I’ve been trying a deserted island start with some random characters lately.
Wilhelmina Regan the Handywoman died 4 minutes in when she discovered her island wasn’t quite deserted – there was a giant worm in residence, who took offence to her squatting, and ate her.
Lawry Dennis the Novice Stormshaper lasted six whole (mostly uneventful) days, and died of frostbite while trying to find some way to forge a handful of scrap metal into a chunk of steel for a makeshift hammer.
Scotty “Gluttony” Koenig the Lumberjack is doing better. He got a straw bed and fire pit constructed, and over the next four days scoured every bush on his five map-tile island looking for a container to boil water in, and found none. He did get some bones from some unfriendly little dinosaurs that attacked him, which gave him a bone shiv to cut things with. Yelling at the dino’s buddies caused them to flee, which was better than having them rot.
By the morning of day four he was drinking unboiled lake water out of desperation and vomiting a lot, but staving off dehydration by a hair’s breadth. He had also constructed a straw basket, and using that, he ferried his clothes and possessions across to a neighboring seven tile island over a three hour period, whereupon he donned his clothes once more set up his straw bed and fire ring, cooked some nearby cat tails, and dehydrated again, set out with his straw basket and wood axe to explore the new island and forage for desperately needed supplies.
This turned out to be surprising, as he saw a wood wall ahead! He had discovered a small boat house, complete with a racing kayak! There was no suitable container, but there were metal display racks which might yield metal sheets. He also spied some unpulped zombie corpses in the woods to the east. Dropping his basket and pulling out his axe, he moved carefully over to smash them. A regular zombie, a child, and a fat zombie that rose as he approached. Two swings of his mighty wood axe felled it once more, and he pulped it. Wondering what might have dropped these zombies beforehand, his eyes scanned the area and spied an odd round structure made of red stone: a wizard’s tower! He was saved! Too bad he was illiterate and can’t read those nifty spell scrolls laying around.
Inside he met Kristy Bullock, a magus who gave him a mission to track down her wayward apprentice and a stolen book, and on his way out he “borrowed” a 3L glass jar to boil water in, a hammer, and a screwdriver.
Ironically, on the way back to his makeshift camp, he foraged a couple of bushes just for the hell of it, and of course, a gallon jug appeared.
