I don't think youre doing anything wrong.
I haven't done the whole ttrpg thing since college, but we rarely did role-play as in getting into character, the nearest we tended to get was making game decisions based on what our character would do - which is still how I try to play videogame RPGs.

Yeah. Trouble with the popular role-playing scene is that it's become all about the characters and people acting as opposed to folks having a good time. I generally would let the individuals decide their level of involvement, if they're having fun regardless of pretending to be legolas, then I would say job done.

Yup totally. Its a huge pressure nowadays to have critical role experiences when most people are happy to be rolling dice and kicking ass mate.

They always seem like hard work for the GM. I’d be happier with something like Fiasco but I’m never sure I’d find the right people to play it as I think most people find it hard to no try and be cool.

There is only one rule: What the DM says goes.

We used Rolemaster rules and there was a stack of rulebooks literally half a metre high that covered every situation possible. There was a lot of citing rules.

TTRPG games aren’t just about ardently sticking to rules though. That was the original setup when it was just dungeon delving, but campaigns now have narrative and stuff. Your job as a group really is to figure out what you’re comfortable with. I’ve not GMd a lot but when I have i’ve never stuck to the book. You make stuff up on the fly, create items, mechanics, rules, characters and so on.

As an anecdote of sticking too close to the book, a friend of mine had an abysmal time recently in a campaign with a DM who was so afraid of going off book that it lead to constant disconnects in logic. During one brutal encounter with some yetis the party came up with the idea of shattering the ice bridge they were fighting on, sending the yetis that were pummelling them to bits into the cold abyss. The paladin has a mace, this is bound to go well. But ah, Wizards have thought of that, so they gave the bridge hit points. The GM allowed the paladin to make this last ditch attempt to save his party, but he came up short by 3 HP. The bridge didn’t shatter, and true paladin got knocked out later, so they had to hash out a few more rounds of combat before it was clear they were heading for a TPK and the GM decided to come up with a way for them to escape.

It’s an isolated incident, but it’s bad feel for everyone apart from the GM who is adamant the book must be followed. The famapign is limping along but my friend never has a good word to say about it.

Me and some other pals are playing the Age of Sigmar RPG Soulbound at the moment, and it’s a lot of fun cos it’s very big broad stories action without a lot of weight mechanics, which suits the setting to a tee, but I can see people who want the crunch of games like Pathfinder, Dark Heresy and Warhammer Fantasy being disappointed. Speaking of Dark Heresy, when I played that, my character got grapples off a 4th story balcony and lost the use of both his legs. I ended up with prosthesis, and a grim outlook on life - which is something pretty unique to TTRPGs - everything can have consequences both mechanical and narrative.

Later in the year I plan on running Lancer, the Mech RPG i did an interview for Dicebreaker about, which I thought was quite interesting: https://www.dicebreaker.com/games/lancer/interview/lancer-rpg-interview-future-roleplaying

I later shared the full transcript for those who enjoyed that. Warning, it’s like 8000 words: https://medium.com/@Tempy/lancer-an-interview-transcript-ea118cebfbf8

I've had a number of games of this during lockdown. One page of rules, so its mainly on the fly stuff but it's a right laugh with the right people (and a few beers).

http://www.onesevendesign.com/laserfeelings/

Used to play alot of Cyberpunk and Traveler back in the day, and I've bought The Witcher RPG to run after lockdown hopefully.