The game was published by the Queensland Department of Education in Australia for use within the public school system in the early '90s and never commercially released. Good luck finding a copy or even a screenshot. It predates Google by about five years.
Oh man, I think I played that back in school! The start sounds familiar, at least. I don't think I ever got very far into it, from what I remember other kids were more into it than I was. Plus it would have been pretty old by the time I was in school... maybe it was an entirely different game, I don't know.
I just remember the parachute intro and gathering bits and pieces on an island to try and survive. Pretty hideous graphics too, I think.
Anyway, a (hopefully) much easier one for you all.
I started playing some browser-based strategy game a while back, after seeing it discussed on the Bay12 forums. Some Bay12ers were at a much higher level in the game, managing realms/factions or whatever and discussing their castles and holdings and feuds with other factions.
The gameplay was a lot more, uh, close-up than games like Might and Fealty, I guess.
You controlled a party of characters, who were various classes (I believe archers were supposed to be quite OP), you could explore dungeons and such to gather loot in addition to fighting other players or battling mobs on the overworld map. It had the usual movement limits and that sort of thing, and you could be attacked whilst offline and view a log of combat later on. There were fairly basic tiled graphics, but I don't remember the UI being particularly good or bad.
One major feature was creating and maintaining garrisons across the land. I can't remember it too well, but you had to keep an eye on them and keep soldiers trained and equipped. I believe they were the same as your regular characters, and you could take/drop them off freely. You could also have characters elected as mayor and that sort of thing, but I don't think I got too far into that part of the game.
Another thing I remember was the towns, which could be ruled by either players or NPCs, had shops with a chance of a variety of goods, where you could work to earn money by spending moves or earn it by taking monster hunting/item retrieval jobs, and there were taverns where you could leave party members staying (or just leave them in the street, with a high chance of being robbed or killed). You could get party members resurrected, too, although I can't remember how easy/expensive that was.
I think there was also the option to write graffiti in towns.
Any ideas? Kind of a rambly description I know, but I remembered the game the other day and I'd be interested in getting back into it if there's still a playerbase. Don't think I got particularly far in it, but from what I'd read from other Bay12 players it seemed like it could entertain one for quite a while. Not sure why I stopped playing and forgot about it. Probably got bored of micromanaging and grinding.
Edit: I thought it might have been BattleMaster, but I tried resetting my password over there and it doesn't recognize my email.
Can't see enough screenshots of the game to judge if it's the right one.
2nd Edit: Nope, don't think it was BattleMaster. Pretty sure I tried that once and couldn't get into it at all.