Land, Property & Tenure

Land is where your people sleep, grow, work, and quarrel. Your world must say who may do which of those, on what terms — because no universal answer exists.

Five separate facts

For any holding, ask separately:

• Ownership — whose recognized claim is it?
• Occupancy — who actually lives or works there?
• Tenure — on what terms is it held: for how long, for what return, under what conditions?
• Rights — who may graze, cut fuel, draw water, pass through, mill, fish, or gather — without owning the soil?
• Superior — is there a holder above the occupier: a landlord, institution, or authority to whom dues or service are owed?

Living somewhere never proves ownership. Owning never means personally occupying. A superior relationship never means the superior owns every acre beneath it. Ownership itself is rarely absolute — custom, obligations, and shared rights constrain even the strongest claim.

Project-defined, entirely

Tenure, rents, dues, inheritance, transfer, boundaries, common rights, building customs — all are yours to define. One valley may hold lifetime tenancies for small renders; the next may lease year to year for coin; a town may rent rooms, stalls, and lofts by separate bargains. Never impose feudalism, serfdom, primogeniture, or any universal landlord pattern. Your custom decides, and unusual custom is valid.

Use the existing Property for every holding that needs persistence — cottage, field, workshop, mill, stall. Do not create Farm, Estate, Tenancy, or Ownership types. One parcel can carry layered interests — an owner, a tenant household, a neighbor's grazing right, a superior's due — inside that single record and its relationships.

Example

Consider a tenant household that occupies a cottage and works nearby strips under local custom, paying a yearly render and harvest labor. Recognized ownership sits with a small religious house up the road; the reeve collects the dues; a neighboring household holds a customary right to graze the stubble after harvest. Each interest is real, each belongs to its holder, and none is the others. This is one illustration, not universal law — your valley may arrange all of it differently.

Buildings follow the same logic: who occupies, who owns, who repairs, and what happens when the roof fails are separate questions. Maintenance is ordinary and constant; neglect accumulates; improvement by a tenant does not automatically create ownership unless your custom says so.

Good Builder Question

For the holdings play will actually touch: who owns, who lives or works there, on what terms, what rights do others hold, and what is owed to whom?

You Usually Do Not Need...

...a file for every hut, room, stall, field, or pasture. Create Property records where ownership, tenure, rights, obligations, production, or condition genuinely matter. Let background ground stay background: the lanes walked daily, the fields glimpsed from the road, the cottages never entered.