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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bedrockgames" data-source="post: 8245175" data-attributes="member: 85555">I think it exists in your mind but it is a product of a process involving your thoughts, your notes, etc. I am not advocating for a platonic form of the setting or something (though I am sure there are GMs who take this view somewhere). It is a concept. A model. I am not saying it is real. I am saying it resides somewhere in between the two extremes being offered (total non existence, and real). It exists in that it has some objective parameters the GM can track and build on in his mind. When I am running a setting, I am regularly modeling it in my head. I am not saying that is a perfect model. When I likened it to a computer simulation, I made a point of calling it primitive because I am using very remedial instruments (notes, maps, sketches, outlines of institutions, outlines of political structures, descriptions, knowledge of what is happening in the setting, knowledge of what the PCs are doing). It isn't as perfect as a computer model by any stretch. but it s also clearly not the same as a method where there is no attention paid to the setting as a living world model. This isn't something where you always have this mental projection going on in your mind obviously. It stops and starts. But I can imagine it pretty clearly when I think about it (and again not everything: I am not saying I have a zoom in and zoom out objective map of the setting in my head---I am saying I have a workable model). And also there can be more worked on and less worked on areas in the setting. Just out of necessity you may decide there is a vast basin to the west, but because you know it isn't likely to come up you don't tend to those details as much as the eastern provinces or something (though eventually you may need to: and there at least ought to be some idea of what is going on in that basin so the eastern provinces aren't in a vacuum).</blockquote>

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