Yes I've suspected for a long time that this is really what you have to do. Either you are so immersed and have such a good memory that you live in your own fan

Yes I've suspected for a long time that this is really what you have to do. Either you are so immersed and have such a good memory that you live in your own fantasy world every day... or reality sets in and you treat fantasy worlds just like the real world, I mean that's what you want after all: For it to feel as real and believable as possible. The real world is pretty complex and full of details, facts and history and lore. Doing this without a database or without treating it like a historical research project is futile. You'd never hope to archive the entire lore and history of e.g the aztek culture in the real world without writing it all down. Hoping against hope that you'd somehow manage to make a believable window into a whole fantasy culture without having a far bigger corpus available at all times so you can adjust that window is futile. After all you have to move that window around for the story to develop and if there is nothing behind it, you constantly have to invent new things adhoc for every millimeter that you moved it. It's too hard.