Heh, I think I'll drop this in the pond and see where it ripples.
I've been cogitating the whole "literary" thing and I think I had a bit of an epiphany. It goes back to my example of the Vengaurak, many pages ago. Basically, I posted a couple of descriptions, one in modern jargon, and one in more "gamey" sort of speak to describe a monster from the Scarred Lands setting. It was [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s reaction that led me to my current feeling of epiphany. He replied, and I'm paraphrasing here, "so what? Why should I care about this monster?"
And, really, he's right. Without context, that monster is just a stat block and a picture. It's no different or more engaging than any of a thousand other monsters that have graced the pages of D&D over the years when it's removed from context. But, see, that's where the literary aspect comes in - building context. World building, while certainly not limited to the literary, is a primarily story telling element. We don't do world building in a conversation. [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] talked about how getting a letter from a relative has a viceral element and it's true, it does. But, that's because it's part of the real world and all the context is built right in. In a second world, you need to create that context for the reader, or, in the case of an RPG, the player. And, you create that context through literary conceits like world building.
A Vengaurak matters to a Scarred Lands player because Vengaurak are the spawn of the terrible titan Gaurak and we care about that because the setting posits that the Titans were these terrible beings that destroyed and remade the world multiple times before the gods rose up and destroyed the Titans. The current setting is a sort of post-apocalyptic place where the Titans war is only a century or so in the past and everyone is trying to rebuild. But, and this is a key element of the setting, the titans and the gods both created different races and different races sided with either the titans or the gods in the Titans war and finding a way to reconcile differences is a major part of the setting. Now, a Vengaurak is a mostly mindless eating machine as befits something spawned from the blood and effluents of the Glutton Titan, Gaurak.
So, right there, that's where the context comes. We care when we see ten kobolds on the hill because we've gamed so long that we KNOW what that is. We don't need it spelled out because it's been spelled out to us many times before. But, when you take away that familiarity that comes with gaming for far too long, suddenly the literary becomes a lot more important. It's the literary - world building, setting construction, theme, trope - (and yes, that's not limited to the literary, but, just because other story telling media use the same conceits doesn't make it any less literary) - that builds that context.
Imagine sitting down to play a Call of Cthulu game if you knew nothing about the Mythos and had never seen a horror movie or read a horror story. Or a game about chivalric knights if you knew nothing about King Arthur or European court mythology. Imagine you were to sit down to play an RPG where you were Ainu living in Yayoi era Japan (something I presume most reading this know little to nothing about) and the DM refused to set the scene because the DM refuses to use any literary techniques. All just pop culture references and modern language. How engaging would that game be?
Just like [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] said, why should the player care about a Vengaurak without any context?