About two month ago I got interested in D&D and I decided to start playing it. I read the rules, found an adventure and got four of my friends to play with me. They always show up to play and we have fun, but I think the game could be a lot better and fun than it currently is.
I think my main problem is that the players don't seem to care that much, mostly about RP. I know you shouldn't force RP, but they never ever speak in character (Instead they choose "I ask him if…" "I try to intimidate him…" and come up with the simplest stuff when I ask them what they're saying exactly). They don't seem to take most of the NPCs, the world, or the challenges seriously, and they don't take initiative at all no matter how I try to make them. I have to ask "What do you do?" every 5 minutes, and most of the time they say they don't know or very vague stuff, like they just wanna get the story going.
It annoys me because I like DMing, but I would also really like to be a player so I could immerse myself in the world and RP. My players, on the other hand, don't seem interested in that, and so the only moments where anything seems to be happening are during fights.
Another problem I have is pacing. We play something like 2-3 hour sessions, and all we can do is a very tiny bit of roleplaying and at most 2 fights, or one fight and one skill challenge.
In the end I'm really frustrated, because the story doesn't move very quickly, the players don't seem to care that much about it anyway, I kinda have to hold their hands if I want something to happen, and while I was excited to roleplay with them and let them discover this awesome world that I created on my own, they don't really do that.
I really like them, they're my best friends, but sometimes it's really unsatisfying to play with them. However, they're the only players I've got.
Oh and one last thing which may be one of the causes of the problem: we play on Roll20, not IRL, so sometimes they just mess up with the drawing tool and sometimes they just don't answer and are kinda lost.
Best Answer
Start small — give your players one specific problem to solve
It seems the main issue is:
Naturally, when you don't contribute to the story, you have no reasons for role-playing.
In other words, your players lack agency. Perhaps they treat D&D as a computer game, where the story is pre-written, and all you need to do is to make choices (select one from a pre-written list) and participate in combat scenes. So they expect the DM will lead the story, giving them minor choices sometimes.
Instead, let them choose the whole approach. Don't make the adventure too open-ended — for new players it might be paralyzing — but propose a decent task (say, to save hostages from a castle) and let your players decide all the details. How do they do that? Will they choose a sneaky infiltration? Will they try to deceive the guards? Will they make a forceful approach? It is up to them.