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Hi John,
If you will take an outsider's advice on the matter...
DMing a Play-by-Post can take anywhere from moderate amounts of prep time to a very large amount depending on how you want to handle things.
Setting up an account to post maps to, scanning maps or creating them via maptools can be time consuming. If you are interested in an option that takes a bit less time, you could always create maps in a spreadsheet table. The later is the option I tend to use, (and Max does too for that matter). No the maps aren't as "pretty" but are functional for the most part. Here is an example from my Council of Thieves game. If you have a group of players that you trust to play fair, you can even give them editing rights so that they can move themselves on the map.
Outside of the typing and map-making, it really isn't all that more time consuming that DMing a table top game. I've found the beginning of combat speeds up nicely if the DM rolls initiative for everyone at the beginning, that's just one less round of posts required for a simple task.
Thanks, Talomyr. So I guess you've forgiven me for pointing Calathes at the explosive runes? <g>
I think the spreadsheet idea will work better for me, since I'd like to be able to post from work and (in a fine example of everyone paying for one person's screwup) the IT folks there don't let anyone have admin rights on their machines.
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Yeah, there's some tricks I use to try and keep things moving, as combat in a pbp can get bogged down REALLY quickly. I usually roll initiative for everyone, and then let people post their intentions in any order they want. If 24 hours pass without a post from someone, they don't get an action that round.
I also don't bother with a grid for my PbP games. I will try and describe the battle area as well as possible, sometimes providing a graphical map of the area (usually just a portion of the image cropped out of the pdf) and then just try and keep track of general positions as best as possible. I guess I play it a bit more like I did 2nd edition.
Outside of combat, I roll knowledge checks where applicable and most saving throws for the players.
Outside of that, I actually find that PbP takes LESS prep time than a regular game, simply because you never have to know the material well enough to fly off the cuff - you can take your time to look up proper responses every time.
Oh, and John, thanks for picking this up and running with it. I'm sure you'll do great.
