I had a go at creating a world with a custom seed yesterday. After learning that seeds don't have to be numbers, I punched in "oddworld" to see what happens.
The result was desert biome starting area with smaller patches of dirt and a couple of trees. Stone was nowhere to be seen at first, my first batch came from the bottom of a pond. But there was plenty of sand, so I decided to go all Arabia and build a house out of sandstone (initially sand, I was in a hurry - then I realised, and made the roof out of sandstone instead).
(mentioned house and the surrounding desert)
(inside of mentioned house, at the time not entirely made of sandstone)
Playing in a desert biome is a good twist to the usual mode of playing. You don't really get lucky outcroppings of coal (even stone), you have to rely on sand a lot initially, and (as far as I'm aware) passive mobs don't spawn on sand.