Call of Cthulhu vibes here. Some rolls you want to fail, because you’re better off not knowing.

Star wars FFG and Deadlands. I love the flavor of both. I doubt I’ll ever play star wars, but some of my current groups will probably give deadlands a try.

Toss them a minor magic item. Prep while they squabble over who should take it for 30-60 minutes.

In 3 months, you’ll forget they have it and they’ll use it to completely bypass a 4 hour combat you planned, leaving you in the exact fake boat you are now but even worse.

But that’s a problem for future you.

I’ve got 4 groups.

Groups 1 and 2 are small groups made of friends and we handle everything over text. We do tend to have a lot of “hey, are we playing today?” texts on the day of.

Group 3 started as a work game and has a larger group with less consistency of who shows up week to week. We use discord. Creating events, hosting lore, and places to stash special/homebrew rules is nice.

Group 4 is a west marches-ish game with about 10 players. Discord for that also, though once a group is set for a couple sessions we switch from the discord channel to a group message for communication.

I’ve used Teams in the past as well but I find discord to be better for managing the various things I need to organize a game.

It’s not malicious. I just can’t resist the trope of having that epic spider v. praying mantis battle that’s comparably totally inconsequential at standard scale. Makes me giggle.

My favorite little twist is that rolling your number results in “laser feelings”, which instructs the DM to reveal something important to the PC.

It’s basically a narrative shove forward every time it happens and keeps the game fast and fresh.

It’s my go to system for a quick one shot to introduce people to ttrpgs. Always fun, crazy, and simple to learn. And minimal work for the DM so long as you’re willing to bounce off whatever your players come up with.

I’ve run some one shots for more experienced players that have been really memorable and full of creative play, too. The simple mechanics don’t hold it back. It excels when you’re willing to “yes, and” pretty much everything.

http://www.onesevendesign.com/laserfeelings/

Also had about a billion hacks https://writingalchemy.net/resources/lasers-and-feelings-hacks/

Cars and Family provided one of my favorite games I’ve ever run

My initial thought when reading OP’s request and list of issues with other systems was that something PbtA would make sense.