That's what I was thinking. Why the hell would you want to keep role-play elements out of a role-playing game?

Though I realized that this is why these kinds of DMs (the ones who prefer mission-based, not the raging douchebags. Though they are often one in the same.) kill their PCs so often. If they're not building a world and character backgrounds, then they're not getting attached to the characters, and nobody really cares when one dies. I compare that to the games I learned D&D in, where I can count the number of character deaths we had on one hand, and each one was a Really Big Deal to the PCs.