TLDR: How Much Time Are We Willing to Spend?

So, I just visited with some of my friends who will be playing in my D&D game using the Dreok setting I put up. I've spent a lot of time on the setting, with the visible in this blog accompanied by plot points, characters, adventures, etc. in my own personal notes. I was able to give everyone some spiel to give them the quick rundown of the setting, but none of them had taken the time to read what I wrote up. It made me wonder if I was trying to hard, or expecting too much?

Back in college and high school I wasted many a page and hour upon setting design and details, writing adventures, trying to make the best games I could. When making some of my LARP characters, I put in pages of detail, even on minutia like relatives that will never get brought up. But as I get older, the time invested to pay off seems slimmer and slimmer. I suppose I can blame RL some, but I seem to have lost a lot of the patience I once held along with most of my players.

So, rhetorically, I sort of ask myself, how much should we do for roleplaying, especially on a single game? How much can we expect of those around us? I figure there are samples of good and bad.

Good preparation type stuff- generating a nifty setting with friends that everyone likes. Did this in Necessary Evil when we did our own take on things, fighting fascist super heroes instead of aliens. Getting player backgrounds and weaving into campaigns, damn near necessary for Seventh Sea. Reading book and knowing rules and setting makes it easier to jump in.

Bad Prep stuff- Background material overshadowed by game, long effort for little gain. Background wasted when character dies suddenly. Long prep time discourages trying to play at all.

I dunno. Its all about balance. I just feel like, the older I get, the older my friends get, the less excited we get about cracking open the new RPG and taking the time to make a super bad ass game. Then again, sometimes its better to jump in and play than not play at all.

More later if I have some insight.