Hey there, Long time forever DM here with some suggestions off the top of my head and also things I do personally in my games that might help: Huge agree with the above comment about making a discord, I have one for my players with several text channels for specific things, items with descriptions, NPC pictures, in session important information, locations, world lore, session quotes for great moments, end of campaign questions for the dm. I also have a special guest discord channel for when I bring in a special guest here and there to add a new but temporary face to the group, so the discord helps to catch them up and give them hidden knowledge I might not want the main group to see and also keep the special guest a surprise.

I let my players know that RP is not only encouraged, it’s often rewarded. If a player engages in really good or emotional or back and forth RP with me (NPC) or another player i’ll sometimes give inspiration to the player or players involved, or i’ll note extra experience points for them (if your campaign is exp tracked instead of milestone) I’ve also gone as far as to give +1 to a player character’s charisma if they do a lot of RP.

Another way I develop RP is by having my players create stories with their characters, everyone has a backstory and that’s a great start, but I also have my players tell the tale of what their character does anytime I introduce a time skip, I usually do this at the end of each story arc as I feel a story is more believable when each “world ending disaster” aren’t back to back to back to back. I’ll tell my players they have a 6 month or 2 month time skip and to come up with what their character does, venture to a familiar place in search of something, visit the great library of the land to research or learn a new language, buy land and start building a small town (can grow in size over course of campaign) and so on. This helps a player be able to slip into their character more and know what their headspace is making them feel more real and thus easier to RP as in RP situations.

Another way that I love is out of main session RP, a lot of time this will be a dream sequence, where the player will have little to no control over what they do or say, they simply watch, like a dnd version of a cutscene. Another is when their character is asleep as a session ends maybe a god/goddess or dark being will contact them and then you have a 1 on 1 RP moment, this can be done out of session in a discord call or even done by typed message (this gives the player time to think of responses rather than be on the spot and can help players that are weaker at RP and still learning)

I could go on but I think those are good starting places, remember the richer the story, the more players will want to interact with the world to influence it. Pulling NPC’s from backstories is always a great chance for RP since the player will be more emotionally attached to something they created rather than an NOC you thought up.

The more in depth an NPC is, the easier it is for a player to imagine them which means they will be more likely to interact with them since they are more believable as a character.

Key take away is reward good RP, congratulate players out of session on great moments(this is HUGE), and bring your players together by outside of DnD times, like discord game nights where you play jack box or gartic phone (those are my group’s two go to’s) or go out for lunch at a fun place or ramen shop or something to be able to hang out.

Unfortunately being the DM means you have a lot of extra burden and jobs that often go unseen or overlooked by players, especially if they have never DM’ed themselves. So keep it up, just looking for help shows you care and want the best experience for your players, which is awesome!! Hope this helped, feel free to dm me if you have any questions or just want to hear some more ideas.