AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Eh, does it have to remain established? I created the original fundamental maps of the campaign world on some big sheets of graph paper in around 1976. Later I re-drew them on some hex paper (maybe a couple times actually, I'm not sure). I pretty much consider the hex grid version 'canonical', but it does differ in some ways from the 1970's version. Nobody would ever really care. Some of the same people have played in this world as recently as 2-3 years ago who were players back then in the same world. Some of the old PCs even made cameo appearances.You'd think so, right?
But in the end it all depends on how good the DM's notes are, whether prepared before the game or written down during it; because seven real-world years later (which might well only be two or three in-game years for the PCs) when the party go back to that area there's no way in hell I'm otherwise going to remember which town had the good swordsmiths or even if there were any here at all.
However it's established, the point is that is then has to remain established.
Most of the time, yes. It's the instances that don't fall under the 'most of the time' banner that cause headaches.
Nobody was really concerned that every detail established back almost 40 years ago was precisely known today or even if it was known that it was exactly held to be perfectly canonical. In fact I introduced a couple of elements in the new game which directly contradicted and put a new spin on a couple of old elements. The players discussed this and happily agreed that those 'old tales' could well be a bit inaccurate! I thought this was interesting. Nobody complained that somehow the play we undertook back then was 'invalidated' or compromised in any sense.
So why not just have the setting somewhat heavily developed even if it's the first game there? This would allow for that same ready availability of information and also allow a chance to check it all over ahead of time and fix or remove any inconsistencies or errors before they affect anything.
Well, you can. I think if you play in any sort of established setting, say a superhero genre game, or even CoC or just D&D in World of Greyhawk, then of course a lot of things are established at some level. I don't think that is usually considered to be a way to remove inconsistencies. In fact I am told often that FR is a nightmare this way, with players often knowing all sorts of obscure facts that are easily contradicted in play! Is the GM supposed to acquire all these products from decades past and read them all? I don't think that's feasible. So maybe a middle ground could exist where some background is helpful, but OTOH a blank slate is hard to run into problems with!