A few things. My ex (who was consistently present at my games sessions far more than anyone else) had prior training in acting and was an excellent roleplayer. As for me, I have done so much roleplaying that I've come to be a pretty good actor, and I could probably take a stab at that as a career of I had the SLIGHTEST desire to, which I don't. The rest of our gaming table regulars were not actors. It showed. They certainly roleplayed and spoke in character when appropriate, they were all good gamers, but they did not have the acting chops of myself and my ex (who cried at the gaming table a couple of dozen times, about half crying on command for roleplaying, and about half crying because something bad happened to an NPC she liked, since she was very sensitive). Even though hers came from early schooling and mine came from a lifetime of GMing she acknowledged that we were about on par as actors. I noticed all of these "non-actors" were consistently several notches better at roleplaying/acting during LARP, which is no surprise at all; y'know, embodiment and everything.
Next thing: I personally think it is eminently, ENTIRELY reasonable for you to expect your players to speak as their characters during roleplay. PARTICULARLY if it's leading up to a Persuasion check or Intimidation check or whatever. "I get it, you're not as good at lying as your character is, you're still going to roll dice, you just need to tell me what exactly you say to the Duke/Guard/whoever. Personally, as a DM, I need that snippet of roleplaying a) so I can roleplay back and b) so I know whether to give the roll a bonus, a penalty, or neither. I have been fortunate enough not to have ever GM'd for anyone that ever REFUSED to speak in character when requested.
I'm a pretty fair Role player, so when I think I'm about to do a stirring speech, threaten, or lie to someone, i generally ask to do the roll first so that I can role play off of it. I'm as comfortable giving a stirring sonnet to inspire the kings men, as i am rambling nonsensically and accidentally implicating the king in several crimes, but either way i just want to know the quality of what i'm doing before I do it instead of after.
That is SUPER FASCINATING, since as I mentioned above, myself and every other GM I've encountered has called for the roleplaying up front, and then applied a modifier to the dice roll based on it. Your doing that in reverse is really interesting and cool. I think it might even make more sense, I'm not sure. I'll have to try it some time.
"I'm talking simple things like "I make fun of his crappy armor" rather than simply "I insult the guard.""
Yeah, that would be an incremental improvement. "I make fun of his crappy armor" is fine for "The Guard", but for important named NPCs I really think you need roleplaying interaction.
"In other words, if you aren't going to get into character in the same way that thespian-type players do, what are some goods ways to still contribute to immersion?"
The best thing I can advise (and I'd expect at least half the board might strongly disagree with me here) would be to steer players that are not particularly good at improv or not comfortable with improv or not interested in improv away from any kind of "Face" roll in the party (typically the Bard, but also some Rogue builds, some Sorcerer builds, maybe the occasional Paladin or Cleric) into classes more focused on killing things than insulting them (Bbn, Ftr, Rngr) or classes that don't need to say
besides "I cast
charm person/command/dominate person on the guard, i.e. the Druid, Cleric, Sorcerer, Warlock, and Wizard, because magic.
As far as jazzing up descriptions...
In one of the RPGs I published,
SPLINTER, there was a mechanic called color commentary. Basically, before you made an attack you would describe the attack you were going to make in a cool sounding way (or pun it up with the cool dry wit of an action hero) and get between 1-3 extra dice depending on how cool the GM thought your description was. The GM is not allowed to give 0 dice as long as you put in an effort. Technically, different types of characters should have been using Color Commentary a limited number of times per session based on your character build, but in practice for the most part we ignored that and gave everyone infinite CC. Color Commentary was a little more complicated than that, because it didn't just call for a cool description, but a cool description of an attempt that may or may not succeed ("I'm gonna try to take this filthy bugbear's head clean off") versus ("I decapitate the ork"). There was also the fact that you were broadcasting it to the fans back home (with some fairly strict autocratic censorship) and if you succeeded at something that would grant you SP (Subscriber Points) while using Color Commentary, you'd also receive bonus Subscriber Points equal to the number of bonus dice you got from Color Commentary. And finally it's worth mentioning that you could color commentary literally anything, picking a lock, making a "save" (the game doesn't call them that but they're basically saving throws), trying to build an assault rifle from spare parts you found in a dungeon,
anything.
You probably see what I'm getting at. When someone does or attempts something, if they describe it in a way that adds at least some immersion/atmosphere/flavor, give them Advantage on that thing.
EDITED IN: Oh, just some brief random musings on the 1st person vs. 3rd person thing? 3rd person is entirely equally valid: "She says XYZ" is exactly the same as "XYZ", it just has two extra words thrown in. Personally, I tend to use the 3rd person only when playing female characters...using the word "she" to describe your characters' actions is a great way to make sure everyone at the table grokks that you're playing a female character.
I can't stand most thespians. By-and-large they're not typically good gamers, but obnoxious attention-hogs using their real-world acting skills to "win" at D&D and verbally dominate the group.
This has been the EXACT opposite of my experience. I've had a lovely time gaming with many theater geeks. I've had the misfortune of gaming with people like the obnoxious attention-hogs you describe, but as far as I can recall, none of them were actors, and all the players I can remember who were actors were fun to play with. The biggest issue any of them ever presented was that they never had any time because they were busy trying to be actors (I kinda miss you Sam Haft, wherever you are).
But I will absolutely admit that the second clause of your second sentence describes me to a certain degree. My acting skills come from GMing, not real world experience, but still, I'm almost always the best roleplayer at a random table I sit down at, and I have literally pointed out that I am doing the best at role-playing a few weeks ago, although that's related to the thread I made about Inspiration. What I absolutely NEVER do as a player, however, is to verbally dominate the group. I take pains to make sure that everyone, even the shyest, most non-participatory wallflowers,
especially gets an equal share of the spot light and a chance to really engage with the game, and I'll do a lot to foment their participation, up to including just plain shutting the hell up myself. Besides, I've spent so many hundreds of hours GMing I always try to have perfect table etiquette as a player. Some players hogging the spotlight by virtue of just BEING THE LOUDEST while other players are getting shut out of the action just because they're being quieter. That makes spotlight management hard for a GM to deal with, and I would never want to saddle another GM with that crap.
I have seen other sorts of attention hogs in other games, like the big extrovert guy who made an SAS killing machine for a "You are all normal people in the Zombie Apocalypse" Savage Worlds game. But not actors as such.
