I believe Aria's worldbuilding stuff was intended more for macro-level worldbuilding and getting a sense of history to use between periods of actual real-time roleplaying. In other words, the interesting things the magic-tolerance stuff could be that Jere talks about, and all the other fine detail, are meant to be filled in by players over actual roleplay with individual (or several, or something) characters.

The Aria:Worlds stuff isn't the game in-and-of-itself. It's the vehicle for fast-forwarding between eras of a game in a logically-consistent, rich, and interesting manner. When you get something intriguing, stop and actually roleplay.

At least, that was always my impressions of it, and how I've seen it used before...