This is going it be vague, so I don't expect much from it. However, I recently had a flashback to one of the first stories I read and I'm fairly sure, it was on this site. All of remember about it is it started with a guy walking through a valley, perhaps he was an adventure of some time, he helped some people in a forest and decided to travel with them. Later he was building a house in a city together...that's about it. Very very vague as I said, but feeling some nostalgia.
A long, long time ago. 14 years at least I would guess. It was a standard adventure fiction I think. It was before LitRPG and Isekai were a popular genre and fantasy was still just for nerds.
So it could have been a Portal novel then? Kinda like Chronicles of Narnia? Or was it D&D or table top?
The only thing that comes to mind is a trilogy called The Heritage? But that's more recent. Unless, I vaguely recall an early Litrpg/Isekai? Where a boy wakes up in a forest in a new world. Lives a few days or weeks scavenging his surroundings while being attacked by forest monsters, eventually being found and rescued by denizens of a Frontier Town. Husband and Wife. She knows magic, He knows Woodcraft/Hunter. They sort of adopt him, and teach him stuff. It was kind of a Cozy Isekai (like Demon Teashop), with brief fights with a forest lizard/dragon.
I do remember reading Tao Wong's Adventures on Brad usenet as a single reading, instead of his later published 9 book series with the ending cut off. Same with an Author called Alexandra Erin's Tales of MU that she later on re posted to a website as piecemeal to drive in revenue.