So You Want To/Make a Runaway Hideaway

A Runaway Hideaway is a place in the story where a Runaway character can live and survive. it can be different depending on setting. Here's how to give your runaway a home.

Think about your setting
The most important of all, as everything links back to the setting.

The Hideaway can be anywhere:
 * A city
 * a stranger's house
 * a shelter
 * somewhere in a large park
 * a church
 * a friend's house
 * The woods
 * A small hut
 * a cabin
 * a campsite
 * a cave
 * A deserted island
 * a ruin
 * A foreign land
 * Another planet
 * A hidden realm

Basically there are a lot of options! But it's all built on setting. Depending on your World Building skills and your character's goal you can either succeed or fail. Running away can be difficult in fiction just as in Real Life.

Dude, wheres my stuff?
Dependent on setting.

In a city you can get nearly anything if you have money and a place to go home to (It may be more difficult in a foreign country). Even shelters provide food and materials.

In a setting usually desolate or abandoned like an island or forest, materials and food are a challenge to get. If you weren't smart enough to take some with you, you may end up crafting your own tools and clothes. You could occasionally steal from near-by cities or colonies but they'd take careful planning. Plus you don't want to get caught after running away. There may not even be anything close to civilization around leaving you to fend for yourself.

You'd need to require a number of skills and know where to find certain resources:

Food:
 * Vegetation: plants, trees and flowers. There are various fruits and vegetables and even some flowers are edible (rose hip tea and cherry petal jam are two examples).
 * Wild life: The idea of hunting and killing animals may creep you out... Boars and pigs are pork; consider wild birds a chicken substitute if no chickens can be found... Cows are beef; Crocodile meat can be food while the skin can be made into clothing. Fish, oysters and shark meat are also good.
 * Water: A freshwater source is necessary. Freshwater sources are usually waterfalls or small ponds. Your own pee can even be filtered and consumed (gross fact).

Materials:
 * Wood: from trees
 * Stone: can be mined or picked up off the ground.
 * Cloth: if there's sheep, there's wool. Wool can make cloth. The cotton plant can also help.
 * Dye for clothing can be made by boiling certain materials in hot water and letting fabric steep in them.

Weapons:
 * Bamboo can be sharped to make a spear.
 * Metal can be melted (with a hot-enough fire) to make knives.
 * Stones can be cut and softened to make several tools.
 * Clay can be used to make brick.

Flying Solo or Making Friends?
There are advantages and disadvantages to running away alone.

Pros:
 * All resources for yourself
 * No traveling companion makes traveling for longer periods of time easier

Cons:
 * No one to talk to
 * No one to take care of you
 * Must avoid battles or die!
 * If you don't do something that needs to be done, it doesn't get done

Running away with a group? Crap, this has pros and cons too!

Pros:
 * People to be with
 * Emotional support
 * People to tend to the injured
 * More members in a battle

Cons:
 * Resources can be easily depleted
 * Fighting
 * Someone might rat you out

Of course depending on the characters the pros and cons change. Depending on plot and setting you'll either want to kill yourself (bad), get new friends and go home; or start a colony, live like a pioneer and stay away from civilization's influences (good, the last one is questionable depending on the motive).

Wait a minute, where do I come from?
Another thing to think about is what setting your character is running away from? Did your abused runaway finally snap and run from their abusive family in the city? Is the rebel in a not so utopian future sick of the rules that bind him?

This will affect the other subjects after this one. Take your time and think. Computers don't fall from the sky and TVs don't come from trees. Electricity can't be made from dirt either...

An Economy Is You
If you plan to colonize a new world or maybe you're LARPing and getting a little too into it... The economy will be spurred or started up by you.

Some advice:
 * Use your resources:
 * if you have farm land, start going
 * if you're at the ocean, start fishing
 * Field of flowers? Start picking

The key is to use the resources available, conveniently a resource that never stops coming - like fish in the sea, flowers and crops all year round if there's no winter - and exporting (selling) them. Crafting your own products is another good idea!

Money is another issue. Before money you had to trade something of equal value to get what you wanted.


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