Swept Away on an Unusual Island

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Apollonian

They're all contestants for some kind of survival reality show, and thus have skills to suit. Bonus points if the PCs (if not the players) start the game under the misapprehension that this is the island where the show is being shot, and they just need to find the producer and camera crew, who were on a separate boat...

Extra bonus points if they find said producer and camera crew, except it's an evil wizard and his thralls. This could be because they just found some alternates of those people that are native to this land, or the "show" was actually all a ruse to bring them there for sacrifice or similar. Alternates are fairly common in portal fantasies, after all (at least the film version of The Wizard of Oz had the Wicked Witch and all three of Dorothy's companions as alternates of people she knew, The Vision of Escaflowne had Allen Schezar as the alternate of Amano Susumu, etc), while if travel to some place is possible, travel from it seems like it should be as well. Note in the latter case the characters have a further complication - the evil wizard may be the only one capable of sending them back to where they came from, meaning they can't just kill him off but rather need to figure out some way to convince him to send them back. Well, unless they decide Earth was lame and this Other World is awesome... in which case they may want to kill him off quick to make certain he doesn't send them back to get them out of his hair!

[Dustin]

Another way to help the PCs survive combat is if they can use the Extra Effort rules, but the NPCs typically can't (except maybe bosses).

[DeadParrot]

The stranded characters are friends who play a lot of RPGs, including of course, GURPS. Thus they have a lot of 'book' knowledge of many ways to inflict harm on others. Types of weapons and ammo, armed and unarmed combat, types of armor and shields, etc. The question becomes how quickly they can take that book knowledge and convert it to useful skills. This knowledge can of course include how magic works in the various game systems that can provide clues when/if they encounter such things in their current 'real' world.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Apollonian

They're all contestants for some kind of survival reality show, and thus have skills to suit. Bonus points if the PCs (if not the players) start the game under the misapprehension that this is the island where the show is being shot, and they just need to find the producer and camera crew, who were on a separate boat...

Add in some Three Amigos jokes along with the Gilligan's Island jokes.

I've had on and off again ideas (if you try to patent the Journal of Adventures That Will Never Be Played, I'm claiming prior art) of a C-47 that goes a little off course during WWII. Possible titles include "A Stick of Paratroopers in King Arthur's Court" or "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Cotentin Peninsula"

[Outlaw]

What is your definition of an, "Average Joe"?

If the time frame is modern, as an example of an average Joe...

I was born near Atlanta, GA in '69, grew up in Baton Rouge, LA, the son of a Georgia Tech educated mechanical engineer and a para-legal mother whose father was an Atlanta detective. My father was drafted for Korea but never served in country. I grew up in BTR but spent many hours in the swamp fishing and water skiing. Keeping the van used to tow the boat and the 85hp Evinrude outboard in good repair was up to my brother and I.

When I turned 15 Dad brought home a 1981 Chevy Chevette with a blown engine. He brought home a 1982 engine from the junk yard the next day. He placed a pipe across the attic entrance in the garage ceiling, hooked up the come along to lift the engine, handed me the shop manual and said, "come get me when you're stuck".

I had many BB/pellet guns probably starting around 10 years old. One day dad and I went to the range with one of his work buddies. That weekend mom bought a Taurus PT99AF 9mm automatic pistol and handed me the box when we walked out of the store. I was 17 years old and still have it. It has had so many rounds through it the rifling is iffy at best and it rattles like a diamond back if you shake it. I can't make myself get rid of it. I now have 14 firearms of various types, and occasionally compete in pistol and 3 gun competitions.

I graduated LSU with a Mechanical Engineering degree, worked for many years as a piping engineer and have since transitioned to IT. I love everything computer related and have business class Internet service so I can run my own web/e-mail/DNS/etc servers. I dabble in Arduinos, PIs, small robots and have done some work on my house which includes adding 220V circuits in the garage.

I am self-taught stick and Mig welder and have done some machine work here and there. Not very good at any but assuming the ship is somewhat intact, has an engine/generator/welding machine (which many larger ships will) and the engine runs, I could do many many cool things and a few deadly ones with the large amounts of steel available. I made a DIY aluminum smelter so I'm familiar with casting metal and I've done a bit of forging but a bad shoulder limits that activity in real life. I understand heat treating and hope to build a bloomery furnace before I die.

Although I never formally trained I am a voracious consumer of MMA and conceptually know some holds/take downs.

Long story short, I consider myself an average Joe and know several others like me. If me and my closest buddies were shipwrecked that would include a former Marine (MP and later aviation navigator) and a former Houston PD narcotics officer, also average Joes. Depending on who survived, the ships crew would provide the ships engineer (who would hopefully be a better machinist/welder/electrician than me), a navigator for the trip off the island, a captain for leading the voyage, and some muscle as well.

Assume the ship has a few firearms and some ammo (either crew or passenger sourced) and we could hold our own for a little while but the best bet would be to find the biggest most bad a$$ dude we could reasonable handle and blow him away. Then take over his tribe/group/gaggle/murder/etc and hilarity ensues.

Or maybe setup shop in the fairly easily defended ship (steel to hide behind, rigging for the high ground, etc) and provide things the natives can't produce on their own with the remnants of the ship all the while building a small vessel to get off the island.

Of course, if the ship SINKS then all bets are off and there's little chance any average Joe would survive very long even with a nice beach to come ashore on. Dysentery would get almost everyone right off the bat. With a month of no harassment from the natives and plenty of close by fruit trees, it might be possible to make it for a while. In such a case it would be better to have them befriend an oppressed group of friendly natives barely hanging on against the big baddies and work with them to take over the island.

Just my $0.02 worth.

--Outlaw.

[tshiggins]

My friend Dave was scheduled to head back to the United States during Desert Shield, until he got stop-lossed in the months leading up to Desert Storm.

Once the conflict ended and Iraq had been kicked out of Kuwait, he and a bunch of other stop-lossed troops received orders to board a chartered commercial jet at the nearest airbase for the trip back Fort Bragg.

So, they gathered up their kits and turned in their rifles and ammo (and grenades) to a sergeant, but were told to take everything else back with them.

After a very long flight, they landed at a civilian commercial aviation airport in North Carolina, and had to go through customs.
The customs guy asked them if they had anything to declare, so they started to pile their gear on the table in front of him.

After about the sixth 9mm pistol and the fourth bolo knife hit the table, the guy just put one hand over his eyes and waved them through with the other.
(Once they got to the barracks, one guy found he'd left several loaded rifle mags in the bottom of his ruck. Oops.)

So, have an aircraft full of troops returning from a long, difficult deployment crash-land just off a beach in the Mediterranean (during a weird storm, of course).
The player-characters are the only survivors, and the plane comes apart.

All that's left for them to use is the stuff that managed to wash ashore or land on the beach, and whatever they could make it out of the plane with.