So what is popular in the land of Rp? and how to handle combat

[TheRambler]

I have been out of Forum RP for YEARS, and I am curious what is popular now? Do people prefer groups or solos? I remember when I was first in Forum RP, it as really popular to have group stuff. A sorta dnd style but without the dice. Where everyone would sort of roll about and the GM would explain how things happen. 

It worked really well for the most part... till combat. Our forum struggled with "DBZ/Naruto" syndrome where people just could not seem to accept a loss, or understand that winning all the time is boring. As there was no real rules for combat there was no real way to stop people for being superpowered undefeatable characters. Which I found boring, I think loss can be one of the most important driving factors in character development! 

Heck even in real life, I did not get my crap together as a kid till my dad got sick. Loss moves things sometimes for good, or ill. 

Anyway, how do you fine people handle combat and loss? What is popular? Any advice on how to have a good experience here as a 'newbie' to all of this? 

[h0p3fuL]

I've never participated in combat roleplaying before, so I have no idea whats popular. I just looked at a different thread that gave me an interesting idea though.

It seems like alot of people use dice to roll for a chance of effectiveness.

Suppose you have a game that has swordplay for example. What if someone implemented an Escape from Tarkov style health system to it? It would require a program that lets you make a multi-sided die online with custom faces. You could roll one die, and that would determine what limb gets wounded (if at all). Then a 2nd die would determine the severity of the wound. 

Getting limbs "blacked" out and becoming unusable would be very interesting I think. Obviously, there's probably a bunch of issues that I haven't realized with this idea. I had just thought of this 5 minutes ago or so. 

[RedPhoenix]

I don't think groups v. solo was ever a popularity thing, I think some people liked one or the other or were in the mood for one or the other and it's always been like that?

As for combat, yeah, it slows things down terribly on forums if you try to play it out by the same rules of a tabletop game. So don't. I always like the approach of if you're gonna roll dice roll them for the entire scene not each action. Like, high roll combat goes good, low roll it goes bad, deal with the results.

And for loss, just gotta tell the players upfront it will happen. That will mostly screen out anyone who can't handle it.