I honestly am not sure what you are saying
Just to add to what [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION] said, and hopefully clarify the point of this thread. At least, to the point to which I understand it anyway (which, given previous history, might not be understanding what's going on at all...
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From what I understand, we are positing that there are two main elements of an RPG - what I've termed content and what I've termed performance.
I define content, in the context of this thread, to mean all the stuff that goes into playing an RPG. Laying out a scenario, building a scene with the players and the DM creating a back and forth conversation which resolves the scenario, rolling dice, that sort of thing. All the stuff that's, more or less, specifically called out by the rules of whatever RPG you're playing. IOW, content=stuff that you need to play the game. You cannot play an RPG without content, well, unless your RPG is akin to Godot: The Waitening.
Performance, on the other hand, isn't really defined by the rules of an RPG. It might be referenced, but, it's generally not actually specifically needed. An RPG without any performance probably looks a lot like a computer game, IMO. You lay out the scenario, and then click the buttons in a certain way and resolve the scenario. The only real difference between tabletop and computer game is complexity - you can obviously do more to resolve a scenario in a tabletop RPG. However, while performance isn't specifically called out by the rules of an RPG, it is absolutely vital to play. How you present the scenario will drastically change the nature of that scenario. Simply dropping bare bones description in a monotone voice with nothing but the most essential of adjectives makes for a really boring game, despite the fact that it has all the content in the world.
Really, I think this is why horror is so difficult to do in a TTRPG. It's so easy for someone to drop a fart joke in the middle of a scene and turn it into farce. Something about picking up dice seems to bring out the inner 12 year old in a lot of us.
Which makes the performance aspect more difficult that it might seem.
I've got a decent example here actually. I just finished running Dragon Heist for my bunch. Now, in the final scenario, it's a dungeon crawl. But, there's no boxed text at all - just point form descriptions of the rooms. Bare bones stuff. There's a fresco on the wall, there's carvings of dwarves on the door, that sort of thing. No actual performance at all. And the scene totally fell flat. The players just went through the whole adventure without really giving a damn because, well, whoopee, there's carvings of dwarves. It wasn't until I started getting a lot more expressive about my description of this lost, dwarven tomb, created by a dwarven empire that had fallen a thousand years before Waterdeep was founded, crumbling walkways, smells, etc that the players actually started getting into the feel of the adventure.
Content is important. Totally agree. But, content without performance has no soul. Has no impact. Your performance, as a DM, AND as a player (give the DM something to work with here, you lazy assed players), is needed to really bring the game to life.
