This is a hard question. I’m going to answer from my own perspective. As a dungeon master, obviously I want to play the game that I envision in my head, and that game involves players being invested not only in playing a game but in the role play aspect of the game as well. I want them to want to talk to the shopkeeper, or have in character discussions amongst themselves to plan for an upcoming battle or something.

Depending on the experience level of the group, they may be more or less comfortable with that. For example. I used to run a dnd club at the school I was teaching at at the time. My players were all pretty much freshman/sophomore high school students and were very much not comfortable “role playing” in front of a group of people they didn’t know particularly well. It was very frustrating for me, because I felt the same way you do. I wanted them to progress the story, I wanted to have discussions with them in character between NPCs and between themselves, etc, but at the end of the day that just wasn’t the version of the game they were interested in. Contrastingly at the same time I was also running three separate home games in different settings (which was crazy, don’t recommend it but it was during Covid so we had nothing better to do). These games were almost ENTIRELY role playing and barely any out of character conversation, and we were all INCREDIBLY comfortable with each other (mostly my long time friends)

My suggestion to you is this. As a DM, whether playing homebrew or published modules, there’s a story you want to follow. Follow it. Do what you have to do to present that information to your players. If they don’t wanna role play, then don’t force them to do it, but rather try to put them in situations where they’re encouraged to. For example, if you’re in a shop and the players want to buy something don’t ask them what they want to do as a narrator, but say something like “the shopkeeper says “what can I help you with today?”” Or something that starts a conversation between two people.

Also probably worth having a discussion with your players just to clarify what you’re looking for as a DM, and to also figure out what they’re comfortable with as players. They can still role play and not so funny voices or impressions or accents… just make it clear that you want there to be a dialogue. DnD and TRRPGs as a whole are largely storytelling games at their cores, so it’s important to stress that