I'll tackle these one at time despite the fact that a couple are the same answers. Also, these responses are in regards to PbP games, face to face games are a different beast and I've never done Chat or VoIP games.
Boogs:
What sort of communication do you find takes the majority of your time (whether for good or for bad)?
Overall, area descriptions. I try to be very thorough with area descriptions, so sometimes I will reread them three or four times and recheck my notes to sure I'm not leaving something out.
After that, rules calls. I have to go look up the rule (often very short time, though sometimes it can be tricksy, so I'd say this is the second longest part of this process, overall), then weigh if it's a straight forward determination (usually it is, this is the generally the shortest portion of the process), then apply the call (writing up a response, if necessary amending the house rules, this is the longest part of the communication process - I don't always type or formulate thoughts quickly).
Though sometimes, I have a moment where I struggle with a response in an NPCs voice. If I hit that wall, this will quickly outpace anything else for "longest time between Player post and my response". These singular moments are the longest moments, but they are thankfully few and far between. It happens more when I'm either feeling burned out on a game, or if I'm hitting a rough patch of "haven't really thought about this part of the NPC's life" moments.
quote:
What do you find yourself spending the most time on when it comes to running a game?
Character responses and detailed area descriptions.
quote:
What do you find is the longest part of getting a game going?
World building when I don't have a group already clamoring for a game. I've spent almost 7 years fiddling around and not really working on a game because I have no "group" (IRL) to run it for. Sure, sure, there's RPoL... but that's not the same thing mentally.
quote:
And, what motivates you to continue on with a game?
Enjoyment and dedication. If I'm enjoying it, it's easy and I want to keep doing it. If the Players are having fun, but I've started to not enjoy it, I'll push through for their sake, and because I know once through the 'doldrums' I tend to pick the enjoyment back up.
quote:
What system(s) do you think combines the best combination of crunch and ease?
Whichever one you're most fluent in. No, really. I don't care how simple a game is, if I'm just getting started in it, I'll think of multiple ways I could be "doing this more easily in GURPS" because I know that system completely. It's rare I encounter a system where it's mechanics are such I "couldn't just do it this this other way in this other system", but there are a few systems I think do specific things more elegantly/simply than I could do them in GURPS, but because of my familiarity (and my Player's preferences*), I generally just prefer to run GURPS.
And GURPS has some "depth to it's crunch". The workload is mostly frontloaded, whether that's on the GM who is setting up the game and making templates, or the Players if they're making 'free-form' characters (not following Template/Professions), or the setting Author if they wrote templates/professions that the GM is using. But once you get past Character Generation, GURPS can smooth out and be very easy for the Players. For the GM it's going to come down to system mastery, book familiarity, and notes organization for making rules calls. During play combat can be pretty fast, I tend to prefer one round of combat per day posting rate, and GURPS combats can be brutal and swift (over in a handful of rounds, which are one second long in game time) if you're not turning on all the "cinematic options". So I can get the Players through an average combat in a week, two if it goes long. And I do use a bunch of cinematic options so the game 'feels' more like a "big action movie" rather than gritty realism (GURPS does both pretty well, you just have to decide what your preference is).
* I've tried to run other systems in the past for my IRL group (when it was around) but because they were GURPS fans, and in some cases very resistant to change, I ended up not getting those games going (sorry FATE, you just weren't
fated to be).