The hand of fate

The D&D group I regularly attend is in the process of starting a new campaign. In doing so we decided to switch things up a little by adding a new (to us) "Fate" system. I've really enjoyed this as it has allowed me to give my character an in-depth background. My last real character was a lot of fun to play, but his back story came from the jokes and collaborative meta-gaming as to how he had all of his quirks. We are currently playing an enjoyable L5R game. However I find myself being unable to put my self into the world or my character. Part of it is that I don't know the back story and as this is only a space filler game have no intention of learning it. To a lesser degree is the fact that I made my character bad on purpose as I plan on doing a lot of TrekWest5 when we get around to Babylon 5. That way he isn't an essential part of the party and nobody suffers when he disappears. I guess the bottom line is that he isn't "real" to me. I have a large email chain going on with my group as we discuss our characters and their respective backgrounds. We all come from the same village which means that any large scale event in our lives probably effected everyone on some level. As an example one of the couples in our group have chosen to play sibling . Part of their back story includes the death of the rest of their family in a fire which consumed the family home. Because of that we have to figure out how that changed them (one now has hysterical blindness) as well as how it changed the village. I was wondering what you guys think about this kind of gaming. Is this something that will keep us playing through the slower parts of a long campaign or is it a big build up for nothing?