Land Ownership: I'm sorry, you cannot use that claim certificate here.

So, we have a huge world, with lots of open spaces.  Lots of coastlines for the humans, lots of mountain passages for the dwarfs, lots of volcanic spill-plains for the ophidians, and lots of old-growth forests for the elves.  As well, there are some spaces for the halflings, barbarians, gnomes, and pteradons to build some political units unaffiliated with a kingdom.
  How exactly does land ownership work?  Well, land ownership is of two types, personal and political.  For a player to own land personally, all they have to do is obtain the design of the structure, some base materials, and find a plot that is not personally or politically owned.  The building starts to take shape as soon as they click on the blueprint and place the structure on the ground.

Some see a barren wasteland, others, a gold mine.

  Political ownership is a bit more complicated.  A political land grant for a town is issued by a Governor of a city or the King of a kingdom.  It includes a radius of 1000ft or so from a point to be zoned for city center structures.  This is to include residences, barracks, city hall, tavern, warehouse, shrines, and monuments.  There is another radius that extends to 3000ft which is to be used for fields, mines, loggeries, ranches and such.  Any personally owned land that is within either of these radii continues to be personally owned until the owner cedes control to the engulfing political unit or the structure is destroyed.
  When the town meets certain benchmarks for growth, it turns into a city.  The radii are then expanded, and GMs step in to help the players with beautifying the area and giving the city flavor.  There are only four kingdoms to a server.  The capitols can be ransacked, but never taken over.  A kingdom may have its holdings completely reduced to zero, but it still has a king.  Also, the king is of the same race as the kingdom.  This is the only instance in which racism is enforced.  A halfling may be the governor of an ophidian city, but a human will never rule the kingdom of the dwarfs.
  Once an area is owned, then any player with the appropriate privileges can place a building on that land.  These buildings will produce resources according to their condition and location and will consume resources according to their building type.  Balance must be determined before launch for every location.  No location should be able to support a town in the long term.  A town in any location must, without imports, languish.  This is the same philosophy as that behind the RBS.  One thing that prevents a town from flourishing without imports is that many of its buildings require medicine as a resource, and a town cannot build an apothecary.  A city may build an apothecary, but not a Royal Apothecary.  A capitol may have a Royal Apothecary that produces royal medicine that can sustain any of these buildings for months, but does not produce enough to supply all the towns that a kingdom can make.
  As always, details are upcoming.