I have this weird problem in the ICON game I am running. I said three very important things to my players when we started. The were "Let's do the epic fantasy campaign" A"I can commit to three years of running this" and "I want to do as little work as possible." Now my players are asking me for lore on the Aesi and the Titans and in the future, who knows what else.
I wanted to play ICON because I saw it as the chance to do the great D&D Campaign I never got the chance to do. I came into ttrpgs via 5e at 2017, and I was very familiar with the people online bemoaning how much effort they put into creating a fictional world with reams of information on every detail, just for players to find the little Goblin they didn't murder to become the party mascot and focus of all ambitions.
Over the next 3 I would run 5e in fits and starts and come to realize that if I was going to enjoy ttrpgs I would have to smarten up about that endeavor. It never mattered to what we were engaging with in play; it was more of a process (a time-consuming one) that served to get all the ideas out. There is a caveat to this process,: trying to fit everything in a world sometimes made it difficult to get the interesting stuff into a game. As I shifted into indie games, especially short form story games for one-shots and some-shots, the tailoring of the game to shorter time frames and how it drived into the core element of the game's topic become exhilarating. I didn't need to wait 3 months playing a game to become someone powerful, I didn't need a 3 page backstory to justify chewing on a scene. We showed up, we set up, and we just Did It.
So now here we are after 3 years of that. I'm all about "hey what do we want this game to be about" or in simpler terms "what do we want to focus our conversation on through the edifice of ICON?" I've come off of one-shots and some-shots and short campaigns and built up a skill of making setting and context for that. I want to hit things to engage with them immediately. There is no slow reveal. We're here to do what we want and get what we can out of it here and now. Here is a valley, here is a cadet branch of a family that is trying to control it. Here is a small-scale expression of a broader social trend that is appropriate for you to try and take on.
So what's going on in this shift into the demands of ICON? I can only assume that I'm buckling in this shift from shorter term, laser focused indie ttrpgs to grander ones. My tricks of alluding to broader worldbuilding without defining it is struggling because the scope of the game is mythic now. It is a great opportunity to grow into a new experience and learn more about what it takes to make this game happen. I'm sure that there are GMs out there who are jealous of me: My players want me to write lore for them. They want to learn about it. Some problem! But here I am having to come up with all of this lore anyways.