I ran a pretty large guild in DAoC (I know, ancient) and I once role-played my own disappearance.
The guild was looking for me while I was hunkered down in a challenging dungeon that would take a lot of people to clear. What's more, I asked others in the community to help me pull this off by standing in areas around the world (4 or 5 locations) and offering hints. Now, I was also encumbered and could barely move (the escort out part would be against respawns all the way) - unarmed with only a server-first massive sword in my inventory. When the participants arrived, I was shocked to see, not just my entire guild, but members from all over the community come to "my rescue". I gave that cool sword away to one of the community members that really rallied everyone on the server.
I used to do "wave training" too. Try to kill a massively impossible NPC by throwing wave-after-wave of optimized "squads" at it that were far below the creature level. RPG-ing some training exercises was inspiring for everyone. (we killed it by the way - took a while and several tries - haha).
Why these two crazy, ancient stories? Because I wanted to make the point that RPG-ing is always fun. To have that fun, you must work within the limits of the game framework, however. You will have more challenges if you're trying to play a different game within the game. But 'using' the game to roleplay is crazy fun (not to mention inspiring, instructional and sometimes emotional).
Know your environment - keep safety relevant and urgent at all times - devise your plan - execute your plan without hesitation - embrace all the things that suck - own it and do it until you get it right. Do this hard stuff and the rewards will come 10-fold.
If you want to run an escort mission (for example) without being griefed, then devise a way to protect that mission. Make it a part of your storyline and solicit some griefers to come try their hand at your security escort (don't tell anyone in the group though). Build it up - involve the players across the universe - make it fun on a grand scale.
And if you fail ... well do it over with a new approach. Risk something and receive more.
We're all role-players after all. Heck, I told my wife I was rich, stable and liked her mother ... lol