get shot twice because two characters saw him as the biggest threat. If you can find a way to do this, then combat can proceed at an even pace rather than the snail's pace it's restricted to. Think of it like Golf- playing by the rules takes forever, but if everyone shoots as soon as they get to their ball (within reason) then the game itself isn't affected too much, and everyone can have a good time.

-DrZ